Being negative about Xi might have similar results, but less likely in practice.
There's a game being played that, once you see it, it becomes clear that some world leaders are thinking about 2035, and other world leaders are still in 2015. I don't like it, and I genuinely feel for Canadians; they're a small, inconveniently positioned pawn that is getting caught up in something so much bigger than their country and leadership has the resources to deal with.
Edit: Since I'm throttled... Trump has been talking about Greenland since 2019, before he was surrounded with the current crop. Good try at keeping the 4D chess con going though.
It's hard for me to come up with a standard that encourages trade with China but discourages trade with North Korea. I'm not saying that trade with the US is therefore a good idea. There are many reasonable moral standards that would forbid trade with both the US & China.
I've been to China, and I'm going again this year, I'm from the EU. The funniest thing is that China's Tier 1 cities are more developed than EU cities and offer a better quality of life.
States use the "morality" argument when they need to build a narrative and portray someone as bad/evil to justify actions against them, while the real reason is almost always geopolitical interests or money/resources.
Not to mention the US and China use similar “low level” indoctrination strategies (like swearing allegiance to the flag in schools)
Being negative about Xi has typically much worse in consequence and closer cooperation with China might make it more likely in practice. I'm not saying countries should not cooperate with China, just that your argument is not that great.
The US is just less trustworthy at this point, at least we know china's goal better.
Note: both under the current administration
It’s hard to build an alliance when one of the partners flips their fundamental goals every 4 years.
Current administration is just bat shit crazy and hungry for personal gain.
This started with Trump and Project 2025 and whatever the tea party mixes in there.
It's how trade starts, small friction reductions. And now that trade is happening anyways, and there are newer better ports, it becomes easier to do more trade. And trade grows. With better new trade routes/infrastructure they aren't just selling the Europe, they are taking more and more market around the world.
For the USA that 'tiny' to you 3% is going to wreck a lot of red, agricultural states economies. And they then become drags on other parts of the American economy, and instead of chasing opportunities we're propping things up. Less trade impacts all trade, because suddenly things get tighter for Mississippi shipping. Train lines. There's less synergy, more expense carried by the remaining industry. Less money for maintenance/reinvestment in bulk transportation. Less money going into John Deere and all those agg adjacent companies. Less money for our petrochemical companies (fertilizer) means less reinvestment for them/worse health, higher risk from foreign competition.
For example 60% of farm exports travel over rivers, and 20% of coal. So coal shipping prices might get impacted. Maybe coal shipping efficiency as river shipping lanes lose 60% of their business there is less put back into maintaining them. Coal isn't in a position to absorb much shock, it's doing really bad already.
Chemicals are 9% of US exports. More ag trade makes it profitable for companies in these other countries to start setting up their own petrochemical factories/industries that will then compete with us as well.
Edit: You missed my entire point. But yes, the US is winning by shrinking our export market and needlessly building up competitors. Everyone envies shrinking markets. You got me.
This is a good thing for the EU; more diversity in their import partners is a good thing. This is a bad thing for the EU; their farmers are about to see prices for their goods drop. This is a good thing for the US; less international demand for their products means US customers will see more stable prices. This is a bad thing for the US; because of everything you said. How it shakes out is a story for the history books; but the game that's being played right now is far bigger than you realize, and more important.
Now that we’ve shredded the relationship with both areas, they signed on the dotted line.
What’s next, let in shitty US food?
I don’t see general public welcoming it. Most people don’t seem to even know about it. Out of those who do know, many don't seem to be happy about it.
Also, fucking over our farmers in unstable world does not seem like a smart thing to do. It’s time to do opposite and double-down on sovereignty on all fronts. And food sovereignty was one of very few sectors where EU got it right. Our food is not cheap, but we got plenty locally and quality is pretty good.
Everyone can solve this for their own farmers. Just buy local, problem solved.
Does that mean some things might be a bit more expensive? Yes, you're paying to keep them around just like you might want someone to pay for you to be employed.
If we don't it's a race to the bottom for everyone.
