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Trump slaps tariffs on Mexico, Canada and China

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101–110 of 169 posts

Re: Trump slaps tariffs on Mexico, Canada and China

#101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nukes for everyone yay! Hey Georgia is also under Russian threat, why don’t they also get a nuke or two? Then maybe their neighbor Armenia will think to themselves “why not me, I’m also under threat by an ex-Soviet country”? Then maybe Azerbaijan, then Turkey, then Saudi Arabia, everyone gets a nuke, I freaking love it! Then maybe other countries that got invaded by a bigger power like maybe Vietnam? Iraq? Why not!

I mean...why not? What moral right does the US have to nuclear weapons that others don't? US exceptionalism? Just looking at what is happening in the US right now -- an astonishingly corrupt banana republic increasingly led by an insane Christian nationalist movement that bizarrely doesn't seem to understand a thing about Christ's teachings -- I have more faith in North Korea's management of nuclear weapons than the…

Exactly. I can bet that every country on the world having a nuclear bomb would actually make the world a safer place. We are still primitive, so the threat of us being destroyed at any time should keep us at bay.

No country that holds nukes should be considered a pillar of morality. That's stupid beyond belief.

Re: Trump slaps tariffs on Mexico, Canada and China

#102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, the USA has massive leverage over Canada on basically every front. We are a small child standing next to a massive person with a gun. But what is the point of destroying us? Our economy is already down. All of our tech elite move to Silicon Valley. Our energy infrastructure cant get off the ground. The USA dictates so much of what Canada is able to do. What is the point of squeezing us more? We have so little we…

> What more do you want? The pennies in our pockets? Pretty much yeah. US wants to tax you, subject you to their religious laws, and take your oil. What are you willing to do about it?

We are hoping the electorate in the US doesn't want to find out. US leadership has threatened Canada and other countries with using economic or military force for annexation. Canadians are hoping that saner heads will prevail, but it's not looking very good. We are very much aware that our military has been underserved in every way by Canadians, and that was part of the reason I chose not to continue my military career.

In the meantime, we are carefully and cautiously reminding the United States that we fought many of the same wars and learned the same lessons as the US military about how insurgencies are fought, and while many of our friends, family, and neighbours are American, we are not, and do not want to, and will not be American. Do with that what you will.

Re: Trump slaps tariffs on Mexico, Canada and China

#103
post #28
post #3

Canada was specifically warned not to retaliate in any manner, which is basically an acknowledgement that Canada has some powerful levers. This is farcical and of course Canada is going to retaliate. The $450B of American goods sold to Canada is going to collapse. The F35 purchase will be cancelled. Various other projects with the US will be abandoned. Oil will be export tariffed. Every American service -- Netflix, D…

> Every American service -- Netflix, Disney, Prime, Apple services -- need to have enormous tariffs applied. We can handle without them, and every enabler of this insanity needs to suffer. No need to wait for tariffs. I started cancelling all American services today. Netflix and Prime were first. I will not send money to a country that has declared an unwarranted trade war on my country. And it truly is unwarranted.…

> The current trade agreements were negotiated by Trump in his last term, and are well balanced.

I'd contend that they were already unbalanced in favour of the US. Canada gets some supply management, while the US gets to maintain softwood lumber tariffs and greatly extends copyright protection.

Re: Trump slaps tariffs on Mexico, Canada and China

#104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They've been telling us the plan. Fascist Elon Musk was telling us before the election they were going to crash the economy and wreck the government. Project 2025 was freely available. https://www.marketwatch.com/story/kaboom-elon-musk-predicts-... They want to snap up assets, strip mine and privatize government services once theyre broken, and install the billionare oligarchcy as the permanent ring class. Theyre spe…

Except this time it’s the capitalists and not the communists. The lesson of the fall of the Soviet Union was never that Communism doesn’t work, it’s that this top down insider-only rule by decree doesn’t work. They’re trying it again with this smug background of feeling like they’ve got it all figured out this time, but they’re just doing it all again but with iPhones and the internet. But it’ll turn out just the sam…

What do you mean, doesn’t work?

It works fantastic for the people at the top.

Re: Trump slaps tariffs on Mexico, Canada and China

#105
post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What more do you want? The pennies in our pockets? Pretty much yeah. US wants to tax you, subject you to their religious laws, and take your oil. What are you willing to do about it?

