Now that we have a new thread, in order to ensure that this thread continues to meet TL standards and follows the proper guidelines, we will be enforcing the rules in the OP more strictly. Be sure to give them a complete and thorough read before posting!
NOTE: When providing a source, please provide a very brief summary on what it's about and what purpose it adds to the discussion. The supporting statement should clearly explain why the subject is relevant and needs to be discussed. Please follow this rule especially for tweets.
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the percentage of individuals managing with just enough each month has increased by 10% over the last two years.
ya, i guess Biden's reign was not very successful. it is hilarious listening to Americans complain about the "bad economy" when you go to other places and see what's up.
the percentage of individuals managing with just enough each month has increased by 10% over the last two years.
ya, i guess Biden's reign was not very successful. it is hilarious listening to Americans complain about the "bad economy" when you go to other places and see what's up.
Hopefully, Donald Trump can turn things around.
my main point was things were not good under Biden - post covid etc... still, bad is bad. and Trump did nothing to turn that around. just the opposite by melting down the world economy.
and people only blame what is in front of their eyes and whoever is in charge when they march to the polls. guess who that is going to be coming mid terms?
I would love to see Rs somehow make this about Dems crashing the economy, hell I would actually pay for witnessing such a parlour trick...
On April 05 2025 22:39 Doublemint wrote: my main point was things were not good under Biden -
your source states things GOT WORSE under Biden because more were living monthly. That was not in your point. It is an important thing to note.
The working poor and lower middle class are getting crushed and we need to do something about it. I've already made my proposals regarding eliminating income tax for people making less than $X. I'll add another. Public Transit needs to cost 1/3 what its actual value to the rider is. So a ride on the NYC subway should be $1.40. All New York state transit systems should have pricing along the lines I suggest.
if my property taxes have to double so that we have a transit system that accommodates the working poor... i'm all for it. i want to live in a place where the working poor have a decent shot at being middle class.
Joe Biden failed the working poor and lower middle class.
On April 05 2025 19:52 Sadist wrote: Oblade you cannot build your manufacturing base up in 2 years for consumer goods. No one is even starting because theres a thought the tariffs may go away.
A brownfield or greenfield plant takes years to be operational and requires huge investment. You also need to have a plan on what products will go there. For automotive all of this is selected 2-3 years before start of production.
I mean I said 5-10 years we're in the same chapter if not on the same page.
The 1-2 year answer is for the fact pain starts to ease by next year upon reinvestment, low rates, relaxing of tariffs, and new trade deals. Because the alleged problem is not strictly that manufacturing doesn't exist, but also other issues like that manufacturing isn't bought by other countries enough. TLDR: Trade deficit goes down by importing less, and by exporting more.
The US uses ~78% of its industrial capacity now. That capacity can be spooled up readily with workers/materials if demand exists. That acceleration doesn't take 2-3 years. How can demand exist? To put it simply: Trump adds tariffs, starts a trade war other countries say ahhh please no, goes to India, says buy some fucking cars, they say okay and drop tariffs to import cars. That raises production, decreases the trade deficit, and seems to satisfy the general goals.
Building out entire new plants to produce new things, or produce things the US should be producing or should have the ability to produce for itself, for example drugs like antibiotics, can take longer than the above. But doesn't need to take forever at all. Pessimism is its own drug. The Empire State Building was built in a little over a year. The idea the US can't do things because it's slow, when the US regulates things to be slow on purpose, that's why a parallel goal of Trump administrations has always been deregulation. Business wants itself. Business wants to do business. Regulation is why it can't and doesn't bother. Regulation is why BEAD hasn't connected anyone to the internet since 2021 and California doesn't have high speed rail. And it's intentional.
Your idea of everyone possibly holding their breath because tariffs may disappear is certainly true. But realistically the only way they will just "go away" is if the entire Congress came together and rewrote the law (not likely in the House), or countries and companies come to the table in ways that help and actively make the tariffs obsolete. Or if Trump reconsiders something, is that something you see happening?
