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)

https://www.brookings.edu/articles/trumps-25-tariffs-on-canada-and-mexico-will-be-a-blow-to-all-3-economies/

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

sounds nice in theory but i don’t think people realize just how integrated their economy is to the US

entire industries are completely dependent on US trade. they traded large swathes of their economic autonomy away for easy access to the US market. prosperity was deemed more important than sovereignty

it’s a decision that was decades in the making and it will likely take decades to reverse.

and if we’re being honest it shouldn’t have exactly taken Trump to make Canada realize the US acts in its own interests. Look at NAFTA signed by Bill Clinton. We pressured Canada into accepting a deal that forced them to maintain a certain level of oil export to the US even if there were domestic shortages.

It’s not the type of agreement equal parties or allies come to. It’s a relationship of domination. Always has been

i say be polite. you don’t have to be super friendly or anything

being a “homewrecker” is bad, but sometimes there’s more context you don’t know about. i tend to give people the benefit of doubt and give them an opportunity to show who they are before I make assumptions.

i do this because in the past i have judged too quickly and been wrong about people- in both directions

American trade is nearly worth half of Canada’s total GDP. something like 75~80% of total Canadian exports go to the US. if they actually retaliate in force they could be dooming their country to an economic crisis if Trump is spiteful enough. so far the Canadian tariffs have only touched about $30B worth of goods, or 7% of the total trade.

What do you think it’s platform should be?

If the name was “Tax the Rich” then I would assume the platform should be a tax on the rich. Either land or capital gains. I think increasing income tax on the rich is meaningless.

Would it need a social agenda?

I don’t think so. In our polarized environment, any social agenda you set will turn someone off. If this party were to succeed, theoretically, it would have to get elements from both the right and the left. And there are many on the right who are anti-establishment and upset with the current economic situation. I feel like if you put other issues like “pro-abortion” or what have you, you will dramatically shrink your base.

What conditions would be necessary for you to vote for it?

I would realistically never vote for a third party unless it had some serious momentum. For example during the 1912 election cycle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1912_United_States_presidential_election

I would have voted for a third party. Teddy Roosevelt got 27% of the vote and he ran as a “Progressive” party candidate. Eugene Debbs got 6% (almost 1 million votes) as a candidate of the “Socialist” party.

But really, these elections are like once in a century type of event. Where a 3rd party actually has a chance in hell of winning.

But for reference with Eugene Debbs… 1 million votes in 1921 is like 3.2 million votes today. For reference the Green party got like 800k votes in 2024

Reddit may actually be doing a lot of people a big favor.

Today Trump’s DHS went out and arrested a Palestinian student at Columbia for participating at a protest a year prior. Our federal agents are becoming like the KGB- hunting down political dissidents.

I believe that is just a start. I think people would be wise to be careful about the things they post online. If you do post content you believe the administration may not like, I suggest making an anonymous account with an email not linked to your personal name.

I have a hunch that people will be arrested in the near future for posting things online.

Just in case it isn’t clear I don’t support Trump nor the tariffs.

I voted against Trump and I hate him with a vengeance. I’m discussing the geopolitical and economic context of the tariffs and the dynamic between US and Canada. I was surprised when I started doing research about this recently just how reliant in the US Canada truly is. The numbers were shocking to me. Likewise with Mexico. For some reasons the news doesn’t really cover these details.

There really is no world where the US is not Canada’s largest trade partner. It doesn’t matter what government is in power. No amount if federal unemployment would cover a quarter of your economy vanishing overnight.

And on the topic of a united Canada- https://www160.statcan.gc.ca/good-governance-saine-gouvernance/institutions-eng.htm

Public faith in federal institutions is at an all time low… just like the US. Right wing populism is on the rise… just like the US. Canada is a lot closer to the US both culturally and politically than any European country. This should be intuitive- both are cut from the same cloth. British settler colonial societies.

And Canada is starting to fall victim to the same style of right-wing populism we are seeing in the US (Trump), Latin America (Brazil/Bolsonaro, Argentina/Milei), and Europe (UK/Brexit, Germany/AfD, Italy/FdI, France/Le Penn, Sweden/Dems) etc.

Don’t let some vague sense of national pride blind you from seeing the truth for what it is. Confront the truth head on even if it is uncomfortable.

All countries are sovereign but some countries are more sovereign than others. If Canada’s priority was protecting sovereignty then they would not be in this position to begin with.

It’s something that has been decades in the making. It will take decades to reverse course. It isn’t going to meaningfully change in the upcoming 5-10 years.

You say Canadians are ready to “go without” but we’re talking about millions of people losing their jobs. A historic spike in poverty. Collapse of many industries. No sane leadership would ever cut off trade with America. National pride doesn’t feed a family.

Long term, sure, maybe there will be a realignment. I doubt it, but it’s possible. The near future is a chaotic one where Canada and Mexico are going to need the economic value from America. We’re headed for troubled times globally.

Yes, they are. There will be no meaningful response because they have no leverage. Any meaningful change from status quo would mean an immediate economic crisis.

Ignore what they say on camera because they are speaking to their domestic audience.

Right now, Canada has placed a 25% tariff on $30B worth of imports. That’s 7% of US imports. Whereas Trump has placed 25% on everything that Canada exports to the US.

And 80% of Canadian exports go directly to the US.

So just for reference.

Canada retaliatory tariff -> $30B which represents less than 1% of total US exports

Trump’s tariffs -> ~$550B which represents nearly 80% of total Canadian exports

Ignore the rhetoric, look at the numbers. Canada and Mexico have no choice. They signed their economic autonomy away a long time ago. It’s sort of like when Greece went through their debt crisis and couldn’t do jack shit because they signed away their autonomy to Brussels (and really Germany).

