"We have recognised from the beginning that America has changed, and that we will not return to our old relationship. Our government understood, before many, that America is altering all its trade relationships. Putting tariffs on its closest allies and charging for access to its vast market."
[1] _ https://www.pm.gc.ca/en/news/statements/2026/08/21/statement...
The US was a good faith actor, especially relative to its power. Now it is not. It is not good for the world's most powerful military and economy to stop "pretending" to be a good faith actor, and it is not something you should find any joy in.
I mean, in a way Trump's tendency to back out of everything, good or bad and base his entire foreign policy relationship with your country based on who he last spoke to is predictable, but predictable in a way the only winning move with US relationships is not to play
I'll throw in China, which might want whats best for Chinese influence even more than it wants to sell you cheap consumer goods, but it's also very, very predictable in what it wants from any sort of international agreement with you and these days has an abundance of capital and the ability to sell you most things the US can sell you for less...
The world is watching this story just like the world watched Davos.
Last night will encourage further decoupling of the US for nations other than Canada.
idk if Trump 2028 will happen or not. I will say with conviction no matter who is in office by then will not rebuild trust around the world in their tenure. Too much damage is done to the US's reputation.
The only way that the US can start rebuilding this trust is that the incoming Democratic President and Congress (assuming we are so lucky) immediately starts by prosecuting Trump and his family (and results in actual jail time, not just fines or small stays), zero out their government contracts, fire most of the people installed in government since 2025, expand the Supreme Court, and remove the fillibuster. I know people think ideas like that are extreme, but really, what else is going to convince the rest of the world that the US has cleaned up their act? It has to start at home first.
a de-nazification program similar to germany post-WW2, combined with a shredding and full rewrite of the US Constitution by western allies to bring it in line with estonia's as an example, in addition to clearing house with the Trumps is the kinda thing that would start building trust
I'm not hopeful for a full Constitutional Convention, but every possible effort by any means must be made to put into law every "unwritten norm" that the Trump administration took advantage of.
Impeachment is the mechanism to remove a rogue president, and the entire GOP is party to a "soft coup" against the Constitution of the United States. I agree it will take a complete societal rejection of MAGA and the Unitary Executive theory for allies to ever trust the US again.
If Trump goes to prison, that’s when I leave, because that will be the moment historians point to as “no going back”.
So I’m hoping the justice department either doesn’t have enough of a case to convict, or has enough of a case that the whole country falls in line. The in between, it’s time to get out. Because shit will go downhill very fast.
That has always been clear, seeing how it is the default mode of operation for empires throughout history. The solution here is separation of powers: the ruler itself is bound by rules and institutions that provide a check on their power, and in turn those institutions protect the ruler after stepping down.
It is Trump and the Republican party that chose to abandon that solution. There already is no going back from that choice.
And I reject your premise that putting one's leaders in jail will only lead to an infinite spiral of partisan kangaroo courts because other democracies manage to hold their leaders to legal account without going into a death spiral.
And it's honestly weird and more than a bit disturbing how controversial that simple concept has become. I guess we really do want kings here.
“than it doesn't deserve to survive”. There it is, out loud. If you only support democracy when your side wins then you are just an authoritarian who wants democratic cover. You’re just as bad as Trump.
You implied that Democrats would be jailed for following the law with this comment.
This is laughable.
He never hit 50% in the popular vote, and that doesn’t count the ‘none of the above/don’t care’ non-voters. That was at the peak of the oligarch-funded campaign that saw record-smashing spending and advertising to gin up support.
His popularity immediately fell after the election and has been sliding the entire time he’s been in office. A majority of voters supported his impeachment shortly after he started the Iran war in back April and he’s even more unpopular now.
Yeah, no. Obviously not what I said, or what my comment implied, and you're not even trying to respond in good faith.
Unless Trump does something egregious enough in the coming years that the case against him is rock solid, black and white, and heavy, any move to jail him and those around him is impossible to distinguish from political targeting. I have not seen evidence of something out of line enough, no matter what Reddit hive mind thinks.
