I do but more so with respect to companies than countries. I have a strong preference to paying a bit more for a company that sources their work ethically. Maybe I should avoid buying from China (I don’t buy much from China that I know of except maybe a phone every 3-4 years. I guess computer parts too, although I think those actually come from Korea. Maybe my phone does too since it is Android), and maybe the fact that I don’t do this more so make me a hypocrite to some degree. But it feels like the USA has stabbed me in the back and said “Hey we’re still friends right?” I feel a real sense of betrayal, just like if a long time friend betrayed me it would feel much worse than some random stranger. I really honestly for all my life felt like the USA and Canada were strong friends and allies, and that we might disagree but that we would resolve things in a friendly manner so that everybody was at least a little bit happy. I really do personally feel betrayed, and I’m angry about it. So yeah, I feel more angry with the USA right now than China, because I expect China to be dicks.
Now, I’ve used the word never a lot. Who knows, maybe once Trump is gone, my anger and pain will subside and I can buy American again. I cannot predict the future, I can only say how I feel today. I hope that I can feel good about the USA again. This isn’t pleasant for me. Again, I worked closely with US forces when I was in the military. We had a yearly joint exercise, and I felt a real kinship with them. Hopefully, this helps clarify what I’m feeling. I’ve lost a lot of confidence in the US voter. I’ve lost a lot of respect for the USA. And it really hurts.
Just for a bit of extra clarity. I have no problem the the US president putting America first. The US president should put America first. Just as the Canadian prime minister should put Canada first. But there are ways to do that which can still create international partnerships, and while still treating your friends as your friends. Also, being a Canadian (and hence a ultra left-wing super communist by American standards), I do believe that there is a time and place to take a hit for the good of the community-at-large. So I’m ok with Canada not always getting there way if it is good for world. A good example would be with respect to climate change. We might have to get dinged a little bit more here and there in order to preserve the environment for humanity.
Thanks for the reply. It’s a good answer, FWIW. It’s a lot like many Americans after the lead up to the invasion of Iraq, where they wouldn’t buy anything French, and even tried to change french fries to freedom fries. The anger is very similar, to me. And I’m a big fan of voting with your pocketbook.
Myself, I do actually boycott most products from China, especially those with the made in China label, and especially for any sort of pet food or products that could be ingested. I’m not rabid, as I own an iPhone, and many of the parts in there are manufactured in China. There probably is no way to buy anything today that’s 100% non-Chinese…but you are probably going to be hard pressed buying things that are 100% non-American as well.
My own reasons are 2 fold. Firstly, I had a very treasured pet die due to adulteration of the pet food I was giving her…by a Chinese company (well, a US company that used a Chinese company to do the manufacturing). Essentially, they poisoned her. And it wasn’t a one off…it’s something that happened quite a lot with Chinese manufacturers, especially at that time. The second is that my sons partner and his family came from southern China, and I got interested in China a lot more when they hooked up and I got to know him and his family. I started looking into China and what I found was pretty horrifying and disgusting wrt how the CCP operates and how Chinese companies operate. Just their trade practices and the systemic theft of intellectual property and such was enough to pretty much put them on the no buy list as much as possible.
FWIW, I think Trump is an idiot, and I think his trade policies, such as they are, have been a disaster. I don’t think he was aiming at Canada…you were part of his pressure for bargaining, pretty obviously (so was Mexico). My WAG is, assuming he had a plan, the real targets were the EU and, more specifically, China. He wanted to (and still wants too) ring concessions out of the EU…probably some sort of bilateral trade agreement. But he really wants to put the screws to China. The trouble is, he’s a clueless idiot, and doesn’t actually understand international trade, so his reasons are always flawed and full of populist horseshit about bringing back manufacturing jobs to the US.
So you think …
[ol]
[li]Trump rails against NAFTA and free trade[/li][li]Trump replaces NAFTA with USMCA, with relatively insignificant changes[/li][li]Trump tells supporters USMCA is a huge improvement over NAFTA[/li][li]Trump supporters now believe in free trade[/li][li]Political spectrum is now unified behind free trade?[/li][/ol]
Boy, I wish I could believe it was that simple. (As I stated in the OP, I already support free trade.) But the next time a US company closes its plant in the US and moves production to Mexico, betcha Trump doesn’t say, “Hey, that’s how free trade works.” No, he’ll probably accuse Mexico of violating the treaty and start making noise about new tariffs.
The big thing is that the United States is a major exporter; the second largest in the world (after China). So we’re the kind of country that gets hurt in a trade war.