There are trade-offs to every decision. Canada got easy access to the American market and a nice way to exploit their natural resources. But it also gives Washington an absurd amount of leverage over them.

Mexico is even more screwed.

Gays had to hide from a secret police in the 80s? Hippies in the 60s? There was discrimination (and still is for gays) but I don’t think it’s anywhere similar to how pervasive and powerful the ideological grip was in the USSR

I’d say a more apt analogy would be blacks and our police state. They actually get imprisoned at rates that are in the same ballpark as the Soviet gulags.

Another more modern analogy would perhaps be illegals in US over the last decade or two.

Me personally, I find it fascinating how people survive under brutal regimes. It’s very hard for a government, no matter how repressive, to truly kill ideas.

The country I was born in went through a military dictatorship for some decades. During this dictatorship, people would be disappeared and you would not know what happened to them.

They were building a highway in modern times some years back and they accidentally dug up a mass grave with hundreds of bodies.

Even during this dictatorship, though, people would make music and art and express themselves. But they would have to do it within the constraints of the system. Your message had to be coded and metaphorical and vague for rhe censors to let it pass.

The culture not only survived through the repression, it ultimately incorporated it and became (in my opinion) mode profound in ways that is hard to explain.

To be cliche- “life finds a way”

Example- “the gulag archipelago” by aleksandr solzhenitsyn

And really a lot of Russian literature from 1800s-1900s. Some of the most beautiful art created in some of the most repressive and brutal environments you can imagine

Canada - America trade amounts to a little over $920B https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IF/IF12595

Canadian GDP is a little over $2.1T https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.CD?locations=CA

We’re talking nearly half of their GDP. In addition, half of Canadian foreign investment comes directly from the US. They will continue to be integrated into the US economy, even if Trump doubled the tariffs tomorrow.

And that’s because Canada, and Mexico to an even higher extent, are completely reliant on US trade. They both have no real choice but to grin and bear it. They will of course speak out publicly for the domestic audience but things will continue more or less status quo for the foreseeable future.

Started a much longer time ago in my opinion. I’d say around the time they threatened to ban the kratom sub and did ban the ketamine & steroids one

Reddit was much cooler 15 years ago. You could find anything on there

I think a lot of people should pay attention and get ready to live like the Slavs did under the Soviets. We might be heading towards a similar period in the US, I think.

If a new World War was coming, we would definitely want to be closer with our border countries than give our foreign enemies a chance

think of it this way. let’s say WW3 kicks off with China tomorrow. Will Canada or Mexico suddenly ally with China?

Reality is that Canada and Mexico are totally dependent on US trade. It really doesn’t matter if you piss them off they’re gonna be forced to deal with you anyway.

80% of Mexican exports are to the US. 30% of their GDP is based on American trade. If US exports stopped tomorrow, Mexican economy would immediately enter a deep depression. They have no choice but to play nice, even with 25% tariffs.

Canada is similarly stuck. 75% of exports are to the US. 50% of their imports are from the US. 20% of their GDP is based on American trade.

If you took both Canadian and Mexican trade combined and compared it to the US economy, though, it wouldn’t even reach 5%. If trade with both of these countries were to stop tomorrow, America will suffer- but growth may slow by 0.5% or 1%. Both Canada and Mexico would see a depression.

America is like the sun in the solar system. Canada and Mexico have no choice but to fall into orbit around it. The total weight of the economic power is hard to understate.

Do you see why Trump feels like he has the power to do this? This is the point I was trying to make above. Historically US presidents have been more diplomatic and subtle about how to abuse the leverage that America has by the nature of being a superpower. Trump isn’t fundamentally different except he’s exploiting this leverage loudly and in an ugly and aggressive way.

In the past, presidents would play nice. Pretend like there was sovereignty and diplomacy, etc. But when Bill Clinton signed NAFTA… it was for the same reason. To dominate the economies of both Canada and Mexico. The difference is the rhetoric sounds much nicer.

After NAFTA was signed, subsidized US corn flooded the Mexican market, totally bankrupting millions of Mexican farmers. Wages in Mexico stagnated for decades because US needed cheap labor to build cars. In Canada, they became more and more reliant on exporting natural resources to the US.

We always need to remember US is an imperialist power. This is what empires do.

As for the upcoming war, I think it’s only a matter of time. But we’re talking a time scale of 5-10 years. We’re preparing for the future showdown. There will be one or two more flashpoints before the main war. Ukraine was one, Israel is another.

If we had to make an analogy with WW2, I’d say we’re roughly in mid ~1930s. Our Spanish Civil War is the Ukrainian war. Our Italian invasion of Ethiopia is the Israeli conflict. (Gaza, Israeli invasion of Syria, war with Lebanon, Iran, etc)

There’s a story from Soviet Russia.

A bunch of politicians are in the Kremlin and Stalin is giving a speech outlining some new policy. One politician stands up and angrily yells out- “Stalin! This is wrong! I cannot support this measure”. Everyone gasps and looks at him.

Quickly, another politician stands up and replies “Comrade! Don’t you know? You cannot say that Stalin is incorrect! We do not do that here.”

Stalin ignores these outbursts, tells everyone to settle down and continues the speech.

Of course, this being Stalinist Russia, the man who disagreed with Stalin gets quietly sent to the gulag for a couple of years to learn his lesson.

The second man, however, gets sent to the gulag for 20 years and doesn’t come out until he is an old man.

What’s the moral of the story? Implicit censorship is so much more powerful than explicit censorship. This is reddit goal. Create an air where people self-regulate their speech. The key is not to say it out loud. It needs to be vague and amorphous and ambiguous.