I feel the same way about some euro leaders pointing to China as possible alternative to US. Fuck no. Sometimes it feels like some people here want to pull off the same shit that is going on in China or US and just wait for a good opportunity. E.g. legendary chat control. But many people pretend it’s all fine and dandy just because.
We are at a crossroads if we continue with globalism in the remaining world or if everyone is on its own. I prefer the first. The EU, Canada, Japan/Korea/other Asian states form a great alliance not associated to China or the US. Will not help military wise, but will help market wise.
Strategically, I do think you want to be coming up with a plan to shield core industries like auto, shipping, energy, and some parts of manufacturing (eg “factories for factories” rather than “factories for consumer goods”) from dumping / state subsidies.
It might be OK to let the PRC subsidize your solar cells, assuming you can build wind instead if they try to squeeze you. It’s probably not wise to depend on PRC for your batteries, drones, and cars, where these are key to strategic autonomy and you don’t have an alternative.
BUT, with a new contender (China); we could re-enact it, rebuild our diminished blue-collar manufacturing base; and hasten the rollout of EV vehicles. Which is the real objective here.
IMHO, that would be a solid win for everybody.
[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada%E2%80%93United_States_A...
Around 65-75% of Canadians live in parts of Canada that have winter temperatures similar to those of Norway's major cities and EVs perform fine in Norway so will probably also be fine in Canada.
The US and Japanese and Korean car companies are putting most of their EV effort, at least in the US and Canada, into the more expensive models. They don't have much that is the EV equivalent of a Toyota Corolla or a Honda Civic for non-SUVs, or the equivalent of a RAV4 or CR-V for EVs.
Honda for example only has the Prologue, which is built on top of GM's Equinox EV platform and starts at about $15k more than an Equinox EV.
The Chinese EV companies seem more willing to address that segment. Even if they have to pay union wages to build them there will be demand because it will still be cheaper than the EVs that are aimed at a more upscale market the other companies are mostly making.
If this deal as reported somehow manages to doom the Canadian auto industry, then our auto industry was probably somehow doomed anyways.
Letting in some small amount of Chinese EVs for so they can test the waters seems sensible all around. If they are popular then negotiate on local manufacturing to allow a larger market share.
Nova Scotia here, off grid, realy want to build a new bigger solar pv set up with sodium batteries, and design for whole house, shop, and car charging. Time for that is looking like now!
Canada total trade with China in 2024: $119 billion
As an analogy, imagine you’ve accumulated enough debt and bought yourself a house, a car, and invested in enough productive unseizable assets (very important), like a farm and whatnot, to sustain yourself. what’s the point in servicing your debt? If the only consequence is no one will lend you again, you already have everything so whatever, right?
I can poke a million flaws in this logic, but I _think_ that’s the megasupersmart move the current administration is gunning for. Hell do I know how it will pan out, but I have a hunch. FAFO I guess.
*fuck around, find out (◔_◔)
Or, you grow the pie. Look to history to learn how empires of the past grew their pies.
As an external person which is actually benefitting from Trump's shanenigans (I am paid in CHF, which are worth more and more as they are considered probably the safest currency there is) I think the current US Administration wants to thread the needle by devaluating the currency enough that debt becomes manageable and exports benefit from a weak USD while remaining the reserve currency.
However, I also believe that for this plan to work you shouldn't alienate your closest allies as they will go trade elsewhere, impose tariffs on you, or trade in Yuans just to spite you. So you are left with a weak currency that is not as important anymore and basically unchanged exports.
The experiment in "is America too big to fail" is probably going to result in a "not quite" answer, but they're really giving it a go.
Spain in the 1500s, the Netherlands in the 1600s and the British empire in the 1800s are good examples of countries considered too big to fail that they eventually crashed and burned and lost their world leader statuses rather fast.
In all three cases over reliance on new debt to fund stuff, disappearance of the middle class, and abusing their dominance (military and/or economic) made them crumble as other countries steered away from dealing with them.