On April 05 2025 23:08 oBlade wrote: The US uses ~78% of its industrial capacity now. That capacity can be spooled up readily with workers/materials if demand exists. That acceleration doesn't take 2-3 years. How can demand exist? To put it simply: Trump adds tariffs, starts a trade war other countries say ahhh please no, goes to India, says buy some fucking cars, they say okay and drop tariffs to import cars. That raises production, decreases the trade deficit, and seems to satisfy the general goals.
Canada buys more stuff from the USA than any other country in the world. from 1965 to 2024 both countries were effectively in a zero tariff relationship.
How does the 2025 actions by Trump get Canadians to buy more American stuff?
Marketing Rule #1: your best customers are your current customers.
put another way... "would you like a large fries with that?"
On April 05 2025 22:39 Doublemint wrote: my main point was things were not good under Biden -
your source states things GOT WORSE under Biden because more were living monthly. That was not in your point. It is an important thing to note.
The working poor and lower middle class are getting crushed and we need to do something about it. I've already made my proposals regarding eliminating income tax for people making less than $X. I'll add another. Public Transit needs to cost 1/3 what its actual value to the rider is. So a ride on the NYC subway should be $1.40. All New York state transit systems should have pricing along the lines I suggest.
if my property taxes have to double so that we have a transit system that accommodates the working poor... i'm all for it. i want to live in a place where the working poor have a decent shot at being middle class.
Joe Biden failed the working poor and lower middle class.
Free healthcare and free education like we have in most of the developed world are absolutely paramount for the working poor and the poor to do better. Are you in favor of those?
On April 05 2025 23:08 oBlade wrote: The US uses ~78% of its industrial capacity now. That capacity can be spooled up readily with workers/materials if demand exists. That acceleration doesn't take 2-3 years. How can demand exist? To put it simply: Trump adds tariffs, starts a trade war other countries say ahhh please no, goes to India, says buy some fucking cars, they say okay and drop tariffs to import cars. That raises production, decreases the trade deficit, and seems to satisfy the general goals.
Canada buys more stuff from the USA than any other country in the world. from 1965 to 2024 both countries were effectively in a zero tariff relationship.
How does the 2025 actions by Trump get Canadians to buy more American stuff?
Marketing Rule #1: your best customers are your current customers.
put another way... "would you like a large fries with that?"
I don't know that that's true.
Just playing with the analogy, someone who steals a hamburger worth $5 is maybe a better customer than someone who has bought $5000 worth of stuff from your store, but only when it's on sale for less than it cost so you net lost $1000 on it. Of course if you weren't going to move the product at all you would lose $5000.
Also the US is obviously its own biggest current customer to be exact.
Canada is a huge customer and not one of the worst countries for trade deficits at all. In that case I think it's more about getting you guys to join the Union, and in Mexico's case about destroying the cartels and cutting off all land migration. The rest of the world once he gets enough new trade victories from the US's perspective he'll probably back off in general on the rebound. What could you buy more of though? You could always buy more cars right? Keep Michigan red.
On April 05 2025 10:45 Vivax wrote: The applications of AI are likely underestimated, not over. The context advanced programs are used in isn‘t within the grasp of the public.
Just going by the rule of thumb that the military is usually 10 years ahead before an invention becomes accessible to civilians. And they are the main drivers of progress in engineering.
Sounds tinfoily, but it‘s just history.
Im sure AI is/is going to be very useful for plenty of things, but it will not make good art, basically ever. Its crappy and unreliable for customer service, its not actually intelligent, its just pattern regurgitation. Ive heard its useful for things like sequencing human DNA and other science-y shit, but a lot of the common use case that gets thrown around is replacing normal humans doing average human jobs and LLM bullshit just doesn't actually seem any good at it, or at least its not good enough to be safe replacing humans.
