Good
The title could really use an extra comma and some quotation marks…
Some highlights I found interesting:
The tariffs have been met with deep anxiety in Canada, whose majority of exports are sold to companies and clients in the US. Officials predict up to a million job losses if a 25% across the board levy went ahead, while economists warn that a recession is imminent if they persist.
Even with the tariffs being scaled back temporarily, the uncertainty alone is hurting both American and Canadian economies, says Rob Gillezeau, an assistant professor of economic analysis and policy at the University of Toronto.
“The most sensitive thing to uncertainty is business investment,” Prof Gillezeau says, adding that firms are “not going to want to spend a dime anywhere” until they have some clarity.
That trepidation is also seen in the stock market, which had erased virtually all its gains since Trump won the presidency in November.
Proof that the rug can be pulled out from under you is a good sign that you need to prepare for that.
These sorts of preparations speak about the uncertainty mentioned in the article. That kind of uncertainty also hurts both countries. I don’t think there’s any net benefit to anyone.
I know you’re talking “net benefit” in terms of money, but your comment made me think. Not trying to be oppositional with mindless toxic positivity here, but I find myself really hopeful that it’ll reduce restrictions of trade between our provinces and territories, and help free us from the fuckup of NAFTA. Obviously nobody with a lick of sense and humanity wanted this, but it’s what we’ve got to deal with. So until the USA smartens up I figure we have to look for how all this disaster capitalism can possibly be siphoned to the common good.
I’m hopeful that Canada’s trade relationships with countries that are committed to improving their human rights records can be strengthened.
I’m relieved our politicians are talking about the responsibilities and trade agreements we already have with Indigenous nations up here, as well as our obligations to be better neighbours working in a better way for reconciliation.
I’m heartened that this is laying ground for Canadians to loudly claim an anti-nazi, pro multiculture, pro socialist identity, especially after all the “Canada is Broken” Russian convoy nonsense. The traitors new “Canada First” dogwhistles are gonna get amplified again real soon, so a reality reminder before the next onslaught is really helpful.
The trick will be paying less attention to the hourly USA tweetstorms and more to the big business bully boys who’ll absolutely line up to wave the maple leaf and bleed our public funds into their private purses like they did with all that covid funding (looking at Ford).
million job losses if a 25% across the board levy went ahead, while economists warn that a recession is imminent if they persist.
Obviously this will harm the economy initially, probably much like when Finland lost most of Nokia. (Nokia was a huge part of Finish economy and jobs)
But Finland rose again quickly, and Canada will too, because Canada is a country that is very well liked in most of the world, and will have no problem increasing trade elsewhere.
There will be a transitional period, but on the upside also greater independence from USA.
Luckily Canada does not suffer from Dutch disease like Finland did. So Canada will be more flexible in the ways it can recover quickly.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_disease
USA on the other hand, will not be in similar position to recoup their trade losses with, Mexico, Canada, EU, UK and China.
So USA will probably face a harder recession than Canada.
And that’s probably Trump’s plan, to weaken the entire west, including USA, NATO and of course Europe to benefit Russia.
On top of that, I think Canada could make a trade agreement with UK. After Brexit, UK has been looking for ways to mitigate their economic predicament, so old colonies like Canada seem like a good place to start. UK really needs the deal too, so Canada could be in a good position to set some conditions.
Absolutely, I have no doubt they will make a trade agreement soon. Canada and EU already has one, but maybe it can be expanded?
Honest question - are Canadians generally fine with normal US citizens with no untoward agenda still coming to visit and shop in Canada? I love partaking in the cuisine, a museum, and a library in a relatively nearby border town. Especially the more ethnically-diverse cuisine, because shitty generic Americana fare gets tiresome. Canadian Tire is fun, too, although I do secretly wonder why it’s not Canadian Tyre. Curious to know if US plates on a car in Canada generate a negative response nowadays.
Also, I’m sorry about the reality for which I felt the need to ask this question.
Most of the people I know are not okay with Americans right now. I’m in Alberta tho.
Alberta is a broken province. The people here are single issue voters, and that single issue is always “it better not be a damn liberal”.
For a province that’s voted conservative and had a conservative premier since 1971 (aside from 1 term in 2015), we sure like to blame all our problems on the other parties.
Our last 2 premiers ran on platforms of reducing healthcare and education spending. And now my kid has a harder time in school because they have way less resources, teachers are underpaid, and half the healthcare workers (nurses and doctors) fucked off to B.C. and Sask.
