Let’s not forget that no one “invests” unless they can take more out of a country or enterprise than they put into it.
He’s obsessed with annexing Canada. It’s something that his rotten rapist brain cannot get over. He oozed out a Truth Social post about it today:
Canada wants the benefits of being a State, without being one!!!
They have also charged our great farmers, for many years, massive amounts of Tariffs. No more!!!
His pathology (or whatever the fuck it is) doesn’t allow him to understand what trade comprises, to the extent that he probably couldn’t buy a chocolate bar at a convenience store without it becoming nasty and adversarial.
And, of course, this:
This is the part I don’t get. He insists that Canada is a freeloader, that we’ve been scamming the US out of money for generations. That we’re really just that nasty and competent at scamming.
Does he think making us a State will reduce how much money we can pull out of the US? In addition to eliminating all barriers to trade for those wily Canadians, we’ll also get all that nice Federal funding for schools, healthcare, housing, all that shit, and in US dollars, to boot.
The plan is to make Alberta a territory, with no political representation and all the oil resources the property of the US Federal Government (aka Trump)
And many there would embrace it (until their public healthcare went away)(but maybe even still then).
I believe their theory is, “once we’re awash in petrodollars we can afford any private healthcare we want!” Of course the “we” is a very small subset of “population of Canada,” the bulk of which can fester and die because “I’ve got mine, which used to be yours, but I took it and sold it.”
Sorry for the digression. I’m out of here altogether. (In unison: “I’m out of here!”)
Other countries attraction to US trade is it’s population, aka number of consumers, period. 340 million or so, is nothing to be scoffed at.
China has a large population as well. As do other countries, India, Brazil. This is why countries such as Canada are increasingly moving away from US trade toward less hostile partners.
Increasing alienation has already seen the administration cosying up with less than desirable partners.
The States is an attractive market because of its wealth, population, proximity, need for resources and what Canada produces, common language and similar culture, shared needs. People pay to join Costco. But you don’t have to shop there.
The last minute changes were non-starters. Under different people, I would think they tried to scupper it on purpose so they could talk Canschluss again. Except true pathological narcissists genuinely think they are right about everything and don’t truly take other perspectives into account.
The lack of agreement will not go down well at all with most American businesses, and will also be very closely watched by both Mexico and every other country that placated Trump by signing asymmetrical deals.
Tariffs were done to justify historic tax cuts and pretend that money could be easily replaced. Big businesses are hurt less than small ones, but the American auto companies said it would cost them billions even if it went through at a “bargain” 15%. A number is not a bargain because it is lower than some other number you pull out of your rump. Many businesses need steel and aluminum to make stuff.
The Washington Post had an article two days ago about a $4B aluminum plant Trump wants to build in Inola, near Tulsa Oklahoma. They stumped for Trump by 30%. The plant is incredibly unpopular. Thought it will pollute the environment and damage crops and use crazy electricity. For 1000 jobs most don’t want - few people actually want to be miners these days even if Trump thinks it is still the 1950s. Canada makes aluminum better and cheaper and its plants are largely owned by Americans anyway like many resource businesses here.
A good read, I’ve tried to giftlink.
President Donald Trump has touted plans for a massive $4 billion aluminum smelting plant in the small town of Inola, Oklahoma, as a prime example of his administration’s efforts to bring manufacturing back to the United States. Instead, the project is demonstrating a pitfall in populist economics. Promising to restore industrial jobs is popular in the abstract, but the reality on the ground is more complicated, even in a state Trump won by more than 30 points.
Last week, Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond (R), who is running for governor, asked a federal court to block construction of the 350-acre development. He was tapping into intense anger in Inola, a conservative town outside Tulsa. In June, the town’s council issued a temporary moratorium on the smelter project despite a direct plea from the president to approve it “without delay.”
Though the plant would create about 1,000 permanent manufacturing jobs, locals reasonably fear that pollution could harm residents and nearby agriculture. Aluminum smelting has real environmental fallout. Others are concerned that the energy-intensive facility would compete for electricity resources and jack up ratepayers’ bills, a familiar point of contention in the fight over data centers.*
But unlike data centers, which are being built to satisfy exploding market demand, the aluminum smelter could face economic headwinds. It would be propped up by hundreds of millions of dollars in subsidies and incentives from both the federal government and the state — a classic exercise in industrial policy. The U.S. used to be one of the world’s top producers of aluminum, but high energy costs have driven smelting capacity to other countries in the past two decades. No aluminum smelter has been built in the U.S. since 1980.