We are hoping the electorate in the US doesn't want to find out. US leadership has threatened Canada and other countries with using economic or military force for annexation. Canadians are hoping that saner heads will prevail, but it's not looking very good. We are very much aware that our military has been underserved in every way by Canadians, and that was part of the reason I chose not to continue my military care…

I fear that in hoping cooler heads will prevail, you've only set yourself up for failure. Trump and Musk will take advantage of your willingness to see them as better than what they are. That's how they win. Just remember they are doing Nazis salutes and setting up a concentration camp in Cuba. There are no more cooler heads.

Re: Trump slaps tariffs on Mexico, Canada and China

#106
post #51

As I recently wrote on Cowen's blog, a lot of the electorate doesn't know how tariffs work. Say I manufacture a widget in [country]. At present, there is no manufacturer of that widget in the USA. We export to the USA, and now the US importer or distributor pays a ~25% tariff on the declared value to Fedgov. Then that US importer or distributor receives the widgets and sells them. Because its margin is down, it raise…

[country] may have no other place to sell to, at least immediately, and at the same transportation cost. Moreover, unlike US, [country] may not have diversified its trade. The US may be able to control inflation like last time, by buying some of these goods from elsewhere and through interest rates etc.

Canada, Mexico and China make up about 40% of the imports of the USA. "Buying some of these goods from elsewhere" is not going to be easy.

Re: Trump slaps tariffs on Mexico, Canada and China

#107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They didn’t. The vast majority of Americans don’t hate Canadians. You don’t need a popular referendum to set tariffs, the president can just do it. One of the many downsides of electing a crazy person as president.

Fair, apologies for having a knee-jerk reaction to it. It just sucks to scroll a tiny bit on forums and get bombarded with pure hate. I understand that it doesn’t represent the majority, but makes you scratch your head and think why so many level headed people are willing to throw away trust that was built throughout decades. Like I get the whole America First approach, and understand the desire to build out the manu…

To be fair Canada and most of the EU haven't come close to fulfillment our NATO requirements since, well, ever. For better or worse most of the free world freeloads off the US' security shield.

Canada is especially egregious, where we have a bunch of tariffs and regulations protecting certain Canadian corporations while expecting the US to protect us and buy our products. All the while smugly criticizing them for it.

Re: Trump slaps tariffs on Mexico, Canada and China

#108
post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What more do you want? The pennies in our pockets? Pretty much yeah. US wants to tax you, subject you to their religious laws, and take your oil. What are you willing to do about it?

We are hoping the electorate in the US doesn't want to find out. US leadership has threatened Canada and other countries with using economic or military force for annexation. Canadians are hoping that saner heads will prevail, but it's not looking very good. We are very much aware that our military has been underserved in every way by Canadians, and that was part of the reason I chose not to continue my military care…

US electorate must find out. You can only negotiate with rational people. Retaliatory tariffs are mandatory, at a minimum.

Re: Trump slaps tariffs on Mexico, Canada and China

#109

What's the plan here ? Tariff war with all main trading partners ? According to Trump EU tariffs are coming in soon. US can win any tariff war against a single country. They maybe could win against China or EU or Canada / Mexico alone. But all of them at once ? This is going to be a disaster for the US. Because of current sky-high stock market valuations, US thinks it's the only game in town. We will soon see if it's…

I don't really understand what the end game is with Canada here. For Mexico, it seems more like a prod for social policy on immigration and fentanyl. I listened to Trudeau yesterday and he isn't even able to get a hold of Trump right now, something that seems just insane. I am just not sure that is true though that this is a disaster for the US. How much can China afford to fight back here with the state of their eco…

The end goal is annexation. Canada has natural resources and Trump wants them. He's creating a crisis he can use as justification for invasion.

Re: Trump slaps tariffs on Mexico, Canada and China

#110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fair, apologies for having a knee-jerk reaction to it. It just sucks to scroll a tiny bit on forums and get bombarded with pure hate. I understand that it doesn’t represent the majority, but makes you scratch your head and think why so many level headed people are willing to throw away trust that was built throughout decades. Like I get the whole America First approach, and understand the desire to build out the manu…

To be fair Canada and most of the EU haven't come close to fulfillment our NATO requirements since, well, ever. For better or worse most of the free world freeloads off the US' security shield. Canada is especially egregious, where we have a bunch of tariffs and regulations protecting certain Canadian corporations while expecting the US to protect us and buy our products. All the while smugly criticizing them for it.

US gets unquestionable currency dominance from US' security shield. Don't get me wrong, but if that was a real concern, they would've started the tariff war 4, 6, 8 years ago. Economical and political headwinds are showing potential Chinese dominance across all manufacturing and export industries. This is the actual time when US is being threatened and trying to bully others, because they can't fix the problem themselves.
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