There's a lot of investor capital moving to traditional industries in China, India, Brazil, Korea and Europe, simply because there's better returns to be made with more resilience to American problems.
It is going to be a rough ride as America re-calibrates to a world which no longer relies on it. We took enormous amounts of benefits for granted.
Simple. They see opportunities to blame the opposition for the failure of their economic policy. They've been doing it for decades with great success.
There's a significant percentage of voters who will believe, no matter what, that what's going on right now is the fault of the Democrats. Hell, Federal agents are killing people in the streets on camera and a significant percentage of the population is OK with it.
Just like there are young voters today who blame consequences of Reagan and Bush on current leaders. Just like literally every cycle for the last 30 years Republicans fuck an insane amount of shit up and try to break the economy and then dems have to work doubly hard to do a shit repair job while being fought tooth and nail and then they get blamed for the lack of progress.
* Assuming we still have elections
It was so uncontroversial that it passed the House by unanimous consent. That doesn't mean 100% were for it, but it means any who were not didn't think it was worth making even a token effort to stop it.
In the Senate they passed it on a voice vote, which is what they use for routine and completely non-controversial bills. They are all asked to say yea or nay, and the presiding officer calls it for whichever they think they heard the most of and if no one objects that they misheard it passes.
Trump vetoed it. The official reason given was some bullshit about costs, but no one believes that. The leading theories are that it is because it is important to Lauren Boebert's district and because Colorado won't release Tina Peters from prison.
Boebert upset Trump by being one of the Republican House votes to force the release of the Epstein files.
Tina Peters was an election official who did various illegal and shady things [1] that Trump approves of.
The House failed to override the veto. They are so afraid of angering Trump that they couldn't get 1/3 of Republican House members to to go against Trump on something that they themselves had just recently found completely uncontroversial.
It's not at all clear what the GOP looks like after Trump. The most likely Republican successors are said to be Vance, Rubio, and DeSantis. The last two have failed badly at presidential bids before.
[1] https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/the-end-of-never-trump...
Watching this from the other side of the ocean, I'm not convinced that it's the most likely outcome.
As soon as Trump dies there will be an increasing avalanche of "always never-trumpers", until 40 years from now it will be almost impossible to find anyone who admits to having voted for him. I already have anecdotal experiences of having conversations with people (on tape) in early 2017 celebrating/defending their vote of Trump who now claim to have never voted for him and say that anything on video was just a joke or sarcasm.
I wonder how wide spread drug abuse is among the moneyed elite and how paranoia and other related factors are affecting their decisions
Trump wants to tariff countries that support Denmark and Greenland. That's like all of the other NATO countries. What happens if NATO doesn't exist? No more bases to support Middle East operations and no more intelligence sharing.
It will mean more support from the Canadians and Europeans for moving trade to be denominated by Renminbi.
I don't think the Republican leadership has thought through the implications to the US with their deal with the devil.
The pressures of a democratic society will force Western governments to extract money from their productive sectors and redirect them to their comparatively unproductive auto sectors.
Watching an increasingly aging Europe try to sustain its expensive welfare state while losing its biggest industries and facing a war citizens don't have the heart to prosecute is going to be interesting. Already French retirees make more than the average working man there.
They won't fight. They won't work. They won't provide children. To retirees, replacing local industry with Chinese manufacturing is a no-brainer: everything gets cheaper. With the resulting loss of well-paying jobs, healthcare for the elderly and wait staff will get even cheaper. A bonanza for a generation soon to disappear leaving the bits to be picked up by their most ardent fans.
Not really sure who it's going to hurt most.
The NAFTA/EU trade blocks were extraordinarily strong, this Greenland business is exactly the kind of issue which can shatter the entire block. It benefits no one to give Greenland to the US, so they won’t do it without a fight. It provides no benefit to the US to take it.
The only thing that would really be settled by the US annexing another country on a presidents whim is the formal end of the U.S. separation of powers.
German car makes do have issues, but I'm sure they will work it out.
