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Trump administration 2024-2028

lol, good luck finding Potash somewhere else.
Christ the sheer number of bootlickers that surround him. Stalin and Hilter would be impressed.
According to the USGS, the US has about 220Mn tones of known reserves (and admittedly I get confused between 'ore' and 'recoverable product'). Apparently not all is profitably recoverable. Even at that, it seems if they could get at all of it tomorrow, it would only supply their demand for number of years.

From 'Real Agriculture':

"While the U.S. produced roughly 400,000 metric tons of potash in 2023, domestic potash consumption that year was approximately 5.3 million metric tons. No substitutes exist for potash as an essential plant nutrient," he explains.
 

U.S. manufacturing contracted for the ninth straight month in November, with factories facing slumping orders and higher prices for inputs as the drag from import tariffs persisted.
The Institute for Supply Management survey on Monday also showed some manufacturers in the transportation equipment industry linking layoffs to President Donald Trump's sweeping duties, saying they were "starting to institute more permanent changes due to the tariff environment." They added "this includes reduction of staff, new guidance to shareholders and development of additional offshore manufacturing that would have otherwise been for U.S. export."
Bullet, meet foot.

This was always the logical conclusion of the tariff policy. Increase input costs while doing nothing to increase domestic supply and you just tank your own manufacturing capacity.

And Americans voted for this.
 
According to the USGS, the US has about 220Mn tones of known reserves (and admittedly I get confused between 'ore' and 'recoverable product'). Apparently not all is profitably recoverable. Even at that, it seems if they could get at all of it tomorrow, it would only supply their demand for number of years.

From 'Real Agriculture':
Maybe we need to list Potash as a critical mineral on our side (if it hasn't been already) and we consider export limits or controls against it.
 
IMHO our problem is since the 1960s we have let Canada slide into being a welfare state. And part of the correction of this means changing that. Who is the willing political party to tackle that ? For Christ sakes we just created a federal school food program, day care and dental.

I am not sure Canadians are willing to walk away from the teat they are suckling from. Our in ability in getting Canadians to care more about what they can give the country than what the country can give them is probably our eventual downfall.

Meanwhile something seems to be going right, for some reason...

Productivity rebounds in the third quarter

Labour productivity of Canadian businesses rebounded in the third quarter, increasing 0.9% after a 1.0% decline in the second quarter and no change in the first quarter. This was the sixth quarterly increase in eight quarters.

This upturn in productivity in the third quarter reflects the sharp recovery in business output, following a quarter of decline, while hours worked declined slightly.

Despite a context of persistent uncertainty related to international trade during the third quarter, real gross domestic product of businesses rebounded, rising 0.9%, after a 0.8% contraction in the second quarter.

Goods-producing businesses contribute the most to the overall growth in productivity

In the third quarter, productivity rose in both goods-producing businesses (up 1.6% after a 1.3% decline in the previous quarter) and service-producing businesses (up 0.2% after a 0.3% decline in the previous quarter). Overall, productivity increased in 9 of the 16 main industry sectors in the third quarter.

Manufacturing and, to a lesser extent, the mining and oil and gas extraction sector, the agriculture, forestry, fishing and hunting sector, and the real estate and rental and leasing sector were the main industries that contributed to the productivity increase in the business sector during the third quarter. Construction as well as accommodation and food services also contributed to this increase. Meanwhile, utilities posted a significant decline for a second consecutive quarter.

 
Who ever Stuart Currie is seems to be onside with you, an I.

View attachment 97135
I'll only quibble a bit with the characterization of Canada's support of Ukraine, which is pretty sizeable overall (although I know around these parts, the main attention is paid to the military bits of help) - more on that here.

Funny about the "never trust you again" line. Matt Gurney at The Line (far from a woke commentator out of his depth on defence issues) was at the big Halifax security shindig not too long ago, and had this to share from a not-for-attribution session there in his latest piece (whole piece worth the read, including the bits on zero Pentagon folks being there) on how one former US General said things could get better in the relationship after mid-terms:
... I worry that I might have been a bit brash with my American dining companions that night. (If any of them are reading this and if I was, sorry. Lot goin’ on over here.) But before I could worry about it too much, a senior military officer from a major (non-American) allied nation drove a stake right through the heart of the matter.

America has blown 80 years of accumulated goodwill and trust among its allies, our American moderator was told. A rock-steady assumption of allied defence and security planning for literally generations has been that America would act in its own interests, sure, but that those interests would be rational, and would still generally value the institutions that America itself worked so hard to build after the Second World War. America’s recent actions have destroyed the ability of any ally to continue to have faith in America to act even within its own strategic self-interest, let alone that of any ally.

The officer then said that even a swift return of America to its former role won’t matter.

