Thucydides said:
This is right out of "The Art of the Deal".
President Trump's position is no tariffs, no subsidies (announced at the G7 summit), but everyone chose to ignore this (as well as other US concerns). The breakfast summit where the topic was gender issues in trade pretty much sums up how seriously everyone was taking this position.
Your position is really rather weak when you say no tariffs, no subsidies, when you are among the worlds largest subsidies, have the highest average tariffs in the Western world, and have just punished you allies with more. Kind of like being anti war after you have decided to invade someone, abstinent while having sex. It kind of rings hollow.
So the next phase (currently) is to push hard to knock people off their positions. The size and scope of the tariffs were deliberately designed to produce immediate pain and (as in the case of the German Auto industry) provide reactions between and within various competitors.
And what you seem to not realize is that Canada, Europe, China, everyone is playing the same game as the US. The world is trying to knock america off its position with tariffs deliberately designed to produce immediate pain. And so far, it's working. America is feeling pain.
While there is a great cheerleading section for the Liberals, is there any realistic way for Canada to come out with our position intact (especially given the 20:1 ratio between our portion of GDP based on US trade to their portion of GDP based on Canadian trade?).
People keep pushing this false narrative. It's not a 20-1 ration between our economy. We have allies in this trade war, and they are hitting the USA as well, and collectively, us and our allies have a much bigger collective Economy and trade with USA. If this was WW1, you wouldn't be complaining that Germany is a lot bigger than Canada, thus it's better to not even attempt to fight, yet here you would rather Canada just do nothing while the USA attacks our economic interests
Frankly, it seems the elitist view of President Trump has turned around to bite us very hard in the behind, and the essentially offhand way the Liberals have approached both shoring up our internal economy (strangling oil pipelines
How many pipelines have the liberals approved?You act as if it is none.
, not intervening on behalf of free trade between provinces)
what Canadian Prime minister has gotten the provinces to agree to free trade? What heavy handed approach do you want a Prime Minister to use on what is really a provincial jurisdiction?
or their approach to NAFTA (particularly attempting to insert their social engineering agenda into the deal)
People seem to be pushing this narrative as well. Do you hear the americans complaining about that? No. It seems for all intents and purposes that it got nowhere fast, and the Canadians dropped it as a negotiation point
seems much like agonizing over what hat to wear as a freight train barrels down the track at your stalled car.....
Again, not what is holding up negotiations
While it is true *we* have limited options, essentially taking them off the table before you start seems a ....counterproductive..... way to approach negotiations.
Again, more talk of what Justin Trudeau and Canada shouldn't have done, but no talk about what they should have done instead. It's easy to whine and complain, much harder to come up with alternatives.
