Don't depend on this. I didn't expect him to survive his first term, but there's something about evil that seems to keep the body animated long past its best-by date.
I'm very much not a fan of China, but I'd still say "prefer Europe but be open to China too." Canada's uniquely positioned to be able to trade well with both, the same advantage that America had before they turned isolationist and squandered it.
That said, I expect that applying reasonable standards to China will result in a lot of trade opportunities being cut off anyway. I just don't want them cut off preemptively without trying first.
Frankly, as a citizen of a formerly-allied country that the US is now openly discussing annexing by force, I'm fine with them crippling their military with absurd rules and standards. Go nuts, Hesgeth. Pile on the racism and sexism and whatever. Kick out any pilots or gunnery officers or whatever that are good at their jobs but that can't run a mile in whatever arbitrary time you pick. Ensure there are lots of well-trained former military personnel in your country that are bitter at your government but no longer under its control. I'm sure it'll go great.
They have meaning in France. The US doesn't have any say over that. If the US breaks those contracts then they can be sued in France and French judges can award them penalties.
I considered Bush II to be the "first transgression" already. There are some further back too, of course, you can go back to the Gulf of Tonkin or even the USS Maine, but the Iraq invasion was the first where all the contradicting evidence was already fully available to the public if they cared to go look at it. Those "misadventures" in the Middle East and Afghanistan were where the first pebbles of this current avalanche of American collapse really started to move, IMO.
What we're seeing now is just the point of no return, where nobody's trying to stop the slide any more.
Over on Reddit today I got the coveted "[Removed by Reddit]" award for a comment where I merely predicted that this would end in violence. This is the Fediverse and I can be a bit freer in saying that at this point that's probably the better option for America, to make it absolutely clear what "side" the general public is on.
I doubt that America will choose the better option, though. Cowards.
It's bitterly ironic that the only people who have taken literal shots at Trump so far were themselves crazed Republican nutballs, his own base. I give America no bonus points for those attempts.
I don't even now what Trump is wanting us to "give in" on, or if he has anything in particular that he wants. Isn't his position basically that the tariffs are good for the US purely in their own right, and exist for their own sake? He thinks that by doing this it'll magically revive the domestic car manufacturing industry and then they'll have tons of cars and money and everyone else will think he has giant hands.
For many years I have argued that Putin's actions in Ukraine and Europe "make sense" based on the assumption that no country in the world actually has agency in its actions other than a handful of superpowers - Russia, the US, and China. Any other country not on that list must be a vassal state of one of the ones that is, so if the Eastern European countries are no longer Russian vassals then that must logically mean they are now American vassals.
It would appear that Trump is under a similar delusion. He's apparently trying to beat countries into submission that he views as already being American vassals. Hence why he thinks stuff like the "51st state" garbage is no big deal, since in his view Canada's already 90% of the way to being a state anyway.
I love the catch-22 that this puts Trump in. If he declares that none of the details of the discussion were classified, then the journalist can release those details without legal issues. If he declares that they are classified, this happens.
Yeah, I hope nobody took my comment to suggest that it's not worth voting at all in a "safe" riding. Frankly that's a bit liberating, if I was in a riding that was already certain to go to any party (Conservative, Liberal, Natural Law, whatever) then that would mean I was free to vote my conscience. The popular vote doesn't mean anything in absolute legal terms but it's still a nice bit of psychological pressure to apply.
"Maybe someday they'll let a Democrat be president for three terms!"