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CAN-USA 2025 Tariff Strife (split from various pol threads)

Yeah well when I say "serious on defence" I mean spending 2% or more and achieving actual meaningful military capabilities to the benefit of mutual NA defence. A few barely armed ice breakers is a joke.

As to the rest of your post, it's just garbage unfounded speculation.
Sure, because the guy that has major ownership in SpaceX cutting funding in NASA is a pure coincidence, and wanting to push drone warfare over existing proven equipment (vice complementing it) has nothing to do with his forays into that sector either.

It's the world's dumbest narcissist bookended by the world's dumbest 'smart' people plowing ahead against their own expert's opinions.
 
Just breaking: A one month reprieve on Canada as well, to April 2nd. Not sure if is CUSMA trade only or across the board.

The instability is the point. Who wants invest in Canada if they don’t know what the tariff regime will be month to month? Why would an American firm keep a branch plant open in Canada if they can’t forecast what the tariffs will be month to month?

This is just as bad as the actual tariffs in terms of weakening our investment climate.
 
The instability is the point. Who wants invest in Canada if they don’t know what the tariff regime will be month to month? Why would an American firm keep a branch plant open in Canada if they can’t forecast what the tariffs will be month to month?

This is just as bad as the actual tariffs in terms of weakening our investment climate.
It is also a deterrent to US internal investment, since no one can plan ahead.

DJT is tanking the US as well.
 
Trump bluster. Being the tough guy/ bully on the block.

So you think this is something that is possible? You think he can just crash our economy and just take us over? No international laws in the way? No world opinion. Even if it were possible, Trump would be dead of old age before it happened. We could easily have diversified our trade by then, negating the threat. No matter what he thinks he can do, he can't do it without agreement from us. With us as a new voting block, the Republicans can probably forget about ever getting in power again.
California has 39 million people, Canada 40 million. California has 2 Senators and 52 House Representatives. The most of any state. Do you honestly think they will give us that much power? Beside taking an act of Congress to increase the House count?

Even if we agreed, it would still take years to complete. Trump says we'd pay no taxes? I'm sure all the other states would go for that 100% while they keep paying them.

It's a false threat. If you don't fall for the hyperbolic rhetoric, there's nothing in it. If you don't agree with that assessment, tell me how he could make it happen in his term. Tell me how he could surpass all the negotiations, laws and conditions in order to annex us.

I'll wait and see what happens when the rhetoric calms down and we get into the nuts and bolts of trade talks. Baseless threats don't figure into it for me.

Out of curiosity, what international law or world opinion do you think Trump feels particularly beholden to on this? I’m not being passive aggressive here; I’m genuinely interested in your thoughts on how much those things would constrain him.
 
That's right. Even though it's Trump saying he will use "economic force" to annex Canada, we're gonna twist this around say Trudeau is "scare mongering" (Sarcasm of course).

Those who pay close attention to the news will remember pre- 24 Feb 2022 that many Ukrainians believed the invasion was "scare mongering" and wasn't going to happen. That didn't age well, but that's the sort of thing that happens when you bury your head in the sand.

Most pro-Trump supporters like to say "He's just talking, he's not serious" and try to downplay the crazy stuff he says.

And yet, when he says things they want to hear, that is 100% truth in their eyes.

We won't know the truth about Trump's intent for Canada for a while. And there's a lot of unpredictable things that could happen in the meantime. But when a superpower threatens to invade their neighbour, ignoring it is the real definition of putting your head in the sand. Especially when said neighbour cuts off support for a small country being invaded by a superpower.

I don't think it's just Trudeau "scare mongering" by simply discussing the fact Trump keeps saying he wants Canada to be part of the United States.
I spend more time than I thought I ever would trying to imagine what Austrians thought leading up to the Anschluss. I imagine the debates and conversations would not have been much different than the ones we have been having on these threads. It’s a sobering thought…
 
Trump bluster. Being the tough guy/ bully on the block.

So you think this is something that is possible? You think he can just crash our economy and just take us over? No international laws in the way? No world opinion. Even if it were possible, Trump would be dead of old age before it happened. We could easily have diversified our trade by then, negating the threat. No matter what he thinks he can do, he can't do it without agreement from us. With us as a new voting block, the Republicans can probably forget about ever getting in power again.
California has 39 million people, Canada 40 million. California has 2 Senators and 52 House Representatives. The most of any state. Do you honestly think they will give us that much power? Beside taking an act of Congress to increase the House count?

Even if we agreed, it would still take years to complete. Trump says we'd pay no taxes? I'm sure all the other states would go for that 100% while they keep paying them.

It's a false threat. If you don't fall for the hyperbolic rhetoric, there's nothing in it. If you don't agree with that assessment, tell me how he could make it happen in his term. Tell me how he could surpass all the negotiations, laws and conditions in order to annex us.

I'll wait and see what happens when the rhetoric calms down and we get into the nuts and bolts of trade talks. Baseless threats don't figure into it for me.
I don’t think we could take it as a given that we’d be given a vote in this scenario…
 
Canada is America’s northern flank. Much more important than other random countries, from a defence standpoint.
Yup, you’d rather drop those ballistics coming over the ice cap in someone else’s country rather than your own….
 
Out of curiosity, what international law or world opinion do you think Trump feels particularly beholden to on this? I’m not being passive aggressive here; I’m genuinely interested in your thoughts on how much those things would constrain him.

I see two possibilities. There's probably more but I'll stick to these two.