Trump and his followers seem to imagine the United States can just dictate terms to other countries and they’ll have no choice other than to give in to us. But when you raise tariffs against another country’s goods, they respond by raising tariffs against your goods. Both sides end up losing export sales and the country that has more export sales gets hurt worse. And that’s us.
Even other exporting countries will do better than us because Trump is starting trade wars all over. So if America raises tariffs on EU goods and Chinese goods, China and the EU will each raise tariffs on American goods. American goods will become more expensive in Europe and China and fewer American goods will be sold.
But the market for goods doesn’t disappear. And China and the EU aren’t fighting a trade war with each other. So European goods will hold their prices in China and Chinese goods will hold their prices in the EU. China will therefore import more European goods and fewer American goods while the EU will import more Chinese goods and fewer American goods.
The Chinese and European economies will be okay because they’ll just be redirecting the export sales they lost to America to each other. But the export sales America will be losing will just be gone.
And we’ll have a hard time getting them back in the future. Consumers in Europe will get used to buying Chinese goods and consumers in China will get used to buying European goods. Even if we repeal the tariffs in five years, that new trade will still exist. We’re creating competition for American companies.
I’ve used China and the EU as examples but the same principles apply to Canada and Mexico. And Japan and Korea and South America and India and Africa. Every time the United States gets into a trade war with another country, it just means we’re shifting trade in that country away from America and towards somebody else. We’re building up a global economy that we’re not part of.
If we were trying to motivate China into changing its business policies (or its political policies) we should be working on building up an agreement with other countries so that we all cut off Chinese trade. If we want to put pressure on China we need to isolate it from the global economy.
Instead, Trump’s unilateral actions are isolating the United States from the global economy.
Well, I don’t think we need to isolate them so much as hold their feet to the fire wrt the WTO agreements they signed on for. To do THAT, we need to be working with other countries in concert. I totally agree that Trump’s clueless, ham fisted methods suck, and have hurt a lot more than they helped. The thing is, you have to understand that Trump is clueless…he doesn’t really know how any of this stuff works, and really believes the populist horseshit about bad US deals and bringing those great, high paying low skill jobs back to the US if only we show them who is boss. That’s his real goal…to bring back the 50’s era manufacturing reality to the US.
I disagree with some of this. The US is certainly a large exporter…but we are a huge importer. While the EU would probably be fine in a trade war with the US, I think you are underestimating the damage even what’s happened so far to China…or their ability to just shift to other markets. The US also wields a lot more clout than you seem to realize, so countries have to pay attention, even when it’s an orange haired idiot at the helm. His tantrums do real damage outside of the US wrt trade. Sure, we get hurt too, but until and unless there is a major market shift the US is still the largest importer of goods and services out there as a single market.
I do agree that we are causing nations and companies to start to put in the hooks for a shift. China will, eventually and after a lot of pain be able to rebuild markets for it’s goods and services…assuming they survive. Not a sure thing…they are a lot more fragile than they appear, and have recently really upped their total debt globally. The hit to them from the US putting tariffs on $250 billion in their goods is going to hurt them badly.
Definitely. He believes it himself, I have no doubts. And, frankly, politicians on both sides have been telling the people this for a while in the US, so it’s not like it’s something new or unique to him. He’s packaged it together with a bunch of other populist stuff, and that’s how he got elected. But it can’t be done. The US is never going to be in a position like we were in the 50’s, when 50% of the worlds manufacturing came out of the US and we were basically the only game in town. We don’t have the supply chains or the labor to basically move Apple production back to the US, and if we forced Apple to do so (just an example) it wouldn’t be bringing back those sweet, sweet low skill high paying jobs. At best, Apple would be putting in highly automated manufacturing plants…at worse, Apple would go tits up because they couldn’t compete at all, and iPhones would cost $2k per unit.
The truth of the matter is that Trump doesn’t really want a trade war with Canada. Even the most conservative of his supporters doesn’t dislike Canada or see them as a problem. A few industries like timber and dairy don’t like a few of their policies and that’s OK, but largely even Trump isn’t going to turn the US against Canada. Canada to most American’s seems like family. Maybe family that occasionally gets preferential treatment and occasionally rides our coattails and does some things better than we do, but family nonetheless. There is exactly zero stomach to get into a real slugfest with Canada over anything and I am largely coming to the conclusion that Trump is not an idiot-though it may pain me to admit it. He’s a reality star and views the world through that lens and recognizes that family drama gets some headlines, but you have to stop that plot before it goes too far.