The administration has argued that the Inola plant is necessary for national security. But the largest source of U.S. aluminum imports is Canada, not China. The U.S. and Canadian aluminum markets have been intertwined because of their competitive advantages: Canada’s low cost of energy gives its manufacturers an edge on primary smelting, while U.S. manufacturers have focused on recycling the metal. Trump disrupted that balance by imposing a 50 percent tariff on Canadian aluminum products last year…
Create an account to read your FREE article
They’re not really gift links any longer; you have to pay in information.
Trump wasn’t looking for miners…
Claims like “1,000 permanent jobs” do not always pass the sniff test, not least because capital is always looking for ways to reduce labour costs, which means reducing the work force and/or wages. How long is “permanent”? After all, by 1885, the Canadian Pacific Railway had received from the federal government millions of dollars, guarantees, tax breaks, and acres of land in return for a promise to maintain passenger service “in perpetuity.” “In perpetuity” turned out to mean about 100 years. Of course things change; the point is, capital often over-promises and it behooves people to be wary.
Excellent article, thanks. It just highlights how everything that Trump is doing is stupidly wrong. The town has blocked approval for the aluminum plant on the grounds of pollution and general environmental disruption, and concerns about massive electricity use which could jack up prices significantly. The same concerns exist for data centers but all of the mega-centers I’ve heard about are providing their own power, mostly from natural gas powered turbines, but the one Anthropic is building will supposedly have a nuclear plant.
Meanwhile Canada can provide aluminum at cost-effective prices because of abundant hydroelectric power, most notably in Quebec. But Trump’s illegal 50% tariff on Canadian aluminum has disrupted that market, and his solution is this unworkable abomination that no one wants.
Which is just further proof that you can neither reason nor negotiate with this idiot, and the collapse of this latest trade negotiation suggests that it’s madness to even try.
Yes; he probably thinks it’ll let him wreck Canada outright as part of his desire to punish everyone who fails to worship him enough. And divert as much of its present budget to himself as possible.
Ego, Spite and Greed are his Holy Trinity.
“Oh C-annex-a!”
Comedian Greg Giraldo (paraphrased);
“Canada is the only country in the world that got its independence by asking nicely. “Look, King, you don’t want it anyway. It’s freezing cold, it’s crawling with French people…”
“And Canada was not even part of the coalition of the willing to invade Iraq. Join the fine countries of the coalition of the willing… Bulgaria sent a couple guys… Even Spain sent a “good luck” piñata…”
Well, nobody involved in the contract broke their word.
Let’s leave aside the local opposition to this plant.
It’s this sort of story that fools the rubes. One thousand jobs is a nice win for the 1,000 people who get the jobs, though actually it’ll be 750, and a few of the jobs will be relocations from other places. But in the grand scheme of things, even 1000 jobs is a drop in the bucket, and the cost of raising tariffs of aluminum is FAR more economic disruption and job losses. Those job losses, though, aren’t concentrated in one place, so stupid people cannot grasp that they actually do happen.
And THEN we find out the government gave them “hundreds of millions of dollars,” which if literally true - and actually, I will be charitable and say it’s just $100 million, though technically “hundreds of millions” means at least $200 million - means the government paid one hundred thousand dollars per job, a very inefficient return on investment EVEN had that money not been taken out of other people’s pockets, which it was. The government would quite literally be doing more work for the economy just printing $100 million in new $100 bills and having the Army throw them out of helicopters over Oklahoma City.
Sean Duffy, the reality- challenged TV man, now Trump sycophant is on Fox, bloviating a bunch of idiotic false and downright moronic stuff about Canada.
“It’s a country that doesn’t have a military,” Duffy claimed on Fox News Sunday, adding more bizarrely, “they have record-high euthanasia rates.”
They’re sending out the mentally challenged to attempt to trash Canada with bullshit.