kava @ kava @lemmy.world

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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.

Anyone who’s even remotely qualified to lead the military is being replaced with sycophants

it's a purge. we're watching our own version of what Saddam Hussein did when he took power. it definitely weakens the country overall but it strengthens the hold on power for the executive.

as for the military, we've been spending more than like the next 8 countries combined for decades. it's hard to understate the relative power of the US military. there are hundreds of military bases all over the world.

even a weakened superpower is still a superpower

If no enemies exist, they are created.

i don't disagree. that's why the rhetoric. but I would disconnect the rhetoric from the policy. trump says one thing and does another. he wants to deport everyone but at the rate he's going we won't even see a 10% reduction in the illegal immigrant population. mouth says one thing, hand does another

notice how tariffs were a trend that started a decade ago. Trump placed tariffs on China on his first term and then Biden increased the number of tariffs. the ban on Tiktok was a bipartisan effort- it's in the interest of US foreign policy. obviously tariffs on Canada and Mexico are insane and probably wouldn't have happened without Trump.. but more tariffs were a definite part of the future regardless who won in 2024

Trump isn’t doing this because he’s some brilliant strategist

couple of things. first, i wouldn't underestimate trump. he successfully hijacked the Republican party which is a party full of wealthy and powerful people who did everything in their power to try and stop him

second, the people around Trump are very principled ideologues (ie people like Peter Thiel and the dark enlightenment ideology they're enamored in)

these people are educated, intelligent, and dedicated to their cause. they also have near-limitless money and now they have the control of the federal government of the strongest country in the world- a country that has an executive branch that has gotten progressively more powerful.

they have a vision and they planned for this and they are enacting it. this is not a spontaneous thing. they view a future where there is a showdown with China and tariffs play into that future

the analogy was in reference to the size differential between david (boy) and goliath (giant)

sure david wins in the parable but to quote bo burnham

South of queers, north of Hell

The queer ones suck and the brown ones smell

We guard the border and we guard it well

But some slip through the cracks of the Liberty Bell

Did I say liberty? I meant taco, Paco, hey you better let that rock go

'Cause in real life, Goliath wins

And then sells all the silk that the widow spins

I would very much like to preserve the freedom that attracted you to this country in the first place

i would very much like to preserve the freedom as well. i'm not pro-fascism if that wasn't clear

i was just saying that even if shit gets really bad here people may still come because everything else could be worse