Summary
In a virtual speech at the World Economic Forum, Trump suggested Canada could become a U.S. state to avoid his proposed tariffs on imports.
The remark elicited gasps from the audience.
Trump claimed the U.S. does not need Canadian lumber, energy, or vehicles, vastly overstating the trade deficit between the two nations.
He reiterated his intention to impose tariffs, potentially as high as 25%, on imports from Canada and Mexico starting February 1.
Economists warn such tariffs would raise prices for U.S. consumers.
Remember when he said he was gonna end the war in gaza and ukraine?
Or cut the prices on gas and food?
Yea, this is abuse of the news cycle. It’s just manipulation of news cycle so you don’t think about any losses, mistakes or other shit.
Gas jumped $0.40 here this week.
So many people are extremely missing the point here
Trump is purposefully threatening Canada to give his canadian conservative buddy Poilievre something to “fight” against, to make him look good
“Wow Poilievre is standing up against Trump, I’m gonna vote for him!”
That’s the game plan, in reality the two dipshits are best buds and can collude together to fuck over both countries extra hard, after conservatives get a majority over here.
It’s a stunt to get conservatives in charge over here “against” Trump, which is so fucking stupid and yet it’s probably gonna work cuz so many people are gonna fall for it.
I don’t think the liberal party has a good play against it, other than if our new liberal leader challenges Trump and musk to a boxing match and literally bears the shit out of them on live television
I unironically think the Lincoln “I’ll fight you let’s go right now” leader who seriously fucks up Musk or Zuckerberg or any of those dipshits on live television would actually win by a landslide here
It’s fuckin stupid but that’s what works apparently…
He’s done the same with Putin
He’s looking for more bribes. ‘Pay me, or else.’
Is electoral reform still a policy of the liberal party. Will they Lucy football is away once the election is over again?
Trump is purposefully threatening Canada to give his canadian conservative buddy Poilievre something to “fight” against, to make him look good
This theory is predicated on 1) Trump remembering who PP is, 2) caring enough about who is running Canada to have it drive policy.
I don’t think either of these things are true.
They literally have meetings, and Trump obviously cares about conservatives willing to help him grift being in charge…
Trump is purposefully threatening Canada to give his canadian conservative buddy Poilievre something to “fight” against, to make him look good
Except Polierve has been the slowest and the quietest to speak out against this bullshit that Trump is trying to pull.
I don’t think the liberal party has a good play against it, other than if our new liberal leader challenges Trump and musk to a boxing match and literally bears the shit out of them on live television
Ahh, well that’s not good. Love him or hate him, I think one thing everyone could agree on about Trudeau is that he’d do pretty well in a politician boxing league.
Trudeau is out, we are voting in a new leader shortly
Hopefully they vote someone in who unironically would challenge dipshits to boxing matches
other than if our new liberal leader challenges Trump and musk to a boxing match and literally bears the shit out of them on live television
That would probably get me to vote liberal for the first time in my life
The Conservative Premier of Ontario, Doug Ford, is already doing that. I’ve heard his ads on the radio calling for Ontarioans to give him a majority government so he “can stand up to Trump”. The guy spent his time as Premier standing up to nurses and bike lanes. This new stand up against Trump shtick is just more faux populism.
the other side is not???
The centre to left is against it as much if not more than the conservatives. If anything, PP has been awfully silent on the whole thing. And don’t even look up how Danielle Smith (conservative premier of Alberta) is responding
Sides. But try not to get caught up in the us vs them drama.
The key point is that Mr Ford is using populism to promote populism, with no actual history where he stands up to bullies as much as he stands up to caregivers and citizens; and populism is the schtick of his party and the national cons, but isn’t a common thread in other parties as they campaign on rights and consolidated services instead.
Even if Canada would merge with the US, surely it wouldn’t become a state. We all know the importance of the Senate at this point, and how the two-senators-per-state rule affects things. At the very least, each province would want to become a state to get more senators, and it may be in the best interest of some of the larger provinces like Ontario or Quebec to subdivide to gain even more, if they can get away with it. Goodness knows the idea of splitting California has been floated by some to try to get something closer to senator-per-capita parity.
Y’know, I can see a future where Canada gets annexed, but not Quebec. Those francophones will burn down the whole province down and salt the earth before they became US citizens. I just know it. And I wouldn’t blame them one little tiny bit.
Maybe Alberta would accept being annexed fairly quickly but the rest of the Canada would fight just as hard as the Québécois. Part of the Canadian identity is not being American and like hell you’re taking that away from us.
I’m not suggesting the rest of Canada would lay down and take it, just that the image in my head of Quebecoise is one of salt of the earth and die on that hill type. Like, Canadians are Not American™, and Quebecoise are Not Any Of You Fuckers™
The FLQ rises again.
We all know the importance of the Senate at this point
Trump does not understand how anything in the U.S. government works, you must know that.