Its definitely not in a state that justifies the amount of money or resources being spent on it, let alone the raw unadulterated stolen material that a lot of the common LLM data sets are trained on.
Its very lucky that tech isn't adequately regulated. Lucky for tech company CEOs anyways.
I think AI is just the latest tech buzzword, proudly following "nft", "crypto", and the .com bubble. There are just too many examples of shoehorning AI into products, pretending they do something useful, while they really do not. For a lot of tasks, i vastly prefer internet searches, as I know what my sources are.
Thee was recently a huge scandal in my town where the townhall used AI to make a report about school policy. As a dutiful servant always eager to please request, the AI fabricated scientific reports and literature to go with the prompt, and this was uncovered by a newspaper. Ouch.
As I get more used to AI generated content, I have become much more sceptical towards images, text and reports. Why not just google it and get the proper info from a trusted source instead? As AI clutters the web with more and more bs, and AI are trained on that same BS, humans might just go elsewhere, and the web will devolve into AI spewing random characters to each other (I have seen several bots do this in comment sections).
Then again, the current AI tech is supercharged by huge investments, and is nowhere near paying for itself. If you would have to pay the actual cost, it might be cheaper to hire a human. Maybe simpler engines like DeepSeek are better.
Yeah, I basically agree with this, its a waste of money and the common conception of what AI is is not what Chat GPT or any of these other LLMs amount to.
The deepfake aspect of it is also wildly troubling, especially at this current point in time, like being able to truly fabricate reality for stupid people is such a dangerous thing to be able to do with LLMs that they should basically be stomped into the dirt until we're in less of a fascy place as a world.
On April 05 2025 22:39 Doublemint wrote: my main point was things were not good under Biden -
your source states things GOT WORSE under Biden because more were living monthly. That was not in your point. It is an important thing to note.
The working poor and lower middle class are getting crushed and we need to do something about it. I've already made my proposals regarding eliminating income tax for people making less than $X. I'll add another. Public Transit needs to cost 1/3 what its actual value to the rider is. So a ride on the NYC subway should be $1.40. All New York state transit systems should have pricing along the lines I suggest.
if my property taxes have to double so that we have a transit system that accommodates the working poor... i'm all for it. i want to live in a place where the working poor have a decent shot at being middle class.
Joe Biden failed the working poor and lower middle class.
you seem angry about something and focus on a minor sidepoint I made to reach a higher truth... perhaps someone melting down someone's portfolio might have something to do with it.
we are in total agreement that something needs to be done to HELP lower and middle in income people. making risky macro economic moves and gambling on other parties caving is not it.
you must realise that currently Mr Trump fails the people harder out of his own accord and policy choice.
unlike Biden who for the most part had to manage the ineptitude of his predecessor handling the once in a century virus AND the aftermath of said virus and the economic issues that followed.
On April 04 2025 21:59 Uldridge wrote: All I can say I really hope it's stupidity instead of some Machiavellian scheming to enrich the elite while fueling some culture war bullshit as a distraction. I wouldn't call Scott Bessent and Stephen Miran stupid people doing stupid things.
How do you break up a cult of a few million people and ten of millions of sympathizers for that cult? Certainly not an easy task.
On April 04 2025 21:55 Jankisa wrote: You seem very intent to believe these people are some masterminds of media manipulation and you ascribe every idiotic thing they do to being a strategy, I'm not sure if this is cope or lapping up their propaganda but in both cases, in my opinion it's a very deluded way of viewing these people.
Them sowing hate and creating rifts between people is what they do. I fully agree they behaved like adolescent high schoolers in that chat. But just frame this from an accidental to an on purpose adding the reporter that just so happens to hate Trump's guts. Could they be so incompetent? Sure. Could they have orchestrated this to sow more dissent? Absolutely. Don't underestimate people that seemingly do stupid inept things. I'm done with that, you should too.
