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Canada considering charging for road access from USA to Alaska

washingtonstatestandard.com

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Re: Canada considering charging for road access from USA to Alaska

#311

Post by chneu »

bdamm wrote: post #114
vohk wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The justification is Trump wants to do to Canada much what Putin is doing to Ukraine. Russia being allowed to take Ukraine legitimizes world powers engaging in conquest within their sphere. It's really that simple. The talk about fentanyl, the supposed trade imbalance, and all the rest is just smoke and noise, because if he said that he wanted to raid Canada for resources and Lebensraum it might actually threaten his…

It is worse than this. Trump is just the spokesman for a younger group who is steering him. He doesn't actually know anything, he's just being fed punchlines and he's good at regurgitating them.

Trump usually goes along with whatever the last person said to him about a topic. Or whoever promises him the most in return(money or fame).

This was a major thing in his first term. People fight to be the last person to speak in a meeting.

Re: Canada considering charging for road access from USA to Alaska

#312

Post by chneu »

busyant wrote: post #73
mig39 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Canada's market is 10% of the USA. Of course there's going to be an imbalance in trade. Trump doesn't understand this, and he thinks that it means that Canada (the government) is literally ripping off the USA. Just like he doesn't understand that tariffs are paid by the buyer, not the government of the seller. Finally, the current trade treaty between Canada-USA-Mexico was negotiated by Trump himself, and it replaced…

> When he says it's a bad deal, why is nobody pointing out that he negotiated it? And famously said it was the best trade deal in history. Every sane person is pointing it out. But the asymmetry of lies and indifference to those lies by a large swathe of the electorate is terrifying. I have no idea how to fight this.

Republicans have an amazing ability to just ignore criticism. Their base is primed to also ignore any criticism. This makes it seem like everyone is bringing up a "non issue". It's wild. Thats part of why some issues seem to never gain any traction.

This is a major reason trump kicked a bunch of reporters out of the press pool. They challenged the narrative which doesn't let them ignore criticism.

Re: Canada considering charging for road access from USA to Alaska

#313

Post by [deleted] »

rayiner wrote: post #309
pcwalton wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should visit Canada sometime. It's quite a nice country. British Columbia in particular is gorgeous.

I have been visiting Canada for decades—quite a bit of my family lives there. I was just there in 2022 for a wedding reception. It’s a nice place that seems like it won’t be a nice place in 50 years. Cops watched me like a hawk—I assume they have good reasons. Punjabi Uber driver told me he doesn’t even have to speak English because everyone at the bank, store, etc., speaks Punjabi. For some reason his elderly, past…

[deleted]

Re: Canada considering charging for road access from USA to Alaska

#314

Post by sjsdaiuasgdia »

rgrieselhuber wrote: post #235
sjsdaiuasgdia wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You may not be aware, but Alaska is not part of the blob of 48 contiguous states. If you want to get from the main body of the US to Alaska over land, you'll have to cross Canadian territory.

And Alaska is still in the USA, so my critique of the title stands. If it had said 48 contiguous states it would have been accurate.

The context made it perfectly clear without additional words.

Re: Canada considering charging for road access from USA to Alaska

#315

Post by rayiner »

blackeyeblitzar wrote: post #307
diggan wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to the Democracy Index (article about it here: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/democracy-index-dat... ) there are about 25 "Full Democracies", 107 Non-authoritarian regimes, and 60 authoritarian regimes. Fun fact: The US isn't counted as a "Full Democracy" by that index, so seems it's not as a great of an achievement as you seem to think. I'm looking forward to see how the ranking of the US changes…

This index unironically puts countries that practice government censorship in the category of full democracies. Sorry but this isn't a democracy index - it's just a progressive index.

To lots of people, “liberal democracy” just means “liberal.”

Re: Canada considering charging for road access from USA to Alaska

#316

Post by rayiner »

kube-system wrote: post #147
rayiner wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But that sounds bad! Why should we be borrowing all this money from foreigners when we’re a rich country? What if I want the U.S. to build stuff, instead of moving money around and trying to “influence global politics.” I’d also love a sane domestic politics that acknowledges that borrowing money from foreigners every year because we can’t square our spending with our taxing is a bad thing.

> Why should we be borrowing all this money from foreigners when we’re a rich country? The crazy thing is, most of the money that the US borrows from is from their own citizens... not foreigners. I don't know why everyone presumes that US debt is mostly or entirely owed to other countries. It isn't.

Okay, but then doesn’t that undermine your point about the importance of the US being the world’s reserve currency? What does that matter if most of our debt is to ourselves anyway?

Japan runs huge structural deficits and most is held by its own citizens.

Re: Canada considering charging for road access from USA to Alaska

#317

Post by rayiner »

mindslight wrote: post #293
rayiner wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does having the reserve country benefit america? Because it enables us to run unsustainable deficits? Is that good for Americans in the long run?

Being able to trade arbitrarily-devaluable IOUs from a future America for real goods today is a fantastic deal. Putting it in the kid terms that seem to be necessary for this dynamic of endless "questioning" - if Bobby can get ice cream treats from the corner store by giving them pieces of paper with his picture on them, that's pretty awesome for Bobby. In the bigger picture - the reserve currency dynamic has allowed…

> In the bigger picture - the reserve currency dynamic has allowed many things to grow detached from reality, and those things are in dire need of reform (eg the everything bubble)

It seems like you don’t even disagree about the problem, you just think we should chip away at the symptoms instead of getting at root causes.

Free ice cream is bad! Bobby is going to not learn how to work for a living, and he’s going to get diabetes on top of that.

Re: Canada considering charging for road access from USA to Alaska

#318

Post by disgruntledphd2 »

bdangubic wrote: post #284
bryanlarsen wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A new administration can not promise that somebody like Donald Trump will never be elected again. That's what it would take to repair this relationship.

you may be right but money always talks and national interests go before “what ifs”

But at this point, Trump has been re-elected with a greater margin so in terms of national interests one needs to assume the worst case (i.e. these tariffs/behaviour aren't going away).

Would it be better if they did? I think so, but as a European (but very very exposed to the US) I don't think that's an economically rational way to plan.

Re: Canada considering charging for road access from USA to Alaska

#319

Post by LargoLasskhyfv »

fmbb wrote: post #142
a-priori wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely. Canada is almost certainly going to cancel or severely limit a pending F35 order, and is actively sourcing aircraft and negotiating mutual arms deals with European partners.

… which is hard to do for European plane makers that have engines with parts licensed from US companies. Hopefully this all leads to more countries stopping relying on US trade.

Well. They had it once. Maybe they could resurrect and modernize it :)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orenda_Iroquois

Re: Canada considering charging for road access from USA to Alaska

#320

Post by dguest »

throaway1987 wrote: post #89
phkahler wrote: post #78

Totally off topic, but after reading some comments here I got curious and went to Google and typed "population" and autocomplete offered "of Canada" with an answer of 40.1 Million already there. Of course that's what I was going to type, but but but... I'm in the U.S. so there's no reason to know what country I was going to look for unless Google (or this MS browser) knew I was just reading this in another tab. Reall…

people keep looking up the population of Canada to see where it would rank as a state

There was a great article about what would happen if Canada were a state:

https://abcnews.go.com/538/trumps-push-canadian-statehood-hu...

basically, assuming the US continues as a democracy in the same way it is now, the GOP / Trump would loose terribly in the next election. Then I guess it probably becomes independent again.

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