The conservative solution to the problem they created (on purpose of course) is to privatize healthcare and schooling. And the people are eating it up claiming they wanna pay less taxes. We already pay less taxes here than the rest of the fuckin country.
But for some reasons all my neighbors think about is “trans people are evil” and “Ontario is stealing our money!” So, we continue to be a blue province.
However, Trump is losing favor here pretty quick with 25% tarrifs on our oil and farm goods. when those 2 things are 27% of our GDP and employ about 8% of the province, it hurts pretty bad.
Come spend your money, just don’t act all full of yourself like some Americans do.
Also, “tyre” is British spelling. We kind of have our own spelling where we generally use British spelling, but not for everything. For example, we don’t spell fetus as “foetus” or estrogen as “oestrogen” either. There’s probably some fancy official name for it.
I do secretly wonder why it’s not Canadian Tyre.
Because in the same way we are not American, we are not British.
Curious to know if US plates on a car in Canada generate a negative response nowadays.
Depends on if you’re talking an American negative response or a Canadian negative response. I don’t imagine you’d be getting flipped off or have stuff thrown at you but you may not have people stop to let you back out of a parking spot or let you out of a driveway in busy traffic.
I own a business in Canada which gets a ton of tourists. I’m fine with everyone coming in.
That said, if they’re wearing a MAGA red hat or a Trump shirt, I’m not quite sure what I’d do. I’d probably tell them they can’t come in wearing that. I think it would be hilarious to make these scrubs leave their hats in the car.
“I feel terrible for the American people because it’s not the American people, and it’s not even elected officials, it’s one person,”
Americans elected Trump, and Americans are failing to do anything to reign Trump in.
These are the official policies for the COUNTRY! So unfortunately, this is not just one person, it is de facto USA as a whole.
If it was only Trump, it would just be Trump refusing to buy Canadian for himself. As it is, the whole apparatus is enforcing these decisions, and they impact all of USA.
This. I can’t stand how they blame the system for a choice they chose to make, be it voting for the orange turd, or sitting it out to protest a war halfway across the world, knowing fully well that he’d use that complacency ro return to office. Now the rest of us are dragged into the muck.
Absolutely, Trump was elected in a democratic election.
USA is a (flawed) democracy supposedly with checks and balances.
It’s not like some military general overthrew the democracy out of nowhere.
Obviously there are good Americans that oppose this, and tried to prevent it, but they are unfortunately a minority, and as a whole USA as a country is doing this, and letting it happen.
The US electoral system is broken and has always been broken. Republicans have spent the past 2 decades gerrymandering and introducing as much legislation as possible to manipulate the outcome of elections in as many districts as possible. They’ve introduced legislation: to prevent people with debt from voting, to prevent people with criminal records from voting, to prevent people who cannot physically make it to polling stations from voting. The Republicans and the ruling class own all the largest media organizations in the United States, and they have weaponized social media and traditional media to indoctrinate and manipulate as many people as possible.
Trump won this election with fewer votes than he lost in 2020. He won mostly because Republicans and Democrats are material allies in neoliberal and imperialist endeavors. Democrats refused to campaign on progressive politics, instead choosing to run on a more conservative campaign than they ever have before.
The working class is not responsible for their own manipulation at the hands of the ruling class. It is not their fault that the system is broken. It is not the fault of American families who literally can not afford to resist, as without the income from their jobs, they will lose their homes and be unable to feed themselves and their children.
Capitalism is the problem. Conservatism, and by extension neoliberalism and fascism, is the problem. Donald Trump is an accelerationist fascist. He will not wait and seeks to plunge the nation headlong into fascism as soon as possible. But do not mistake that as being in opposition to the social and political system of America. Donald Trump is entirely a representative of the failure of American democracy, not a representative of the American people. He manipulated people into voting for him, as evidenced by widespread outrage at his actions even among those who ostensibly voted for him.
The US electoral system is broken
Which is why it’s considered a flawed democracy, which I stated.
Republicans have spent the past 2 decades gerrymandering
Except Trump actually won the popular vote this time. Making this argument void regarding the presidential election 2024.
Republicans and Democrats are material allies
That far I agree, they have arranged it so they share power, except this time, Republicans may choose not to share it anymore.
The working class is not responsible for their own manipulation at the hands of the ruling class. It is not their fault that the system is broken.
Isn’t it? Haven’t they mostly agreed on this arrangement because for decades many thought they benefited from it too?
Capitalism is the problem
I partially agree, but there is no real alternative to capitalism, and definitely not anything proven, the problem is not capitalism but how it is managed. In a social democracy it can work pretty well.