I've seen and heard all the arguments before. I'm only trying to understand what they're doing might lead to other than us saying: lol they dumb, they're destroying everything.
Edit to add to what Simberto is saying: if they're so stupid and the good guys are so smart, why are the stupid guys still in control and winning and get to keep doing stupid things?
LibHorizons: Understanding why Democrats are supporting a sketchy habitual sexual offender in their primary for NYC mayor helps answer that question. So does understanding why they can't really talk about it.
On April 05 2025 19:52 Sadist wrote: Oblade you cannot build your manufacturing base up in 2 years for consumer goods. No one is even starting because theres a thought the tariffs may go away.
A brownfield or greenfield plant takes years to be operational and requires huge investment. You also need to have a plan on what products will go there. For automotive all of this is selected 2-3 years before start of production.
I mean I said 5-10 years we're in the same chapter if not on the same page.
The 1-2 year answer is for the fact pain starts to ease by next year upon reinvestment, low rates, relaxing of tariffs, and new trade deals. Because the alleged problem is not strictly that manufacturing doesn't exist, but also other issues like that manufacturing isn't bought by other countries enough. TLDR: Trade deficit goes down by importing less, and by exporting more.
The US uses ~78% of its industrial capacity now. That capacity can be spooled up readily with workers/materials if demand exists. That acceleration doesn't take 2-3 years. How can demand exist? To put it simply: Trump adds tariffs, starts a trade war other countries say ahhh please no, goes to India, says buy some fucking cars, they say okay and drop tariffs to import cars. That raises production, decreases the trade deficit, and seems to satisfy the general goals.
Building out entire new plants to produce new things, or produce things the US should be producing or should have the ability to produce for itself, for example drugs like antibiotics, can take longer than the above. But doesn't need to take forever at all. Pessimism is its own drug. The Empire State Building was built in a little over a year. The idea the US can't do things because it's slow, when the US regulates things to be slow on purpose, that's why a parallel goal of Trump administrations has always been deregulation. Business wants itself. Business wants to do business. Regulation is why it can't and doesn't bother. Regulation is why BEAD hasn't connected anyone to the internet since 2021 and California doesn't have high speed rail. And it's intentional.
Your idea of everyone possibly holding their breath because tariffs may disappear is certainly true. But realistically the only way they will just "go away" is if the entire Congress came together and rewrote the law (not likely in the House), or countries and companies come to the table in ways that help and actively make the tariffs obsolete. Or if Trump reconsiders something, is that something you see happening?
Things take a long time beacuse the entire chain of things that have to be there have to exist for something to happen. The empire state building was built in a year beacuse they had the entire industry supporting it already chugging along. The plants building the materials to build the building were running, the people trained to build buildings were already employed and working togeather, OSHA wasn't a thing and people acepted a rule of thumb that for every million a project cost a person would die.
Do you think there is some massive ammount of rubber production going on in america today or that it would take a year to get them online? Do you think there are iron mines and steel foundries just sitting on half shifts? Do you think there are enough unemployed people who are trained in those roles that are just sitting on the couch doing nothing? Do you think there is enough transport capacity just sitting idle?
The worst part is that you can't imagine why these things were shipped overseas in the first place, it was beacuse it was cheaper for everyone. The idea that people are just going to suddenly acept massively increased prices for everything is wild considering thats why trump got elected in the first place.
Trump may not have another election in him but midterms are in 576 days. He does not have the time to rip up the entire economic structure of the country and neither does he have the support. Every nation in the world has access to the schedule for americas elections and know they just have to wait out trump while making deals with others to survive the pain. Once the american economy is in ashes they will be able to dictate terms.
Oblade, if Trump's tariffs trigger a recession, will you concede that it didn't work? Because you don't believe you will increase US manufacturing during a recession. Definitionally, a recession is when businesses contract, not expand.
