MyBrainHurts

Yeah, they've pretty strongly turned from recent history though. No one in NATO believes the US could be trusted to uphold article 5 anymore. That's the whole issue.

Hell, why doesn't Ukraine have the nuclear deterrnet that it had after the collapse of the Soviet Union? Because they foolishly believed American security promises, which were given in exchange for them releasing their nukes.

Source on the abandoning decreasing emissions? They're shuttering coal plants, starting the world's largest hydro electric project, pumping out the next generation of EV cars, massively funding green tech etc. And I'm hard pressed to find anything comparable in America's course.

And sure, bears can swim but few can do so over an ocean. Even a casual understanding of modern history or an ounce of common sense should show you how much easier it is to invade a country next door than it is to maintain supply lines across an ocean.

Man, Ukraine needs to stop goading Russia by having so many innocent civilians.

/s just in case I guess?

Which is more of a threat, the bear actually threatening to eat you or the one an ocean away?

And to make things more interesting, which is worse for the world, the country doing their damnedest to make climate change worse or the one that has essentially single-handedly made solar power a viable alternative?

In a geopolitical sense, they are more useful to us right now for two reasons:

1. Any shot that hits Tesla hits America incredibly effectively as Tesla is one of the Magnificent 7, which means it has an outsized effect on the American markets/economy.

2. Showing America that the world is ready to decouple from it and support to its rival over this nonsense is a powerful signal/threat.

No. There's no telling what comes after these 4 years. The US has proven that they aren't an ally worth relying on, we should look to more reliable partners and building them up and vice versa. Any concession or help offered by the next administration isn't worth the paper it's written on (just look at trump ripping up his own trade agreement for this nonsense.)

We need allies not a neighbour that on a whim might try to throw us into a recession.

They are allowed in...

Automobiles are a great example! Yes, those parts cross the border multiple times and that's exactly why they are excluded from counter tarrifs!

You can check for yourself:

https://www.canada.ca/en/department-finance/news/2025/03/list-of-products-from-the-united-states-subject-to-25-per-cent-tariffs-effective-march-4-2025.html

It is also why trump just exempted automobile parts, his tarrifs hit them, ours basically didn't. (I think we have tires because we finish those as a whole part and the production chain is a bit different for those.) The overwhelming majority of the effect on American auto stocks is because of self imposed costs to American businesses.

We're not aiming our tarrifs at things that will target our own factories. Look through the list and let me know what you think looks like a production input that would get refined here and then sent back.

Edit: For more evidence, you might look at today's stock rally after trump announced delaying auto tarrifs. You'll note Canada made no mention of lifting any of our counter-tarrifs and it'd be weird to assume there'd be a massive change in boycotts or diversification off a one month tarrifs reprieve in one sector.

All of our proposed tarrifs are for some 150 billion, which is less than what, one sixth of Tesla's worth?

There are realities to contend with here.

Are we not adult enough to admit that there is a serious inequality and that by ourselves we don't really have the power to seriously affect the states?

I think you're maybe misunderstanding the direction of the tarrifs costs?

The tarrifs cost American importers regardless of our counter tarrifs. For an example, the article pointed to, Target which

said it expected to raise prices within days, specifically mentioning Mexican strawberries, bananas and avocados

Doesn't matter what counter tarrifs Mexico puts in place, produce from Mexico will be more expensive in America. Counter tarrifs just make things more expensive in our own country and hopefully dissuade people from buying them.

The markets aren't roiling because of reduced access to Canadian markets, it's that the stuff in their own products (like say, car parts made in Canada) overnight became 25% more expensive. (I would also be surprised if we tarrifed much in our shared industries like auto production as it'll be hard enough to keep those factories here without making them even more expensive.)

That's not to say what we do is irrelevant, we should absolutely boycott and do whatever we can to make the markets worse but it's good to do so with clear eyes.

Do you want him to lie about the sizes of our relative economies?

I think it's part of the tarrif strategy of aiming for highly substitutable goods. The goal is to inflict maximum pain on the states while minimizing harm to Canadians. So, banning American booze is an easy call because that's super replaceable with a large number of alternatives, many of which are Canadian. There aren't, as far as I know, a lot of great device alternatives that are widely adopted etc (I believe about 2/3rds of mobile devixes are Apple or Google) and I imagine the government is wary of throwing the doors wide open to Chinese devices.