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PaperclipPerfector
17hr ago
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So Trump has hit back against Canadian counter-tariffs with more bans and tariffs on goods like alcohol, dairy products and so on. He's also talked about preventing Bombardier from selling in the US unless it builds there, despite Bombardier building engines there.
What's striking is that I've seen no theory of victory at all from the Canadian side. The closest I see is a sort of forlorn "midterms ?? profit". But I don't see much indication midterms will stop Trump. He's not actually going to run again. Probably.
He may legitimately TACO, but I think it doesn't seem wise to imagine that pulling back against China says much about what he'll do with Canada. A tit-for-tat tariff battle on 1% of trade likely doesn't do it, in which case Canada is being put very choppy economic waters (who wants to do business in this climate without a deal?) even before we get into potential escalations.
If Canada wants independence, they need their own nuclear weapons program and probably a command economy since North America is a natural and profitable economic unit. Mass immigration and an imperial style of citizenship so they can sidestep assimilation and just get resources from millets would help too. A nuclear powered command economy with 100 million people would definitely be independent.
I don't think Canada wants independence. Carney may, he talks that way at least. As if he's the head of some European democracy. Some of the government paid class may also want to be European. Most people are fine doing business across the border. That's the revealed preference.
Canada seems to want to stand up to Trump. Maybe punch him in the face and make him acknowledge Canada and then settle into some honorable peace where all this annexation talk and the unreliability on deals stops, even if we get our asses kicked a bit.
The problem is nobody has actually explained how it'll be contained to the "a bit" part. Or the explanations have a curious contradiction between how vicious Trump is supposed to be (so you can't give an inch) and how constrained a war with said vicious person is going to be.
As for the 100 million people thing...yes, that was a thing people used to bandy about, the northern version of Yglesian thinking. Trudeau killed it.
As for resources, it's hard to explain but Canada fears and distrusts them. Which is why they prefer to sell it to America. As I said, revealed preference.
Obviously- he's more Brit than Canadian (one notes a foreign king on the throne- anything but the domestic option, clearly). And the people who voted for him all remember a time when Britain, and not America, was how Canada defined itself (politically and morally)- this is the Conservative view in the country (the party calls itself something else).
Everyone who was born after that (which goes double for the people outside the Canadian Imperial capital- Toronto/Ottawa/Montreal) voted for the Reform party (the party calls itself something else).
Everyone who doesn't work for a living wants this.
It's jingoism, plain and simple. The old always take the young for granted and provoke stupid wars on purpose- after all, they aren't going to be fighting, now are they? The young will fight and die to preserve the political prerogatives of the old (except this time the old has nothing to pay them with).
A long time ago that point was stressed, repeatedly, by those who actually fought in
Great European Civil WarWW1/2- by the same people who vote for Carney now. Public education was wasted on them, clearly.Trudeau championed it, Carney would continue it if he could afford it. The country has shifted its moral capital into fighting the trade war and away from "accept infinity migrants".
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