Just playing with the analogy, someone who steals a hamburger worth $5 is maybe a better customer than someone who has bought $5000 worth of stuff from your store, but only when it's on sale for less than it cost so you net lost $1000 on it. Of course if you weren't going to move the product at all you would lose $5000.
Also, what is going on in your analogy here? I've read it a few times and I can't figure out who represents what and who is stealing in this analogy because unless a country was seizing American goods, there was no theft.
Canada is a huge customer and not one of the worst countries for trade deficits at all. In that case I think it's more about getting you guys to join the Union,
Have you seriously woken up this year and decided Canada needs to join the Union just because Trump says so? Or have you always harboured imperialist thoughts and now you are showing your colours? Screw off.
Why do you need us in your Union to make money off of us? We're already buying your American goods (less now with your dear leader is having is delusions of grandeur). What difference does it make if we are in or out of the Union as it pertains to American pocketbooks?
On April 05 2025 19:52 Sadist wrote: Oblade you cannot build your manufacturing base up in 2 years for consumer goods. No one is even starting because theres a thought the tariffs may go away.
A brownfield or greenfield plant takes years to be operational and requires huge investment. You also need to have a plan on what products will go there. For automotive all of this is selected 2-3 years before start of production.
I mean I said 5-10 years we're in the same chapter if not on the same page.
The 1-2 year answer is for the fact pain starts to ease by next year upon reinvestment, low rates, relaxing of tariffs, and new trade deals. Because the alleged problem is not strictly that manufacturing doesn't exist, but also other issues like that manufacturing isn't bought by other countries enough. TLDR: Trade deficit goes down by importing less, and by exporting more.
The US uses ~78% of its industrial capacity now. That capacity can be spooled up readily with workers/materials if demand exists. That acceleration doesn't take 2-3 years. How can demand exist? To put it simply: Trump adds tariffs, starts a trade war other countries say ahhh please no, goes to India, says buy some fucking cars, they say okay and drop tariffs to import cars. That raises production, decreases the trade deficit, and seems to satisfy the general goals.
Building out entire new plants to produce new things, or produce things the US should be producing or should have the ability to produce for itself, for example drugs like antibiotics, can take longer than the above. But doesn't need to take forever at all. Pessimism is its own drug. The Empire State Building was built in a little over a year. The idea the US can't do things because it's slow, when the US regulates things to be slow on purpose, that's why a parallel goal of Trump administrations has always been deregulation. Business wants itself. Business wants to do business. Regulation is why it can't and doesn't bother. Regulation is why BEAD hasn't connected anyone to the internet since 2021 and California doesn't have high speed rail. And it's intentional.
Your idea of everyone possibly holding their breath because tariffs may disappear is certainly true. But realistically the only way they will just "go away" is if the entire Congress came together and rewrote the law (not likely in the House), or countries and companies come to the table in ways that help and actively make the tariffs obsolete. Or if Trump reconsiders something, is that something you see happening?
Things take a long time beacuse the entire chain of things that have to be there have to exist for something to happen. The empire state building was built in a year beacuse they had the entire industry supporting it already chugging along. The plants building the materials to build the building were running, the people trained to build buildings were already employed and working togeather, OSHA wasn't a thing and people acepted a rule of thumb that for every million a project cost a person would die.
Lack of support for key industries is not desirable. If you're saying of course we can't do the industry-specific equivalent of make an Empire State Building in 1 year in certain industries, because the support for the industry isn't there, yes, that's a national problem.
On April 06 2025 02:28 Sermokala wrote: Do you think there is some massive ammount of rubber production going on in america today or that it would take a year to get them online?
Rubber grows in rubber trees in tropical countries, it makes good tires and erasers, that's the extent of my knowledge on it.
You might be alluding to something like, if a country can produce rubber and the US can't, and the US buys shit tons of rubber from them, then it wouldn't be fair to expect them to buy anything back, but I don't want to put words in your mouth.