Idea: split canada in 200 states, take over the senate!
“Surrender to my imperialism or I’m going to ruin your economy”
“Surrender to my imperialism or I’m going to ruin
yourmy economy”
So a huge state with an overton window to the left of the US?
But why have only one state when we can have more!
Use gerrymandering tactics to pack all the conservatives in one state, then split the rest in a 60/40 ratio, and make them all winner take all.
magats will lose presidency and the senate forever
How do you like them apples?
They’ll still only have 2 additional liberal senators.
Don’t even talk about the possibility. Don’t even weigh it up. He needs to be told and shown very firmly that this will never happen.
The Canada, Mexico, California, Washington Oregon States.
I bet he’ll end up sprinkling in a handful of very specific exemptions. These are what we need to slap export taxes on. Doesn’t need to be much, but match his 25%. At best it’ll hammer them where they need it, at worst it’ll keep things fair for all our exporters.
Putin’s Sock Puppet taking orders from Moscow to divide the NATO members. For starters, the Canadians should stop buying US made weapons, because the current US leadership is unhinged and unreliable. If anything, the Blue States should become Canadian Provinces.
They don’t want us. As soon as NYS joins, NYC would dominate the votes, due to wild population differences.
Why wouldn’t Canada want any state to join our Confederation?
Guaranteed if that were to happen we would be switching to a proportional representation federal vote to fix large population differences.
So, Canada would “fix” it, by employing a system like the US has, that ensures a tyranny of the minority?
We must strengthen NATO’s defences against the aggressive USA and significantly improve border defences, lest they catch us with our pants down when the time comes.
I still remember fondly the Trump speech at the UN when the whole assembly laughed at him.
I suspect that there’s going to be a lot more of that to come.
Now he’s being told to “fuck off” on the floor of the EU parliament.
I’m going to keep posting this every time I see a reference to US tariffs against Canada.
https://pluralistic.net/2025/01/15/beauty-eh/
The TL;DR is that tariffs would violate the NAFTA / USMCA treaty in which Canada agreed to respect US copyright law in exchange for free trade. No free trade? Canada doesn’t need to respect US copyright any longer and can become a flourishing economy of products to compete with US products that are massively overpriced. Think printer ink and other stuff.
Yes, please, Canadian produced pharmaceuticals + 15% tariff = an order of magnitude cheaper than what we can buy in the States.
That’s why buying drugs across the border is specifically illegal. Can’t have us buying our medicine at a fair value.
That’s amazing. He’s going to absolutely tank the US economy in his first financial quarter of his term.
You’re misunderstanding the situation, then, sorry…
Trump isn’t rational, he is narcissistic-machiavellian-sociopathic.
IF Canada retaliates like that, THEN Trump may well declare war against Canada.
They would only need to drop a single large conventional-bomb on Ottawa, & then claim Canada as their “manifest destiny”, declaring all Canadians to be “illegal aliens & criminals”, & their “problem” would be “fixed”.
He may not have the guts to do that this-week, but he is progressing psychologically, & the end-point of that progression, about 4y in our future, is as the most-murderous-dictator-on-the-planet.
He will be the complete-set: narcissistic, machiavellian, psychopathic, nihilist, sadist, systemically-dishonest, & hate, before the transformation is complete.
Tread carefully, when one is near a heavily-armed psychiatrically-defective giant, eh?
_ /\ _
Sometimes I think you’re right. Other times I think that couldn’t possibly be true.
I’ve studied many of the bigger wars and they’ve all mostly have been started by far less severe events. It’s scary that one person could wield all that power, unchecked and unaccountable.
It sounds like it’s time to build a bunker.
Yeah anyone mad at the US government right now should to take it out on the US corporations, not the citizens. Citizens can’t do much about this shitty administration until the next election but the corporations will have their feelings massively hurt every quarter if they don’t meet their profit expectations.
trump will listen to corporations far more than citizens.
Citizens could have done something about it in November. And almost half of them chose to sit on their hands.
Of the ones who actually voted, half of those actively voted for this shitshow.
Sorry to the few who tried to stop it, but the idiots that surround you have brought this on you.
We will try to aim most of our retaliation at the Redhatter morons, but some of you will likely get caught in the crossfire.
Please do whatever you can to fix your country’s shit, so we can get back to being friendly neighbours.
.
Also, please try not to break any more of the firefighting equipment we loaned you (and sent even after agent orange started threatening us).
Sweet. Host all pirate sites in Canada.
Idk if it’s just for individuals, but our ISPs generally don’t care about pirating already. I use a VPN to pirate here but just set to another city in Canada. I only even do that because I run jellyfin and have terabytes of downloads a month.
Worst case scenario is the ISP sends you a notice that the media companies are mad, but that’s the end of it. They won’t pursue anything further because they don’t care
It’s not illegal to download something, it’s illegal to host something (seeding)
ISPs are compelled to notify you of copyright notices but they can’t hand your information over so you can only get caught if you respond
And even if you are dumb enough to respond to one of those emails, the liability is limited to something $50 per title. So it’s not worth the money to pay a lawyer to go after anyone. They will however try to trick you into a private settlement.