Source: https://motorbranschen.mrf.se/undret-som-kom-av-sig/ (Swedish)
It will hurt Europe a lot. But Donald Trump keeps repeating that it is going to declare war on the EU. Sadly, it makes sense for the EU to align more closely with China.
And yeah, the only winners from the Trump administration so far are the mega-rich, Russia and China. At the expense of strictly everybody else.
if it uses its base in Greenland to annex it, the US military will be promptly evicted from every base in the world
at which point it returns to being a regional power
Yes, the Canadian auto industry will take a hit, but it already has from the US (and might take more).
They wouldn't go bankrupt. They will be saved and protected by government bailouts and tariffs, and the situation will become similar to say Russia car industry. Though, naturally, the situation with Russian cars has become so bad that even they are forced to massively open market to Chinese cars (and even "Russian cars" become more and more just simple rebadge of Chinese cars).
In short - if you don't compete by increasing productivity, efficiency, quality, you will be overtaken by the ones who do. The government actions may prolong your complacency time, yet ultimately such prolongation is just the time you actually lose falling more and more behind.
The whole world by now, 20 years after Tesla roadster, should have been driving American EVs, yet instead we have classic paradigm shift there US is Sun Microsystems and EVs/solar/wind/batteries is Linux/x86.
It doesn't matter what they think. Trump's message resonates with the electorate much more effectively than theirs, partly because of his political brand and partly because he has a network of social media acolytes who broadcast his messaging to each segment and demographic. It's a positive feedback loop wherein anyone who dares to go off-message or criticize his decisions gets instantaneous blowback from the MAGA audience themselves, so they quickly recalibrate. At this point, Trump has built a metaphorical tower of skulls of political foes within the party (e.g. Marjorie Taylor Greene).
It will explain a lot
Ps. Yes, insane
Do people still believe that the tariffs are somehow decreasing taxes?
There should have been a house-clearing of leadership up and down the party apparatus in 2016 and again in 2024 but nope. We'd rather hope those perpetual losers get their act together out of fear of the unknown.
After January 6th, Mitch McConnell could have whipped up the votes to impeach Trump. Forever banishing him from office. Or over the past four years, when asked, "Did Donald Trump lose the election" instead of equivocating, every Congressperson could have said, "Of course he did. Donald Trump is a loser who lost a fair election, but threw a tantrum when the result did not go his way."
Liz Cheney took a stand, and the party punished her for it. Trump was too popular, Republicans preferred to latch onto that energy, despite the consequences.
No raindrop thinks it is responsible for the flood. These leaders enabled this scenario, because they (correctly!) predicted it could help them hold onto power. Now we watch the results unfold as the world does everything to extricate itself from the USA.
I mean, but they're not feeding into the US's power. So they're like, buying into a depreciating asset. This actively signals the US is losing power to China given that it's _formerly top ally_ is making trading partnerships with one of it's nominal "enemies". Anyone who can think more than a month out, can see this will result in the US losing power in the long run.
Part of the issue is that the average age of the House is ~55 and for the senate it's above 60. So they have a lot less incentive to care about that, or about climate change.
Those in congress may still imagine a world where China’s strength is no more than an illusion.
USA will definitely turn into the new Russia if it continues to go on this path. It has already exhausted most of its cultural and moral capital, and its tech sector is already under threat in its major allies. It will continue to stay relevant for maybe a generation or two but it will turn largely irrelevant by the turn of the century, just like the British Empire or Russia today. Assuming, of course, that it doesn't correct course.
So yeah, it's bad.
When returning to sender, the package disappeared, presumably into Customs. I'm out $320 and still no battery.
[1] https://cwsmarketing.com/us-customs-go-merchandise-auction-f...
Do you think anyone in charge has any long term vision capability to be thinking about such foreseeable outcomes?
Dollar dominance gives the US disproportionate leverage over global finance and allows it to shape the rules of the system. Absent this asymmetry, it is difficult to imagine US tariffs or financial pressure (or any kind of pressure) would carry comparable global impact.
