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Notes -
Happy tariffs eve, to those who celebrate.
With by all accounts the tariffs against Mexico and Canada going into action tomorrow, actually for real maybe probably this time, let's have a slice of cake and blow some party horns. This is quite a significant change of political fortunes - symbolically at least, and one would presume economically too, depending on how quickly the reshufflings happen or if this actually goes through at all. Since the 1880s, and more definitely since the 1980s, the world and its various regional economic blocs have moved towards the free trade of goods and services between nations. It has not been uniform or without reverses, but the trend has been unmistakable.
Often I like to wonder how a given event might be thought of 100 or 1000 years from now - will some future textbook see this as the high water mark of globalism, some point in the line of history that is forever after viewed with special significance? As much as people have claimed Donald Trump has been hindered by the Deep State, they seem to be slow to react to him ripping up one of the signature features of American hegemony (something he himself has contributed to, given that it's his free trade deal that is essentially being dissolved).
At the very least this is all going to be fascinating - one of the ironclad, universally agreed-upon tenets of a social science being put to the test. Markets have not reacted well so far, but that's as much a feature of groupthink as it is reflective of material reality. It's a good time to be a prospective PhD in Economics. You're about to have more than you could have ever hoped to work with.
So, have a Happy New Era. If this is actually happening, which I'm sure a lot of people are still unsure about (certainly I am). See you on the other side.
Speaking as a Canadian, we are so, so boned. Things were already looking bad for us economically, with poor productivity, insane housing bubble, and crumbling infrastructure while debt keeps piling up. I keep hearing from my fellow citizens that we are going to need to diversify our trading partners and I really can’t believe they can be so insane. Like, you thinks it’s gonna be easy to freight our goods across the second largest country in the world, to get it across an ocean? And the buyer won’t even have dollars to trade us for it?
So boned
Looks like trade with the US is ~20% of Canadas GDP. Imports are also sizeable. This will not end well for Canada - my sincere apologies from the US. I honestly wonder what Trump is after.
It's all so petty. Trump wants Trudeau to bend the knee. Trudeau sees #resist as a strategy to improve his own popularity, and if average Canadians get fucked all the better. That's been his MO from day one.
In the end, we have two vain leaders peacocking for their respective audiences.
Trudeau already negotiated a deal with Trump last time around.
And then Trump shows back up treating Trudeau as a domestic partisan enemy because ??
Like, I don't think this is a "both sides" thing: Trudeau/the Liberals would probably love to head this off again but nobody is sure what's going on with Trump (who chose to be obnoxious even by Trump standards) which cause a backlash within the population any leader would have to be wary about meeting head on.
Like, the perception of hesitation alone has caused the only blip in what should otherwise have been a cakewalk for the CPC into power.
Because he is?
Trudeau (like Zelensky, maybe) made the mistake of aligning himself with the (current) losing side on US politics, strongly and explicitly. There's no way he's walking back from that; he also hates Trump, and Trump knows it.
Everything is personal with Trump; kind of a weird way to run a country, but easy enough to work with if you aren't an idiot.
That may be his thought process, but it's retarded.
Trudeau is who he is because that's (apparently) what plays for Canadians. His domestic policy is as a theater kid lib with delusions of "punching above our weight" in international relations. When it comes to actual relations with America he plays ball with Trump or Biden because everyone understands the reality that Canada is the junior party.
There was no Zelenskyy/Hunter Biden issue. Trudeau just is a lib why would he agree with Trump politically? It's one thing to say one should not personally wrong Trump (already crazy, given his nature) but another to say no one can differ on policy. And if being a lib is an issue what of Starmer?
This isn't some Vance dressing down via speech.
It's retarded to even care about Canadian domestic politics in the first place given that it's irrelevant to its fundamentally subordinate position to the US. It may be annoying for Trumpists to see pretty theater kid Trudeau on the Daily Show being fellated by whoever has that now (even that more or less stopped as his popularity dropped) or to see libs whine about going to Canada but none of that matters. Nobody actually goes to Canada because America is richer and better, and when the US says "jump" (like "arrest a Huawei exec and hurt relations with China") Canada jumps.
But, if you do care, it's retarded because Trudeau was already a dead man walking. The only thing standing in the way of the CPC sweeping him and his party into the dustbin is Trump himself.
There's nothing "easy" about dealing with this sort of retardation.
Like, I think the case that this is just fundamentally predatory - targeting a nation that is both inherently dependent on the US and has actively made itself moreso due to bad policy - is actually a much more sensible one. If this is actually his thinking...yikes.
"Trudeau is retarded" is not a controversial position -- even people who like him are not doing it on the basis that he's smart.
Policy is not the issue, it's his history of moralizing with Trump on unrelated issues; 'too woke' essentially -- and now Trump is cancelling him along with all the other woke stuff.
If that's what Trump is thinking then he's retarded too -- while the actual gross balance going south is not that large compared to other partners, it's primarily inputs to a wide cross-section of American industry. My guess is that the Trump tariffs on Canadian imports will be more harmful to US businesses than the lame-ass 'retaliatory' ones Trudeau is proposing.
Self-owns all round I guess -- but somebody who is willing to build a personal relationship with Trump is what's needed to mend it. "Shamrock Summit II" anyone?
I'm not even sure what youre referring to tbh. Maybe I'm just totally desensitized (it's been a decsde since "it's current_year"). But it is indeed retarded to take Trudeau being Trudeau (in a way that imposes no costs unlike the Ukraine war) into an economic war when he'll bend on actual policy. Send Vance to give a speech.
I legitimately suspect someone from the Zeihan school of thought convinced him that he could exploit the weaknesses in the confederation to maybe cause Alberta to secede and end Canada.
It explains/fits with a few things. The lack of clear criteria to end the tariffs, his inability to shut the fuck up about the 51st state thing (like a kid whose just heard of a cool new idea and can't wait to share it with everyone) and his general desire to expand territory.
If he could meaningfully change the borders of the US he is going down in history.
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