pretty much. we all grew up in the US being taught it's a country of immigrants and the "bring me your weary your hungry your whatever masses to be free"
it's actually kind of fascinating to see that ideology shift so fast it's giving whiplash. turns out we actually kinda need these people for our economy otherwise we'll end up like European countries with stagnating economies until we eventually get overrun by China
if you look at the numbers, Canada's not that far from Australia. they've only instituted a tariff on like 10% of American imports
it's very common in colonial societies like most of the Americas. without this type of law there wouldn't be any American citizens. even before the 14th amendment we had birth right citizenship by common law precedence
you don't just become friends with people to become friends. there needs to be some glue that brings you two together.
so for example back when you were in primary school, you had that glue- you took the same class as someone or rode home in the same bus, etc.
as an adult, if you want to make friends, you need to find some glue. it could be working together, or playing dungeons and dragons, or a deep appreciation of black and white cinema. who knows
so i will suggest one thing and it will only really work if you live in Florida. go to kava bars. just go with your laptop and hang out there drinking kava and doing your own thing. go every once in a while and you will meet people and make friends. it's one of the few modern "3rd place" locations.
i got this spam too. i think it's just someone who wants to grow some type of online community
i think fact that they feel comfortable sharing a picture with drug paraphernalia & spamming hundreds of people says all i need to know about the person
But they are mistaken. Europe is not giving in to that again.
how do you have so much faith? if you look at the Nazi elections it went something like
~2.5% ⇒ ~5% ⇒ 10% ⇒ 20% ⇒ 30something% ⇒ dictatorship
if you look at AfD it's following s similar pattern and we're currently at 20something%
Looking at past history, just one more successful election cycle and the far-right can consolidate and eliminate any democratic opposition
the current stance is fairly mild. Canada taxing something like 10% of American imports (which represents less than 1% of total American exports) when Trump is threatening 80% of all Canadian exports is not the aggressive retaliation the rhetoric would have you believe
Sometimes you have to fire customers
i knew a guy with a cleaning business. it grew to a fairly large size (roughly ~30 employees with an office and secretaries, etc) over the course of a few years, although about 80% of the revenue came from one client. he eventually lost that client and the business had to fire most of its staff. he had to sell two properties he owned to pay off debt he had accumulated- he was spending money at a rate that was not sustainable because he assumed that money would always come in at the same rate.
he ended up giving up and sold the business to a couple of outside guys. those guys hired a sales team and diversified the business and now it's doing great- grew literally 10x bigger than it was under original owner. but it took years.
moral of the story? when all your eggs are in one basket, you are very vulnerable.
you also have to consider that America is not only a customer, but a vendor too. Tariffs placed on American imports will lead to more tariffs being placed on Canadian imports. You not only lose sales but a source of goods. i really think most people in this thread do not fully recognize the severity of Canada's position
but frankly it will be political suicide
It will also be political suicide to trigger a historic recession. Damned if you do, damned if you don't. I feel bad for the new banker PM. He's essentially a political lamb to the slaughter. Trudeau is getting out at the right time- his legacy will remain intact.
What would you consider a sufficiently forceful response?
So far Canada has taxed something like 10% of American exports into Canada with threats to increase that if Trump does not remove the initial tariffs.
Trump is threatening to tax all Canadian exports into US. And 80% of Canadian exports go to the US.
To summarize: US put a tariff on roughly 80% of all Canadian exports (there's nuance here, like a few exclusions and certain goods have lower tariffs like oil)
Canada retaliated by putting a tariff on a little less than 1% of all American exports
Canada has a knob they can twist that goes up all the way to 10~12% of American exports. They can't go any higher than that.
They've decided to start very small, even though Trump is threatening virtually everything.
The risk is if you go too high, Trump may increase his tariffs from 25% to a higher number. Amplifying the economic pain and potentially triggering an immediate recession with millions of job losses and the collapse of various industries.
So what's the correct number? How do you stand up to a bully but also avoid an economic crisis?
It's a very dangerous game and I do not envy your new banker PM. That's why Trudaeu was so happy when he was leaving with his chair lol.
Mexico is taking a more muted response. They are in an even worse position.
What are you taking issue with? I said sky is blue and you say "yes you're right but the grass is green".
Canadian trade with America- of which both imports and exports are counted, as you yourself stated- represents a value which is roughly 43% of Canadian GDP.
The US may suffer more than the 0.3% in an overall sense because of trade war with other countries, OK. But the impacts from these specific tariffs- the topic of the conversation- are expected to be -0.3% for US and -3% for Canada & Mexico.
I was pointing out 2 things
A) Canada (and Mexico) are relatively small economies that have become increasingly dependent on US trade and foreign investment.
B) Because of this, they are going to experience a much worse fallout from a trade war- about an order of magnitude.
Mexican & Canadian trade combined don't even reach 4% of US GDP. They simply do not have the leverage to hurt the US in the same way US can hurt them.
Am I making the argument Trump is correct in this decision-making? No he's a fascist who wants to hurt foreigners just as much as he wants to hurt Americans.
Am I making the argument America is going to be immune from trade wars? No, it's gonna fuck all of us. And if we continue to escalate trade war with China and EU we will start seeing much worse effects.
4/5ths of a country's exports do not get rerouted in 12 months.
i feel like the most likely outcome is that Canada (and Mexico) end up playing ball with Trump once he feels he did enough of whatever stupid PR stunt he needs to do and ameliorates a bit
Canada is not gonna get a better market for its goods than the largest economy in the world that speaks the same language and has had decades of integration. point blank isn't happening
right now there's a wave of nationalism sweeping canada (maybe that was trump's goal- encourage populism) but reality sets in eventually and the banking class will do whatever they have to do to keep those economic indicators up
Also, in terms of numbers: about 25% of Canadian GDP is based on US trade
https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IF/IF12595 US-Canada trade amounts to $920B
Canadian GDP roughly $2.1T
Or roughly equivalent to ~40% of GDP depending on the year
This will be devastating for everyone, the US included.
it will be painful for US but whatever US feels, Canada & Mexico will feel 3x worse (and that number can go up 10x worse if they retaliate)
go to figure 1. us economy might slow ~0.3%. canada & mexico go into recession. -3% easy with retaliation
note the tariffs are stupid and reckless and cruel and i don't support them at all. im just adding context because i did not realize how fucked Mexico & Canada were until I looked into it
I wasnt aware new ones from yesterday. It was for $30B, though. Combined with the last set of tariffs its $60B total out of $350B of US exports to Canada
So about 17%. So let's say Canads is at a conservative 3 generous 4