So with the knowledge I have, I’d say any serious push to jail him and his team would be terrifying. If we get crystal evidence of bribery that holds up in court and is clear enough to sway a large swath of Republicans, then that’s great. Still a worse outcome than there not being something black and white to nail him with, but I think that case democracy survives. But not “trumped up” charges.
“Pulling punches now will only ensure that it comes back 10x worse later” and using punches will what, subdue? This is half the political power of America you’re talking about punching. Republicans will what, roll over? You think democrats win handily enough to end it?
It escalates the blood feud. The way out of a blood feud is de-escalation, amnesty, forgiveness, working together. Not demanding more blood, even if you think it is perfectly justified.
> You’re just as bad as Trump.
No, Trump's 2nd term is in the running for most corrupt administration in American history. Even what Nixon did would just be another scandal for this administration that would leave the news cycle in a couple weeks.
He, or at least his officials and family need to be held accountable. That is the right, just and Constitutional thing to do.
But... that's still perfectly legal, isn't it? All of these little backdoors the founding fathers added to the executive as some vestigial organ of monarchical power just because they couldn't trust the people in "we the people" maybe should be reconsidered. If we don't want presidents to be able to pardon themselves and anyone else without limit, there are ways to make that happen. Never even bothering to convict any president of a crime doesn't even attempt to fix that problem however.
can you really point to a single government where they dont illegally communicate outside of logged channels, or any such things, to scam the voters? or where they intentionally promise something they have zero intention of keeping, or lying about whether its possible. and of course some such things are not considered crimes because the very people who would then be violating the law would be the ones who MAKE the law.
the vast majority of politicians worldwide are super criminals doing things that if you or I did even 1/100 what they did, they would lock us up and throw away the keys.
It's basically what Canada is doing to the US with dairy, except with Chinese cars.
From the US strategic perspective this is moving out of the frying pan and into the fire.
There are zero Canadian automobile assemblers; they are Canadian subsidiaries of American companies, with some parts manufacturers being here.
Assuming American companies (and companies from subordinates like Japan) leave, what would be the problem in having a similar relationship with China? Is it because their manufacturing is more integrated?
But hey, they have cheap shit, so what better wagon to hitch your country to?
Some EU carmakers are fighting back but it's very hard when politicians managed to have energy price in the EU being about 7x higher than those carmakers in China do pay.
I'm not for tariffs but China is dumping and if we don't all want to end up being vassals of China, we should at least protect some of our industries.
And as "good" as chinese EVs are, I'm sorry but they're not anywhere near the quality of, say, what German cars used to be.
If western carmakers had been given a reasonable timeline to switch to EVs and reasonable energy price, the situation would be different.
EU carmakers may be saved by people preferring to buy cars from their own continent but that remains to be seen. The latest BMW EVs, for example (once you remove the spying / remote control issues: but that affects chinese EVs doubly so), are apparently very fine machines.
To be fair, German cars aren’t anywhere near the quality that German cars used to be, either.
EU and even USA should start doing something reasonable. Like introducing quota on how much overall can be imported/exported to protect local markets. Like lets say 40%.
Everyone gets a piece of cake.
But lets be honest, germany (my country) also never played fair. We gained quite a lot of export strength through the Euro and overall german politics.
And its not just the energy prices, it was quite clear what the energy prices going to be but no one really invested into reducing them early or fast enough at all. No one cared. BMW new factory in hungarie though does has a lot more reneablw and was able to continue production despite hungaries energy issue.
In China a person makes 500-1000 per month, in germany the same person makes a lot more.
China you have raw resources and cheap labor and cheap energy on EVERY SINGLE point of the process. From iron ore to the assembly itself.
And it doesn't matter much anyway because with the current and future grade of automatisation, a lot less money is getting directly to the people.
We need laws enforcing the rich to pay the taxes and/or invest A LOT more a lot faster and a lot broader.