Because “we will never fucking trust you again.”

The Americans at the table seemed somewhat startled by the heat of that pronouncement. I agreed with it entirely. So, it seemed to me, did most of the non-Americans ...
We'll have to see how things go post-mid-terms, I guess.
... Our in ability in getting Canadians to care more about what they can give the country than what the country can give them is probably our eventual downfall.
Among too many, yes.
 
Indeed. It’s wold what an external threat will do to catalyze action.

After decades of ignoring polite requests and diplomacy, I suppose the next step is the threat. Embarrassing it had to come to that with an ally we used to value and rely on so heavily.
 
After decades of ignoring polite requests and diplomacy, I suppose the next step is the threat. Embarrassing it had to come to that with an ally we used to value and rely on so heavily.
'Decades' implies 2 or more. I don't believe this to be the case.

If you had written 'for over a decade', I believe that this would be accurate and correct.

100% agree that its a total embarrassment, goes back to Stephen Harper and him letting us go below 1% of GDP on defense spending and sadly grew worse every year from there.
 
'Decades' implies 2 or more. I don't believe this to be the case.

If you had written 'for over a decade', I believe that this would be accurate and correct.

100% agree that its a total embarrassment, goes back to Stephen Harper and him letting us go below 1% of GDP on defense spending and sadly grew worse every year from there.
It goes back much further than Harper. The decade of darkness was in the 90's, for example.
 
Who ever Stuart Currie is seems to be onside with you, an I.

View attachment 97135

IMHO our problem is since the 1960s we have let Canada slide into being a welfare state. And part of the correction of this means changing that. Who is the willing political party to tackle that ? For Christ sakes we just created a federal school food program, day care and dental.

I am not sure Canadians are willing to walk away from the teat they are suckling from. Our in ability in getting Canadians to care more about what they can give the country than what the country can give them is probably our eventual downfall.
The 1952 Fiscal Federalism agreement was the beginning of this situation. And then when St Laurentian left office, a recession and the zeal of The Chief and our failure to marginalize domestic Marxism- all within 5/6 years - laid the groundwork for PET to gleefully deliver the kill shot.
 
Oh, your talking about the time period after the Cold War when every single country in NATO cut back defense spending, including the US?

I'm talking about the continued degrading of the Canadian military post WWII all the way to today. Nothing is going to justify the state Canada has found itself in these past decades. It was stupid then, and remains stupid today. And now we are scrambling and the threats are growing.
 
I'm talking about the continued degrading of the Canadian military post WWII all the way to today. Nothing is going to justify the state Canada has found itself in these past decades. It was stupid then, and remains stupid today. And now we are scrambling and the threats are growing.
Yes and No.
There was no way that a country of our population size could continue the defence spending from WWII through the late 1950s after Korea settled down.
But, with that being said, by the 2005-2010 time period there should have been a definite shift back towards taking our responsibilities as a G7 and founding NATO member seriously. Sadly, outside of the US, we had no other role models with NATO to follow as they all were doing the same thing as us.
 
Meanwhile something seems to be going right, for some reason...
Any kind of stress tends to accelerate the failure of weak players in the game. I'd expect to see depressed bottom line numbers in an employers' hiring market and improved numbers in an employees' hiring market. We currently have the latter, if all the screaming from public agencies and private enterprises is to be believed. People unwilling to remain unemployed should be snapped up and their time moved from lower-value to higher-value outputs.

And then there are all the other factors which render any speculation on single factors, including the above, into mere guesswork. It's very difficult to know why things haven't cratered to match doom-and-gloom "trade war" predictions. If a (predicted by some) post-Christmas slump doesn't happen, those predictions can pretty much be discarded.
 
When did Canada get responsible between 2011 and Q1 2025.
We didn't, I was trying to say that during the years when we were dealing with the demands in Afghanistan, a complete end to end overhaul of the CAF resource/spending needs should have been done and then naturally carried forward with the 2% baseline become the floor.
 
This is madness.....and will completely kill the tourist based hospitality industry


All tourists to the United States would have to reveal their social media activity from the last five years, under new Trump administration plans.

Customs and Border Protection (CBP), an agency under the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), would also require any email addresses and telephone numbers visitors have used in the same period, and the names, addresses, birthdates and birthplaces of family members, including children.


The proposal was published on Tuesday in a Federal Register notice, the official publication of the US government, which is put out daily. This called the new disclosures “mandatory” for entry into the US. It would apply to people of all countries, regardless of whether they require visas or are currently permitted to complete an Electronic System for Travel Authorization (Esta) instead. That includes visitors from Britain, Australia, Germany and Japan, who are not required to get a tourist visa before visiting the US.
 
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