I wonder why these alternative points of view always try very hard to deflect blame away from Russia when it comes to Russia's invasion of Ukraine (which Russia began in 2014).
Before 2022, the US even sent the CIA director to Russia to warn them not to go ahead with the full scale invasion[0]. Multiple warnings were made[1]. If it was bait, then it was pretty bad bait or some pretty advanced "4D chess" moves.
I'm not saying that there wasn't any US and EU meddling in Ukraine (alongside Russia's own meddling), but you don't just bait Russia like that.
Regarding your comment, I'm sure you can understand why I raise my eyebrow when I see someone blaming a 3rd party for the war in Ukraine and nothing about the country who actually invaded Ukraine. Russia, not the US, is responsible for Russia's own actions.
---
[0] https://edition.cnn.com/2021/11/02/politics/cia-director-rus...
[1] https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/02/24/russia-ukr...
TLDR: Developed countries will come together to cooperate on matters they agree without the US, or US-dominated forums like the UN. Whether it's a group to support Ukraine, tackle climate change, increase trade etc it'll be faster and looser. We will indeed trade a lot more with China and allow chinese EVs, but there's also lots of pressure to bring down domestic trade barriers, automatically recognize European-approved products etc. Over time this will help us decouple from the US.
I'm looking forward to a less US-reliant Canada. We used to have a more vibrant and distinctive culture in the 80s, 90s so it's nice to see people travel less to the US, consume fewer US products. Like the pandemic, it is a painful external event you have to deal with, but what else are you gonna do other than deal with it head on.
That is at least the logical conclusion based on the information the linked-to article provides.
What I am asking myself now is, why did Canada join the US in the 2024 tariffs enactment the article is talking about in the first place? What was their motivation?
The US president always said, that he deemed the existing contracts between China and the US as "unfair" for America, hence the tariffs and trade war. That is his official explanation at least. But why would Canada join that? That's what I want to know.
Any takers?
This is, of course, exactly why Canada joined the US in 2024 tariffs against China. We had all one market to protect.
> Canada found out it doesn't have any leverage over China in this so-called trade war,
For my perspective, this seems hugely beneficial to Canada in the short-term. It might even be beneficial to Canada in the long-term if the US permanently destroys the ability to build automobiles for the unified North American market in Canada.
That's an astonishingly weird take-away. FWIW, Canada by almost any analysis "won" this trade negotiation. China was very eager to thaw relations. Every Chinese newspaper ran a front page of Carney visiting China. They all know this is yet another brick in the collapse of the American empire.
Maybe if you just threaten military conquest more you'll reclaim something much better people built decades ago? Now the Joe Rogan generation foolishly eat up the most profoundly stupid nonsense and repeat it like clucking chickens.
>why did Canada join the US in the 2024 tariffs enactment the article is talking about in the first place? What was their motivation?
Because we foolishly engaged with a tightly integrated economy with the sort of country that casual floats conquering friendly democracies to loot their resources, and that repeatedly elects vile, unbelievably stupid criminal pedophiles? See, "America's" automakers are actually US/Mexico/Canada automakers, so we worked with the US to defend them. Then Trump decided, in his incredibly, profoundly shortsighted foolishness (being unchecked by anyone) that he would start a trade war with neighbours.
I think the most astonishing part was seeing how willing the incredibly poorly educated American public bought the silly fentanyl lie, all so that clown could claim national security grounds. This cult of personality -- one of the most vile, unbecoming liars in human history, and basically the personification of the deadly sins -- somehow convinces millions of the most outrageously stupid thing. It's astonishing, and historians must study this to prevent it in the future. Idiocracy is not a goal.
Plus, this is a canola-for-cars deal. 90+% of our trade is structurally American, forever.
IMO we did this deal to front run the renegotiation of USMCA this years. However, we are only 5% of America’s trade, and last I heard Trump had already walked from the table (and perhaps we signed with China because of this).
The two sides of the debate between our major parties are whether we should sell canola or LNG to China while we wait for America to come back to the table.