We need real politics and not this garbage happening in germany or in the USA or in Russia.
Nice Jedi Hand Wave there.
That's the issue.
China invested in producing cheap energy. Most of the rest of the world did not.
At root, economics is about turning energy into goods and services. If the root industrial input of your competitor is cheaper than the cost of that same root industrial input to you, you're gonna need some incredible efficiencies elsewhere in that production pipeline to pull even.
At this point, the EU should be all about keeping the other major powers at arm's length, (economically and militarily), while pursuing renewable electrification with all deliberate speed.
That should be everyone else' strategy going forward as well by the way. Without cheap energy in the next global economic phase, your nation or bloc is dead in the water.
Especially with being well behind in the current AI arms race. You need the opposite of a "workers utopia" to do all the things the EU needs to do, and do them fast.
They either stay with the US or become a vassal of Xi Jinpeng.
You mean coal[1][2]?
[1] https://www.carbonbrief.org/chinas-construction-of-new-coal-...
[2] https://www.forbes.com/sites/katharinabuchholz/2026/02/27/ch...
Though coal has dropped as a percentage of their portfolio fairly dramatically, and in absolute twh has been stable since 2010, with other energy sources growing.
China dominates global clean energy investment, accounting for more than half of the $1.1 trillion invested worldwide between 2019 and 2025, while the United States contributed approximately $236 billion, representing less than a quarter of the total. - https://finance.yahoo.com/sectors/energy/articles/china-spen...
They are 80% there for 30% the price as a consumer it’s a tremendous deal
Unfortunately, Canada (where I live) will feel way more pain from this than the US. I am not sure Trump will have respect for this at all, but the alternative was to put in a permanent trade deal that significant disadvantaged Canada.
And we already have an actual NATO example, where one member attacks countries around the world, one of those countries fights back, threathening to attack american bases even in europe if needed... and now other nato members might get involved in a war that was started by one of it's own members, that no one else really wanted, and side on the side of the agressor ( https://www.aa.com.tr/en/europe/nato-chief-reaffirms-allianc... ). To turn back into economics, what happens when EU declares an "economic war" against china, china retalites (by eg. banning exports of something we really need)... does canada go along and threathen it's own economy? Or do they form a new "NATO" with "everyone-else except EU"?
Most obviously Southern Ontario is living in a dreamland where inexplicably ICE autos remain a viable industry ad infinitum.
Some forced reality, by any means, will in the long run prove to be welcome.
Canada has manufacturers that the US doesn't (and won't for at least 5 years) and vice-versa.
I suppose that explains why Canadian's won't allow the staple foods to also be supply managed, only accepting it for luxury foods (and once tobacco) that wouldn't cause a crisis if they disappeared, but on that realization we're back to dairy being more like taxis than essential calories.
It'd be like trying to convince the US to reduce their Corn cartel. Except the corn industry keeps prices low, paid for by the American tax payer and demand mandates, and the Dairy cartel keeps prices high so consumers pay for the lack of competition.
The Quebec PM did say that if the dairy industry wasn't happy they wouldn't put US alcohol badk on the shelves, which would have effectively killed the whole thing.
While a factor I doubt this is the whole story though.
No story can be told in a HN comment. No story can be fully told in words.
However, having spent much of my existence around the Canadian diary industry it is clear that it has always been the biggest sticking point in US and Canada relations. Not just today, but that's been the case for my entire life.
That’s not really true. The US has 5% of the quota, tarrif free. Which they don’t even fully use. But, to be sure, it does get used. You absolutely can buy American milk products in Canada.
The problem is that they have to go through the processors to satisfy the processors' own quotas so by and large the meager 5% isn’t worth the operational complexity vs just buying milk locally for the processors. The US wants to be able to go directly to the grocery stores.
what changes is parts that arent so visible - milk powders, sugars, proteins, etc, that are inputs into ultraprocessed foods like a cheezit
I mean, what were you expecting? Like before, they only have access to 5% of the market tarrif-free, and, in practice, cannot even use all of that due to the practicalities of 5% not being all that operationally useful to the Canadian processors. The US hasn't been bemoaning these tariffs for longer than I've been alive (and I'm quite old by HN standards) because the market is flush with their goods...