No no no, you must charge every user with willful commercial infringement and penalize them $250,000 per violation. It is the American way!
I was thinking to host pirate sites of US movies, software, etc. Get the US companies to tell the orange buffoon to behave or better yet, move the companies to Canada.
I really like the article’s reference to manufacturing US DMCA-breaking technologies and forcing devices to host app stores in Canada where the government can declare the 30% Apple tax illegal.
Not pirated, works no longer covered by copyright in Canada.
The TL;DR is that tariffs would violate the NAFTA / USMCA treat
The treaty that Trump himself negotiated and agreed to.
That’s the treaty he is calling a “bad deal” and threatening to violate.
YES! Thanks for the reminder!
Trump just amended the USMCA on January 17 (takes effect on March 18, 2025)…
This went way over my head. IANAL.
Please let this be the trigger for free trade with Europe and all that lovely meat and cheese.
There was a Eu politician that sugeested Canada join the EU instead
I’m down with that. I love Canada but I’d Euro it up to avoid seeing Charles on my currency.
Canada please join the EU!!!
We’ve been trying but our current leader is pro-US
I’m willing to die not to join the US.
Lots of us are
👍
Reminder that Tariffs dont work as a threat to other nations.
The selling price is the same for the seller, they already give the lowest price they can profit from because the modern era allows international distributors to find a demand anywhere, the buyers are the ones paying the import tax for the same goods.
If you were selling and then the buyer had a tariff you wouldn’t just agree to take less money as a result.
Isn’t the point to make the domestic customers choose products from other nations? Why wouldn’t that be a threat to the nation that is selling?
Yeah but it only really works if it’s targeted. Threatening blanket tariffs on countries that represent 60% of all imports (EU, China, Mexico, Canada) takes a bit of the impact away, it’s unlikely domestic production could handle all that. Even if it could, why wouldn’t American companies raise their prices as much as they felt they now could?
Probably true. I don’t know enough to speak further down this line. 😅 But I thank you for joining and sharing that! Interesting!
I think it’s a “threat” but not a very good one.
There might be 3 brands of toothbrush available to buy in the US but maybe all of them are manufactured in China. If you just tariff everything from China then US consumers will just pay more because there’s no incentive for manufacturers to absorb the tariff.
It’s a threat to Chinese toothbrush manufacturers because it creates an incentive for other manufacturers to pop up elsewhere, maybe someone will start manufacturing toothbrushes in the US. These toothbrushes would be cheaper than the tariffed ones for consumers to buy, but obviously more expensive than toothbrushes used to be before the tariffs.
In summary, because consumers are unlikely to buy less toothbrushes, they just end up paying more.
These toothbrushes would be cheaper than the tariffed ones for consumers to buy, but obviously more expensive than toothbrushes used to be before the tariffs.
I think this is my whole point? You’d obviously buy the cheaper one of the products are (fairly) identical. So the Chinese product is disregarded, and thus that market is being hurt.
Sure ok but to make that point you have to skip over all the other significant impediments to this plan.
You need to build, staff, and supply a local manufacturing plant for toothbrushes.
This is no small thing and not something that can be created overnight. It’s not even as simple as “building” a factory… you need the supply chain, and most of the requisite supplies probably come from China - plastic to make the brush head, plastic to make the handles, machines to form the plastic, and technicians to maintain those machines. If you want to invent all these things locally and avoid the retaliatory tariffs from China, that’s going to take decades.
During those decades consumers will be buying the tariffed Chinese toothbrushes wondering why the fuck everything from toothbrushes to shampoo to laundry powder to televisions costs twice as much as it does in any other country.
So my whole point is, there’s a “threat” to Chinese producers but it’s not very likely to materialise because the US will lose the political will to maintain the tariffs long before locally made products appear.
I was thinking more along the lines of choosing other manufacturers that already exist, that don’t have tariffs affecting them, but in case they don’t (exist), you definitely have a good point from what I can understand. 👍😁
Thanks for explaining!
Idk but Trump just tried to threaten Canada with them so clearly some Americans don’t know.
Sorry, you lost me there.
That’s not strictly true, they don’t “pay the tariff” obviously but they do have to balance profit margin and lost sales. Tariffs are likely to decrease number of sales which does hurt their bottom line, the question then is if they just take a loss in sales, cut into their profit margins trying to lower the price to the US (very unlikely the margins are nearly enough for this to be viable let alone preferable) or increase prices further to offset the lower sales. Probably will be mostly the former with raw material type goods and mostly the latter with high end finished goods.
Right, that’s what I was thinking. Surely it hurts the seller. But it also hurts the buyer, so it’s like 🙄 well done, Trump…
