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While it's entirely possible Trump is absolutely excited to apply tariffs all around, my perception is that for Canada and Mexico his goals are more to use it as a "big stick" to get them in line with his goals: "your entire economy depends on us and I have the power to ruin you, so here's what I want you to do", like how he used it as a threat with the Colombian president refusing deportation flights
Canada's economic interaction with the US doesn't seem to be harmful in terms of the US's long-term economic success: "you send us oil, we refine it and sell it back to you" is actually a pretty good setup for the US. If anything, it seems to paint the Canada-US relationship similarly to the US-China relationship, where not building domestic industrial capacity leaves the former dependent on the latter.
The question then becomes whether Canada will cave sufficiently to Trump's desires, and I can see there being some pain there: Canada's tended to frame itself as "the US, but properly enlightened" and I expect that will lead to some #RESIST and trying to get Trump to cave first, and I'm reasonably confident Trump will actually pull the trigger if it comes to it.
I get what Trump wants from Mexico. I'm not sure what he wants from Canada. Is fentanyl coming in from Canada? I thought it was coming from Mexico.
I mean, He's said that he wants Canada to become part of the US, but that can't be his motivation here, can it?
I think the "annexing canada" and the "tariff canada unless they accede to his demands" might be coming from the same place: "you're entirely dependent on the US, so get in line and work to our benefit, rather than benefiting from our largesse and then stabbing us in the back in every public forum you get into"
I think there are some other similar things in Trump's policies, like asking NATO to pay for its own defense: some of that is just cost-cutting, but some of it is the NATO countries deriding the US for being a warmonger while being completely dependent on its warfighting capability. I suspect if they were praising their benevolent protector instead of claiming they're superior because they don't need to spend money on weapons, it would be a lower priority.
How is NATO dependant on America? European NATO has 400 nukes, 2 million troops, carriers, submarines, aircraft, everything.
European NATO would crush Russia in a conventional war. 500 million Europeans beat 140 million Russians 100% of the time. They're only behind in nuclear weapons but still retain the power to cause Russia a lot of damage.
Everyone points to them not spending as much as the US military but they have everything they need already.
I would argue a vast amount of those military resources were researched designed and developed with US IP... decreasing costs for our allies...
And to add to that, if you have XX amounts of jets including however many f-16s, as you can see in ukraine, once you get into a real war, those artillery shells start to deplete quickly. Im aware some european countries produce their own jets but I believe, and am willing to be proved wrong, that despite that much of the equipment is still sold to them by the US. So they get into a war and then you have Macron begging in the house just like zelensky for a loan to buy equipment.
Europe does buy a lot of American equipment but that's fine, many countries do that. They buy it with their own money as opposed to other people's money like Ukraine.
And they have the Eurofighter, Rafale and Tornado that were produced entirely in Europe. They have Leopards, Leclercs, Marders, MLRS and long-range SAMs... Turkey license-builds the F-16 domestically. There is a European version of just about everything except stealth fighters.
Maybe the American stuff is a bit better? American aid would obviously make it much easier to beat Russia. But it's not strictly necessary with over 3:1 population advantage and a much larger industrial base. 1v1 Europe would beat Russia every time in a conventional war. It would be like the Ukraine war but in reverse where sheer size is the most important thing. Broadly speaking, as Russia is to Ukraine, so Europe is to Russia.
If they were actually at war, then they'd start building serious numbers of artillery shells. But there's no reason for them to be at war so they don't bother.
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