> It's extremely hard to find non-Canadian liquid milk on Canadian store shelves.
Hard is a long way from never. Yes, the volume is negligible, but known to be non-zero. Although we'd really have to understand the makeup of the milk to know how common you consuming it is. If every jug has a tiny drop of US milk in it then the chances of you encountering US milk on store shelves is actually quite high. It is highly unlikely that any jug will be 100% US milk. It is not like anyone is going to take the time to painstakingly separate it into a separate tank before bottling. Milk is milk.
Carney is very popular for a reason.
What exactly does this word mean? It definitely doesn't mean a stable set of agreements that can be relied upon to ensure a stable future business environment. That's not in the cards.
What I suspect Carney is doing, and fully support as a Canadian, is running down the clock. An agreement is America isn't worth anything without leverage to back it. The main goal is to stall to delay the damage as much as possible while diversifying away our economic dependence on the US. There is no other long-term goal - everything else is just appearances and showmanship.
Similarly, people who don't have self-respect don't respect others.
I don't think so. Time really isn't on Carney's side either.
Carney's new tariffs fall on those who, in aggregate, did not vote for him. The average Carney voter has been very vocal about wanting to pursue this tactic- that's why they elected him. (That average voter is an Eastern retiree whose holdings are generally in real estate, so they don't care about any other economic sector beyond that which keeps their property values high, especially compared to the feel-good Elbows Up stuff.)
But Carney's currently having trouble just keeping the country together at this point. That's why he's approving projects he really doesn't want to approve out West, like those oil pipelines, because the West has credibly signaled that that they might just ban Carney and his Eastern voting block from making law and collecting tax from them if development of their part of the country is hindered any further. But if it's not hindered, they'll grow in political power, which is also an inherent threat to Ottawa's power (just not immediately).
And yet here Carney is- for the second time now- imposing more economic roadblocks that drive up consumer prices and put more people out of work for no reason other than his voting block wanting it that way. "Just retaliate" might be the least bad option for Carney to pander to that voting block, but every concession to them drives the country closer to separation, and that has time pressure too.
Outside of the small fringe communities that support it, the reaction of the broader country has been to actually shift MORE into hardline stances against the US, as the effort is seen largely as an American manufactured thing.
Additionally, I'd advise to take with caution perspectives from any sources that would characterize the province of Alberta as "the west".
Not really, though. Despite what even a good chunk of Canadians (or yourself) might think, the country doesn't end at Toronto.
If the government wasn't worried about the effects, they wouldn't be in any hurry to approve the infrastructure projects; they've been in the works for a very long time, stalled out. Urban Easterners claim to believe the planet will explode if they're built, and the governments they elect act accordingly, but it's really just a power thing.
Additionally, I'd advise you to not think you know better than the people that actually live here.
The government's actions are much better explained by a sudden actual, panicked focus on actual development of the economy towards some combination of diversification and domestic demand - after the governing party's leader was replaced by arguably a much more results oriented PM after having been governed for a while by a much more vibes oriented PM.
Opening up the pipeline projects required more than just "conceding" to Alberta, it required negotiating with BC and the native tribes that would have a say in the path and ensuring they got the concessions they needed. Boring work. Not really meme material and doesn't make the headlines.
Between all the things the government has been doing - the oil sector work, the acceleration of military procurement, the various bilateral trade agreements, and work on easing internal trade restrictions, acceleration of internal projects - it's easy for some interest or another to cherry pick a particular set of events and use them to paint a narrative.
These narratives would be more compelling and maybe work better at other times, but the issue currently is that the American president is just so effective at drowning out any of these. There's nothing quite so unifying as an obnoxious tyrant rambling on about your country in disrespectful terms.