Regarding the capitalism part
I’d say that what we see today is the logical conclusion of capitalism. In a way it’s a broken system, it just takes time to collapse. But growing wealth inequality and consolidation of power are inherent problems in capitalism, and we were always going to see times like this. I mean, for further example, look at climate change and how it’s damn near impossible to actually solve the problem
It’s more that there is little political will for an alternative system, but don’t get me wrong, if humanity wants to survive in the long run, there is no easy way out. I seriously do think that, either humanity makes a global economy that serves people, and not capital, or we will self-destruct due to systemic incentives of the profit incentive
If you had read the rest of my first line, the American electoral system has always been broken. This isn’t a new state of affairs. The working class of America has been in a perpetual state of manipulation into further and further right-wing politics since at least the presidency of Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan.
He won this election with fewer votes than he lost in 2020. Ultimately, the popular vote is largely irrelevant as the number of votes overall is not what determines who won the election. He won in 2016 without the popular vote. Voter manipulation and strategic disenfranchisment won them that election and this one.
Correct, so the American public had a choice between conservatism and fascism. A state of affairs that outraged many people. The democrats and the Republicans share an interest in their corporate benefactors. They will unite to seek better outcomes for the ruling class at the expense of the working class. The democrats will and have consistently refused to adopt popular politics like those of Bernie Sanders and AOC. Those politics are in contrast to the desires of their benefactors.
The working class has been manipulated through a union of the education system and mass media to indoctrinate them into fascism and further anti worker politics. Even in traditionally democratic held states, there is a persistent refusal to educate children on anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist politics. There is a refusal to educate children on the failures of American democracy and an insistence on nationalist indoctrination. In red states, this is even worse. These problems have existed since at least the presidency of Richard Nixon and to differing extents even before then. American fascism is the system. It didn’t start yesterday, and has been manipulating the American working class for a very long time.
Even more than that the entirety of the media and education systems unite to indoctrinate the working class into anti working class politics. It indoctrinates the people into believing civil unrest is wrong, that protest and demonstration is wrong, that all political violence is wrong. This is deliberate. It is a deliberate effort to protect the interests of the ruling capitalist class.
Socialism is an alternative to capitalism. You have been indoctrinated by the capitalist ruling class into believing that socialism has never functioned. It has and continues to do so today. Socialism and authoritarianism are not equivalent concepts. The failure of authoritarian socialist states were failures of authoritarianism, not of Socialism. Capitalists have taken advantage of those failures to manipulate billions of people, like yourself, into seeing Socialism as the problem. It isn’t. Capitalism is and has been a global failure. A system that serves the self interests of billionaires is a failure. A system where workers do not own the fruits of their own labor is a failure. A system that tolerates landlords and private corporations is a failure.
We have been a flaws democracy the entire time of our existence.
Trump barely won the popular vote by 2 million and less than 50% of all votes. At best, 1/3 of Americans voted him in and unfortunately 1/3rd (beyond those who were disenfranchised) didn’t bother even showing up. Leaving 1/3rd who did or could do anything about it.
We’re pushing back. Unfortunately we have the law to work through and they’re just breaking the laws. Time will tell if the guardrails have completely fallen off. It’s not looking great but we have seen progress fighting back.
I partially agree, but there is no real alternative to capitalism, and definitely not anything proven, the problem is not capitalism but how it is managed. In a social democracy it can work pretty well.
Chiapas is doing just fine, without capitalism. For 35+ years now. Even in the face of Mexican and US opposition to them.
The only thing I can assume that is referencing is when felons can’t vote in some states unless their court obligations are done. Some states passed laws where you can’t have your voting rights reinstated unless that court debt is paid off. That includes payment. Some people did their time but haven’t paid off their court fines.
The US electoral system is broken and has always been broken.
Oligarchy was built into the US electoral system, it is not broken but operating as designed. Only rich white males had any rights in the beginning, and every change since then was window dressing that could easily be taken away, as we are seeing now. The masks have dropped, the world is seeing the true USA. Genocidal, imperialistic, slave owning, bigoted and patriarchal. Nothing new to anyone with eyes and a brain.
The people who voted for him got scammed. They’re stupid, but it’s not their fault either. They are spiritually invested in a scam.
but it’s not their fault either.
IDK isn’t it? Good information is available, and they choose to ignore it. I know victims of scams can be so entangled with it, that they can’t see it, even when the police arrest the scammers, and show them the evidence they were being scammed.
