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Trump administration 2024-2028

The codex astartes does not support opening the door during the storm and hoping only the basement floods.
Right...

To sum up.

Opening trade with China.

Australia and NZ can do it.

America and Trump can do it.

Canada cannot do it it must suffer the Chinese not buying our agricultural goods while the Chinese buy goods from the aforementioned countries.

Bullet, meet foot.
 
Right...

To sum up.

Opening trade with China.

Australia and NZ can do it.

America and Trump can do it.

Canada cannot do it it must suffer the Chinese not buying our agricultural goods while the Chinese buy goods from the aforementioned countries.

Bullet, meet foot.
China’s still our second largest trading partner. We exchange all kinds of goods and services with them. We still have some protectionist policies based on some of their own unfair trade practices, or as part of tit for tat disputes. But you can chill a little bit, nobody is saying our existing massive trade with China needs to go away.


Sure. Australia is smaller and highly trade-dependent. Australia also paid a steep price when it pushed back on China. Beijing hit them with tariffs on coal, wine, barley, and seafood worth billions. For years.

Australia stood firm because it had backup from major partners and diversified exports fast. Countries like the US and Japan stepped in to buy their trade goods. The US does not seem poised to come to our rescue at the moment.

Canada hasn’t built that same safety net.

Replace “China” with “the U.S.”, and “Australia” with “Canada”, and we see some of our own predicament. It’s illustrative of why we need to strategically diversify. We will not get rid of our economic dependence on the U.S., but we can reduce it and hedge somewhat.

Any monolithic view of trade is also doomed to come up short. There are huge differences in different sectors. Cars are not crops are not oil are not professional services.
 
We will not get rid of our economic dependence on the U.S., but we can reduce it and hedge somewhat.

Tv Land Teacher GIF by Teachers on TV Land
 
Andrew McCarthy has worked as a prosecuting attorney. His legal analysis of relevant US law is probably better than yours or mine. That Bragg's lawyering was creative isn't a fringe idea. I've read plenty of legal analysis, some by obviously Democrat-supporting or progressive-leaning lawyers, that concurs. Whatever anyone thinks, it's not a settled question, and there are plenty of hack judgements that were smacked down hard by higher level courts to show that judges are also capable of bringing high degrees of political bias to the courts. Some of Merchan's decisions turned a lot of heads on both sides of the political divide.

Wait for the appeal.

As for lawfare, there's no refuting that some people decided Trump ought to be guilty of something and subsequently went hunting for things to fit him up. They made promises and bragged when they made progress on those promises.

It might be surprising to some that Andrew McCarthy has no love for Trump so to read his dissection of this case should be illustrative for those who still somehow believe the justice system has been pure in it's attempt to get Trump.

The NY case against Trump was always eventually going to be struck down for the reasons listed in the appeal. The timing of it, the novel application of the laws, all of it had one purpose and that was to interfere in the election outcome. The bad players don't care much now that it doesn't matter (election is over, Trump's last term).
 
China’s still our second largest trading partner. We exchange all kinds of goods and services with them. We still have some protectionist policies based on some of their own unfair trade practices, or as part of tit for tat disputes. But you can chill a little bit, nobody is saying our existing massive trade with China needs to go away.
We do have a lot of existing trade with China, but I'm terms of dropping tariffs and getting China to buy Canadian agricultural goods, appearantly that's no bueno. Cannot anger our American overlords. Cannot side with the "enemy".

America meanwhile, "we are lowering tariffs, we had a 12 out of 10 meeting, and they will buy our soybeans again!"

Ugh....

Carney is meeting with China on Friday, I hope he takes America's lead here. Enough of this nonsense.
 
It is fascinating to watch the Armydotca interplay between "US is our saviour and we must enjoy being a lapdog and China is evil incarnate" crowd, and the "Trump will destroy us so we must embrace a known adversary" crowd. It is like a standoff between Quislings.

It strikes me that the right answer is probably quite a bit more nuanced than those extreme positions.

I have also come to realise that I dislike strident pontificating and the distortion of facts to fit a narrative, irrespective of the "side" that it comes from.

For what it is worth, I see China as a much larger threat to Canada's sovereignty and ability to chart its own course in the world than I do the current epic shitshow in America.
 
From the “non-partisan public service offering objective advice”department, spotted this on the USDA page while looking up food info …
87718DAD-2AC9-4C8A-A64F-3243792E9937.png
After all, POTUS47 sees this as so much of an emergency, he’s curtailing travel to organize a deal, right? ;)
 
From the “non-partisan public service offering objective advice”department, spotted this on the USDA page while looking up food info …

After all, POTUS47 sees this as so much of an emergency, he’s curtailing travel to organize a deal, right? ;)
One can only shake the head.

A deal, though...there's none to be made. A major reason for the overspending problem in the US is extraordinary spending that gets permanently extended through the CR mechanism (ie. enters the "baseline" from which extensions are calculated) regardless whether the original reason for the spending ceases to exist. The current fight is mainly about ACA premium subsidies that were increased as part of pandemic emergency spending. Republicans plan to let them expire. Democrats (mis-)calculated that their usual shutdown politics advantage in the media would allow them to keep the gravy rolling. But the Senate has attempted to move so many times on the CR that anyone arguing the Republicans are blocking the CR just looks stupid.
 
We do have a lot of existing trade with China, but I'm terms of dropping tariffs and getting China to buy Canadian agricultural goods, appearantly that's no bueno. Cannot anger our American overlords. Cannot side with the "enemy".

America meanwhile, "we are lowering tariffs, we had a 12 out of 10 meeting, and they will buy our soybeans again!"
We should emulate Trump?

China is much like Russia. Both occupy (eg. Tibet, Ukraine) or aspire to (eg. Taiwan, more of Ukraine) territories to which they have no particular entitlement. Both are notorious violators of human rights. Both are preparing to and expected to initiate or continue hostilities (eg. Taiwan, Ukraine) against sovereign nations, in manifest disregard of whatever passes for a "rules-based order" cherished by some.

A couple of questions are whether China deserves preferential treatment to Russia, and why anyone would work on increasing trade entanglements and dependencies that would have to be abandoned and overcome in the event of a war, particularly for those who believe that war is imminent in one, two, however many years. The predicted liberalizing effect of more open arms to China hasn't materialized in the past three decades over which advocates have argued for it; China has eaten the bait and spat out the hook and continued to muscle in wherever it can. Pushing back more firmly might not easily produce desired outcomes either, but it has the signal advantage of generally making it harder for China, not easier.
 
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