He can try cajole and convince us to come over. However, like I say, it would take years to sort out the minutiae of treaties, minerals and natural resources, government, payments, economy, our place in the Republic. Even then, I'd expect there would be a number of Canadians not quite enamoured with the whole plan that end up taking shots at convoys from overpasses. Laws. Do we keep our own, go wholesale into theirs or work out a hybrid. I would expect a decade at least, or more for a transition. Which could well fall apart over successive governments during negotiation. We would have to get over a national referendum first. Trump would be long out of the picture.

The other choice would be covered under the Crime of Aggression in International Law. It includes annexation. I'm not a law whiz but if I understand it at all, it's basically a UN show. Does it have teeth? Doesn't seem to have. It's the same law that would apply to Ukraine and Russia, at the moment, but doesn't seem to have had much effect on that so far. I don't have faith in the UN to be forcefull or proactive.
Would Trump flaunt their authority? Maybe, maybe not. Could his ego stand the vast majority of the world being against him. Putting world sanctions on the US. Making them a pariah on the world stage. I much doubt most of the US population would go for it anyway.

Like I say though, either scenario takes time and Trump doesn't have the time for either scenario. He can be as loud and boisterous, table thumping and threatening as he wants. It means nothing, really. What matters is that we maintain our resolve. For every Canadian put out of work, we put two of theirs out of work. Their economy is no better than ours and most of their workforce is also paycheck to paycheck. Any disruption we create will hurt them.

Hence why I'm not overly concerned with talks of takeovers, invasions and annexation. Come in high and negotiate down.

There is a third possibility. Trump has a special place in his black heart for trudeau and his crew. They are probably pretty high on his list of people he wants to fuck over big time. I doubt he wants to hand them the win for all, or any of this. Probably why he asked about the time of the election. Now, he won't hand it to Poliviere on a silver platter, but he might not be as hard nosed either.

He probably has a looping tape of trudeau's last blubbering 'I feel your pain' speech the other day.
 
Churchill River is a freshwater river and not open 12 months.
Additionally, Hudson’s Bat swirls counter clockwise, bringing salted water up the Nelson River. And that’s where your port should be. Alas we already knew that, started a project more 100 years ago, didn’t fix mush it due to WW1 and never got back to it. Port Nelson…

Gosh I wish we could edit posts two hours after posting.
 
Have a read/listen this this article from a fellow that I’ve worked with in the past and know to be a brilliant individual. He made is name while working in Wall Street, is a regular fixture in CNBC and came back to Canada as the Great Recession took hold in the US. He is one of the most well known Economists in NA.


His take on all of this - ‘burn down their house’ - is what he’s basically saying, lol.
 
It is also a deterrent to US internal investment, since no one can plan ahead.

DJT is tanking the US as well.
All the more reason for firms to pull pole and move their operations stateside. It'll be chaotic minus tariffs. The Canadian economy will be chaotic, weaker plus the sword of Damocles of tariffs hanging over our heads.

I'm sure he's betting the US economy can hold out for longer than the Canadian one.
 
I see two possibilities. There's probably more but I'll stick to these two.

He can try cajole and convince us to come over. However, like I say, it would take years to sort out the minutiae of treaties, minerals and natural resources, government, payments, economy, our place in the Republic. Even then, I'd expect there would be a number of Canadians not quite enamoured with the whole plan that end up taking shots at convoys from overpasses. Laws. Do we keep our own, go wholesale into theirs or work out a hybrid. I would expect a decade at least, or more for a transition. Which could well fall apart over successive governments during negotiation. We would have to get over a national referendum first. Trump would be long out of the picture.

The other choice would be covered under the Crime of Aggression in International Law. It includes annexation. I'm not a law whiz but if I understand it at all, it's basically a UN show. Does it have teeth? Doesn't seem to have. It's the same law that would apply to Ukraine and Russia, at the moment, but doesn't seem to have had much effect on that so far. I don't have faith in the UN to be forcefull or proactive.
Would Trump flaunt their authority? Maybe, maybe not. Could his ego stand the vast majority of the world being against him. Putting world sanctions on the US. Making them a pariah on the world stage. I much doubt most of the US population would go for it anyway.

Like I say though, either scenario takes time and Trump doesn't have the time for either scenario. He can be as loud and boisterous, table thumping and threatening as he wants. It means nothing, really. What matters is that we maintain our resolve. For every Canadian put out of work, we put two of theirs out of work. Their economy is no better than ours and most of their workforce is also paycheck to paycheck. Any disruption we create will hurt them.

Hence why I'm not overly concerned with talks of takeovers, invasions and annexation. Come in high and negotiate down.

There is a third possibility. Trump has a special place in his black heart for trudeau and his crew. They are probably pretty high on his list of people he wants to fuck over big time. I doubt he wants to hand them the win for all, or any of this. Probably why he asked about the time of the election. Now, he won't hand it to Poliviere on a silver platter, but he might not be as hard nosed either.

He probably has a looping tape of trudeau's last blubbering 'I feel your pain' speech the other day.
It’s the 3rd possibility and nothing but the third possibility.
 
All the more reason for firms to pull pole and move their operations stateside. It'll be chaotic minus tariffs. The Canadian economy will be chaotic, weaker plus the sword of Damocles of tariffs hanging over our heads.

I'm sure he's betting the US economy can hold out for longer than the Canadian one.

Except many businesses would still be reliant on Canadian raw materials. So the friction remains.

He's not a master tactician or playing four dimensional chess. He's an addle-brained senior verging on senility.
 
Have a read/listen this this article from a fellow that I’ve worked with in the past and know to be a brilliant individual. He made is name while working in Wall Street, is a regular fixture in CNBC and came back to Canada as the Great Recession took hold in the US. He is one of the most well known Economists in NA.


His take on all of this - ‘burn down their house’ - is what he’s basically saying, lol.

Time to become Asshole Nation?
 
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