The commentary (mistakenly) assuming my nationality could probably have been left out of your response :)
It's unfortunate and in some ways unfair. I hope the Canadian economy will move towards more open trade partners and will proposer.
The thing that I really struggle to understand is what the grand vision behind this is. A logical consequence of the tariffs is that Canada, Europe and other American allies focus more on those who are willing to trade with them, including China.
If I put a 2/3y contract in place with an American supplier, there's a fair chance that I might have to deal with 10-50% tariffs at some point during the contract. This does make (long)-term business deals with the US risky.
> The thing that I really struggle to understand is what the grand vision behind this is.
This is something so far removed from the way normal, constructive way people (have to) think and behave with each other as a prereq to participate in society that they will inevitably fail to see this parasitical dynamic, because there is no way they can relate to that from their own frames. Even when we learn about this we will instinctively dismiss it. It doesn't fit our frame of reference, so we decide this can't be true.
They don't respect anything. They stand for nothing. Their only concern is to pay lip service to Trump's crazy ideas.
s/Trump.*ideas/Line their own pockets/
For example, the first tariff wave was a huge transfer of wealth from citizens to corporations in the OBBBA. First, the income from tariffs was projected to offset the tax cuts for the rich and corporations. Then, when the Supreme Court found them unlawful, the money had to be returned. But first the corporations let consumers pay the tariffs by increasing product prices, but now it is the same companies who get the tariff refunds. And since they are obviously not going to give the money back to the customer, it lined their pockets.
Also, of course, extracting as much money from the state as possible
Wow, a global Great Depression II really does look like it is in the cards.
Every baffling, self destructive move Trump makes, basically always aligns to a long stated goal of Russia.
Let's be serious, that has nothing to do with the Canadian situation, which has more than enough going on without needing to imagine things.
Edit to add: the extent to which many of you will apparently blame anything and everything on Putin is extraordinary. Just because the sun shines on Putin as well does not mean he made it do so.
europe and east asia whove been helping to fund and arm ukraine are also taking the real pressure from iran and the US halting energy exports from the gulf.
the oil price for high enough to where russia gets paid the same amount despite having most of its infrastructure blown up, vs having its infrastructure blown up and also the oil proce being low.
The war with Ukraine is currently doing huge damage to Russia. Maybe Putin wants to be more securely in charge of a diminished Russia. IMO again, I doubt that.
This is impractical. There is a hierarchy of thousands of Mullahs that ascend when you kill off one. There is no "head". It's a distributed hierarchy or hydra, rather than an effective dictatorship. ofc, Trump wanted to appease Bibi and Trump fired most of the advisors who object to his bad ideas, so it was a perfect storm for a global quagmire.
The irony is that China is the big winner from all of this, simply by staying above the fray and making trade deals with all the countries that more bellicose superpowers start fighting. When your adversary is making a mistake, let him.
He would also want the munitions stockpile to be depleted, which it is now.
Though I do agree, not literally every move Trump does is on a string from Putin and the Iran war isn't one; it sure still is mighty convenient all the same to make the US military look weak and incompetent.
They could be both pulling at the strings, often in different directions with varying success. It could even be tracked by the people going in and out of favor with the admin: MTG, Carlson, Gubbard riding high? Russia's pull is stronger. Them becoming pariahs reduced to criticizing the Iran war from the peanut gallery? Israel has taken over.
They represent two completely opposite poles, geopolitically. Not horseshoe theory compatible: they are mutually exclusionary.
The Green Movement in Europe, which Trump opposes, was best thing to happen to Putin.
As far as I can see, where Trump goes wrong is the same place the social democrats go wrong: believing in economic fallacies. In Trump's case that would be the belief that tariffs are beneficial.
He also on rare occasion aligns with very socialist leaning politicians like Elizabeth Warren, like when he sought to prevent private equity from buying up housing — which totally misdiagnoses the cause of the housing shortage. But it's these economic fallacies that makes Trump popular for the same reason social democrats are popular. The vast majority of people don't understand economics.