But at that point, isn’t that too their own fault that they choose to believe the scammer over police and evidence?
I don’t think we shall give a pass based on “stupidity”, staying stupid is generally their own choice.
The people I know who voted for Trump do not know how to filter and grade the quality of the information that they are receiving. They don’t read very well and they absorb every click bait headline and Facebook meme that gets shown to them. They genuinely do not have a clue.
They are easily manipulated by parties who do not have their interests or the interests of the world in mind. It’s a known problem that is discussed constantly.
And it’s not like the tariffs were a bait and switch. Trump literally had them in his platform.
In fact, all the crap he’s been pulling was in his platform. He’s doing exactly what he promised he would do, and half the country was like, “Maybe this isn’t a good idea” and the other half enthusiastically voted him and then are shocked he’s doing exactly what he said he would do.
This is like the time the UK voted for Brexit and then became shocked when Brexit happened.
In fact, all the crap he’s been pulling was in his platform.
Yes, and he was making similar attempts about everything he is doing now already in his first term. So these policies aren’t new, and Americans voted for it.
This is like the time the UK voted for Brexit and then became shocked when Brexit happened.
Yes, but this is actually worse. Although Brexit cannot be reversed, and Trump’s first term was somewhat reversed. The way USA is acting now, threatening every ally they have, very seriously undermining NATO, Europe, democracy and Ukraine, threatening to destroy economies of Canada and Mexico. This can never be forgotten. USA is not even considered an ally anymore in most places that used to be the strongest allies of USA.
Yup. Whoever is next, and hopefully that will be in January 2029 if not earlier, is not going to have anything like the same influence that previous presidents have had. They will be able to deescalate short-term issues and generally provide a lull in the storm, but Trump has exposed the fragility of US power, and his base proves that America is an unreliable partner, so getting anything significant done that might cross administrations is going to be so much harder. Even if the next president is not insane and is without any above-average level of evil (neither is guaranteed), then that only helps temporarily. Hell, even if there’s some sea change in the electorate that makes democratic allies more optimistic, recovering from Trump 2 is going to mean the US looks inward for a time and there will be, if not a power vacuum, a serious low-pressure system that draws in disturbances.
Now, I’m not sad about the decline of American hegemony per se, but this is very much a “not like this” moment, and a slower unwinding would be better for stability. Our best case scenario here is that our allies understand the conflict inherent in the American ethos and work with us where practicable but also pursue the “strategic independence” we’ve been hearing about. I hope it’s Europe that steps up and reasserts itself, because barring a very unlikely leveling of the international order, your other options are China bulldozing the world for the financial benefit of the party, or Putin throwing bodies (both at enemies and out of windows), cutting off fossil fuels, and threatening nuclear war every time he doesn’t get his way.
You people have worms in your brains, just like the Republicans.
Life is not black and white, though you know who loves to think in black and white? Fascists. Also, you know who loves this idea of lumping together the American people as a whole? Trump does.
you know who loves this idea of lumping together the American people as a whole?
I have often written in comments that criticize Americans that there obviously are good Americans, that tried to prevent this. Just because I didn’t include that part here doesn’t mean I am generalizing wildly, and think they are the same whether they voted for Trump or Harris.
But that doesn’t change the fact that the Trump administration is the administration for ALL of USA, because they voted him in. We can’t make trade agreements or buy weapons from the people who voted against Trump, because that is simply not how it works. We have to respond to the country, not individuals. So this situation is one that the COUNTRY is in, not just Trump or MAGA. And the country let Trump and MAGA win.
We also can’t wait out the 4 years Trump is president like we did last time, because Russia has invaded Europe, and USA is failing completely as an ally, and is actively hostile now. Preventing F-16 planes and Himars from working, that were given to Ukraine by Europe. Failing even in sharing intelligence that doesn’t cost any money to share, and negotiating 100% on behalf of Russia. The allied countries need to move on without USA, that’s not at all up for debate. Allies can no longer trust American equipment.
It’s not Trump alone, it’s all of USA that is failing democracy and former allies. Not just Texas, and not just half the population that voted for the fascist despite the warnings.
If you can’t see that, you are denying reality.
Closer to a third voted for him.
We live in an era of mass communication, unlike what was feasible during any other point in history. More now than ever the working class is the working class wherever they are. The working class of the United States have much more in common with us than they do the ruling class.
We should absolutely be promoting an understanding of their struggle. Nationalism is an illness, even if it’s nationalism to a non-fascist state.