On April 06 2025 02:28 Sermokala wrote: Do you think there are iron mines and steel foundries just sitting on half shifts?
Probably? That's what industrial capacity means, so yes. 78% capacity utilization doesn't mean the US has land to produce 28% more factories than now. It means existing industrial capacity is working at 78% of what it theoretically could (100% is really a theoretical maximum, not a target - 90% would be a high place to top out). But I don't know the exact breakdown for steel. I know auto capacity utilization is down very recently.
On April 06 2025 02:28 Sermokala wrote: Do you think there are enough unemployed people who are trained in those roles that are just sitting on the couch doing nothing? Do you think there is enough transport capacity just sitting idle?
Train them and use lower energy prices (oil drops in recession) to grow expansion of cheaper transport.
On April 06 2025 02:28 Sermokala wrote: The worst part is that you can't imagine why these things were shipped overseas in the first place, it was beacuse it was cheaper for everyone. The idea that people are just going to suddenly acept massively increased prices for everything is wild considering thats why trump got elected in the first place.
You're right, I can't imagine, I can only go by what I know.
It was cheaper because every country other than the richest one in the world has lower labor costs, and most have less "OSHA" essentially to use your own framework.
When you say it's cheaper, this means for the consumer.
Most humans have interests both as consumers and as laborers. Unfortunately not everyone can labor, but everyone can consume. Most people like consuming, they don't like labor/producing as directly, either because they aren't rational and don't understand that labor/producing is the source of the money they use to consume and take care of themselves and their family, or because they are rational and rightly think that labor sucks. Either way, people trend to consumerism, that's what capitalism does once it establishes prosperity.
You can let the consumerism win out, and say oh in a democracy people have the right to prioritize consumerism, who are we to say they're wrong about their interests, but it leads to deep-rooted issues if you never push back. But this is why we have countries with governments we can vote to represent our interests and aren't just an anarcho-capitalist borderless planet. There is a limit to how much the US worker wants to compete with the Chinese worker. The government is there to keep trade, and the economy frankly, fair, and they haven't. They have dropped the ball big time. They stood around for it, pretended to oppose it, watched it happen, and profited from it, and then they pivoted to convince wide swaths of people that their incompetence in letting it happen is actually just a manifestation of historical inevitability.
Eventually workers reach the limit. If your workers cannot compete, the result is they will not compete. Then you end up with a significant welfare underclass - which the US has. Not because of a mere social safety net, but because the system has failed for half the country. The half that Romney said would never vote for him. That's who this is for.
Did I imagine close?
On April 06 2025 02:28 Sermokala wrote: Trump may not have another election in him but midterms are in 576 days. He does not have the time to rip up the entire economic structure of the country and neither does he have the support. Every nation in the world has access to the schedule for americas elections and know they just have to wait out trump while making deals with others to survive the pain. Once the american economy is in ashes they will be able to dictate terms.
On the contrary, every bright nation is going look, I could possibly only have 4 years to get this done, I better seize this opportunity to get a better partnership with the greatest market on Earth.
But the cohort that are enthusiastic about this aren’t rejecting consumerism at all. They want to keep on consuming and have their cheap goods without any downsides on the labour side.
There’s no fundamental reframing of that relationship going on.
Gotta remember that with those self-governed corporate towns and no pesky environmental regulations it should be possible to reduce costs significantly. Doesn't really fit with the idea that we're doing this for the american worker or that it's a long term strategy, though.
Like honestly I think tariffs can be a perfectly reasonable component of a leftist framework where you're favoring the worker over the consumer / rejecting consumerism altogether, and I think there's plenty of grounds for saying that workers in the secondary sector in western countries have been screwed over by various developments and that a segment of the population is hurting as a consequence. But what Trump is doing is in no universe a coherent answer to that.
How long do you think it will take before the republicans turn on Trump, or has it already happened? Isn't he fucking over his own base by tanking the markets in the way he's doing?
