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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   37397 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 27, 2025

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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 don’t think he wants anything from them per se. He wants stuff to be made in the US, by the US, for the US. America has enough raw materials, it can physically do that.

The tariffs are a goal, not a lever to the goal.

That's Juche.

Economic self-sufficiency (자립; jarip) is required to achieve political independence, according to adherents of Juche.

In On the Juche Idea, Kim Jong Il argues that a state can achieve economic self-sufficiency only when it has created an "independent national economy" based on heavy industry, as this sector will drive the rest of the economy. He also emphasizes the importance of technological independence and self-sufficiency in resources.

That's true, but the situation is different. North Korea did Juche out of necessity. They were a small, backwards nation being embargoed by most of the world, and also completely lacking in oil and other key resources. Today they're... still small and backwards... but they've survived, much longer than anyone thought possible (albiet with a lot of help from the USSR and China). The USA is different. We're large, rich, and have basically every kind of natural resource within our border somewhere. There's no particular the USA should have to trade with other countries if it doesn't want to. The usual econ argument is that free trade and specialization of labor makes countries more prosperous, bu the counterargument is that it leads to income inequality, alienation, and fragility as our entire industrial base moves overseas.

fragility as our entire industrial base moves overseas

We can talk about industry being shipped to countries with lower wages and laxer environmental regulations, but none of that really applies to Canada.

I dont care about lower wages or environmental rules much. But i do think it its a bad thing when global capitalism concentrates all te production for something critical into a single place. Case in point, some people are joking that we can't oppose Denmark because they control the entire world supply of ozempic.

So long as everyone makes something that everyone else needs, it should be fine, right? Denmark can't oppose Taiwan beacuse both need each other.

Unless the Taiwanese just don't overeat, in which case the Danish have no hold on them.

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