It’s the same reason that he is willing to spat with the UK, but not really get into a true fight with them and has already started promising them preferential trade. The average American really sees Canada and the UK as extremely closely related to us. Definitely there is some anglophone bias and probably some race bias as part of that assessment, but overlooking the psychology of why Americans like Canadians and Brits, for these purposes it’s safe to say that we do. Suffice it to say that if you’re sitting in a bar in Belgrade and a Canadian gets into a fight, the Americans in the bar are gonna jump in on his side in the ensuing bally-hoo and that’s what Trump cares about. You can snipe at family, but you can’t fight them and you have to make up in the end. His huffing and puffing about NAFTA has about zilch to do with Canada and every American knows it. When he says ‘Americans are losing their jobs to NAFTA.’ He ain’t talking about Stelco. He’s talking about Mexican shops and it’s no use pretending otherwise. Sure, he’ll take some concessions from Canada, but it was minor stuff. Canada’s dairy industry isn’t going to collapse over this and Canadian consumers will probably end up better off-which is why Canada signed off on it. The biggest thing about this negotiation was actually reaming Asian corporations by requiring cars to have more of their parts built in North America and that’s what the long and short of this is. It’s all a posture for the real trade war with China.
I agree with you completely. The world cannot ignore the USA, but there is now a much stronger encouragement to for countries to inch away little by little to get themselves in a position where a massive political upheaval in the USA doesn’t hurt so much. That’s why I think we’re going to see a diminishing USA in the coming decades. These transitions don’t happen overnight, but I think the transition is inevitable now because a great deal of trust in the USA being (relatively) steady and reliable is shaken. This might all be chicken little though, I (and others) may be wrong, and maybe post-Trump the damage can be repaired. A lot depends on how and when Trump leaves office. If he is removed from office in disgrace, then I think that goes a long way to renewing faith that there might be some instability but the USA can and will self-correct. If he survives to 2024, and worse yet, if another populist is elected, then I think the damage is (relatively) permanent.
Well, gee if that’s the way Canadians feel, perhaps Americans should boycott Canadian products. See where that leaves us.
There will be plenty of countries that will want to do business with us. There are very few economies that we trade with that can easily withstand the a severance of trade relations with the USA. Not the Chinese, not the Germans, and certainly not the Canadians.
All wars inflict great cost on the participants, including trade wars. But the US is better situated to handle a trade war than any other country in the world. No other country has a more diverse economy or the ability to produce everything it needs internally after a little transition. Like I said, noone really wants to see it but if we are playing chicken, America has air bags and 6 point harnesses while most other economies don’t even have seat belts.
If Canada didn’t have America on its border, it wouldn’t have anywhere near the economy it has right now. An ascendant China or even Germany will not change that. If America declines so does Canada. Without American trade, Canada doesn’t really have much of a competitive advantage in other markets. What will you export to Japan or Europe that will compete with China, other than raw materials.
America should be nice to Canada because having wealthy stable neighbors is good for the country but if the trade deal is unfair, we really shouldn’t have to live with it forever just so you keep buying our apples.
If Trump offends you then I apologize, he is a great embarrassment to all of us, even my friends that support him. You think its tough living through Trump as a Canadian? Try doing it as an American.
There is displacement but do you think we are running a trade surplus?
Centuries of mercantalism say differently. You can’t keep it up forever but we some runway space before we fall into the ocean. Some of the most vibrant economies in the world are mercantalistic.
Take China for example. They can’t actually afford to go full blown trade war with us, sure it would hurt us but absent the sort of international cooperation that we haven’t seen since the tower of babel, its economic suicide. And if China can’t go full blown trade war with us, then very few other countries can. We have economic muscle that we don’t flex because we want everyone to like us. We used trade a tool of diplomacy during the cold war and then the Clinton sold out the American worker for the American companies and consumers. It was a win win for the investing class and a loss for labor. If you are wondering why so many millenials are having trouble finding work, this is part of your answer. They are now competing with Phds in India and China who will work for an amount that would qualify you for food stamps in America.
That’s not the way trade works. If American consumers are taken offline in global trade, then global trade probably suffer a seismic disruption.
And we didn’t vote Turmp president for life, he is going to be gone in 2-6 years. Then we will get back to the relatively moderate levels of insanity we had before Trump.
We would have to find 10 relatively conservative states to balance out annexing the Canadian provinces. And that’s assuming that Canadians even want to be part of the greatest country the world has ever known.
Even to the degree that Trump has a business background, his business was real estate development. Trump wasn’t involved in manufacturing; he wasn’t buying and selling goods on the international market.
Mercantilism? Where did you study economics; the Holy Roman Empire? Mercantilism was the stuff that Adam Smith discredited back in the 18th century. You might as well be calling for the establishment of guilds and the outlawing of usury.