Perhaps democrats and republicans will trauma bond over this and finally agree on something xD
On April 06 2025 00:49 oBlade wrote: Just playing with the analogy, someone who steals a hamburger worth $5 is maybe a better customer than someone who has bought $5000 worth of stuff from your store, but only when it's on sale for less than it cost so you net lost $1000 on it. Of course if you weren't going to move the product at all you would lose $5000.
i don't buy that Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush, Obama, Trump, Biden all let Canada, its #1 customer, buy American at below cost.
Trump thinks he can get a better deal than the one he negotiated in 2016. It is as simple as that.
The big problem is even if this strategy had a chance of working you would need a extremely competent and committed leader to make it work out well. Announcing on mid week then taking off Friday for your 3 day golf vacation doesn't cut it. Can you imagine if Obama or anyone else did this? I get Trump slacks every week but you would think when the market is crashing and he is meant to be taking all these calls to make trade deals he wouldn't be doing a public vacation.
And that is before you get to the cost on the tax payer. Imagine if he went on like 10 golf vacations a year the savings to American people!
On April 06 2025 03:55 Timebon3s wrote: How long do you think it will take before the republicans turn on Trump, or has it already happened? Isn't he fucking over his own base by tanking the markets in the way he's doing?
I consider Ben Shapiro to be your bog-standard, middle of the road, austrian school of economics loving jewish republican. His negative views on the world wide tariffs are standard thinking. He is dead set against these tariffs long term. Go to any Libertarian // Objectivism club meeting and its filled with Republican Jews who think just like Mr. Shapiro. His views are congruent with mine and at least half of the republicans I know. I'm usually, but not always, a republican voter.
The only defense for what Trump is doing is that it is a negotiation ploy to get better trade deals with individual countries and that these tariffs are sharply reduced on 90% of the countries listed in the next few months. This is the only path for most Republicans to remain in agreement with The DOnald.
Canada's elections really allow Trump to string this thing along without much punch back.
I think this will all be over in less than 6 months. By over, new trade deals are in place and tariffs are sharply reduced. Trump/USA uses these tariffs to "set a new standard." I can't wait for the weekly victory speeches as each new trade deal is signed. LOL.
On April 06 2025 04:32 Billyboy wrote: The big problem is even if this strategy had a chance of working you would need a extremely competent and committed leader to make it work out well.
USA has had competent and committed leadership in the past and still gotten pwned by Canada in negotiations. its not that Canada is better than the USA .. its a matter of focus.
When it comes to negotiating trade deals.. Canada always sends in its best people. The USA ... not so much. USA has better things to do. The USA's critical tall foreheads are busy with the Soviet UNion//Russia ... the middle east... etc etc. When negotiating with Canada its "ya whatever".
A sports analogy works in this case. Does Canada's dominance in hockey the past 40 years prove Canada has better athletes than the USA? Nah, Canada is more focused on hockey than anything else.
Canada's very existence is on the line with every trade deal the country makes with the USA.
This is a Tim Horton's Donut shop parking lot brawl!
I had the honour of meeting Brian Mulroney twice. He's a bad ass mofo.
On April 06 2025 03:55 Timebon3s wrote: How long do you think it will take before the republicans turn on Trump, or has it already happened? Isn't he fucking over his own base by tanking the markets in the way he's doing?
Perhaps democrats and republicans will trauma bond over this and finally agree on something xD
Of course Trump is harming Republicans and all Americans, just like during his first term, but the past 8 years have made it clear to me that with the exception of a few retiring Republican leaders, the party as a whole will stay united behind Trump until he dies. Even if he doesn't run for a third term, every new Republican presidential candidate will be fighting for his endorsement.
Once he's dead and truly done politically, then we'll see if the next round of conservative presidential candidates take the "Vote for me because I was the most obsessed with Trump" route or the "Vote for me because I was the least obsessed with Trump" route.
EPT
