Summary
In a virtual speech at the World Economic Forum, Trump suggested Canada could become a U.S. state to avoid his proposed tariffs on imports.
The remark elicited gasps from the audience.
Trump claimed the U.S. does not need Canadian lumber, energy, or vehicles, vastly overstating the trade deficit between the two nations.
He reiterated his intention to impose tariffs, potentially as high as 25%, on imports from Canada and Mexico starting February 1.
Economists warn such tariffs would raise prices for U.S. consumers.
So a huge state with an overton window to the left of the US?
But why have only one state when we can have more!
Use gerrymandering tactics to pack all the conservatives in one state, then split the rest in a 60/40 ratio, and make them all winner take all.
magats will lose presidency and the senate forever
How do you like them apples?
Don’t even talk about the possibility. Don’t even weigh it up. He needs to be told and shown very firmly that this will never happen.
They’ll still only have 2 additional liberal senators.
So many people are extremely missing the point here
Trump is purposefully threatening Canada to give his canadian conservative buddy Poilievre something to “fight” against, to make him look good
“Wow Poilievre is standing up against Trump, I’m gonna vote for him!”
That’s the game plan, in reality the two dipshits are best buds and can collude together to fuck over both countries extra hard, after conservatives get a majority over here.
It’s a stunt to get conservatives in charge over here “against” Trump, which is so fucking stupid and yet it’s probably gonna work cuz so many people are gonna fall for it.
I don’t think the liberal party has a good play against it, other than if our new liberal leader challenges Trump and musk to a boxing match and literally bears the shit out of them on live television
I unironically think the Lincoln “I’ll fight you let’s go right now” leader who seriously fucks up Musk or Zuckerberg or any of those dipshits on live television would actually win by a landslide here
It’s fuckin stupid but that’s what works apparently…
He’s done the same with Putin
The Conservative Premier of Ontario, Doug Ford, is already doing that. I’ve heard his ads on the radio calling for Ontarioans to give him a majority government so he “can stand up to Trump”. The guy spent his time as Premier standing up to nurses and bike lanes. This new stand up against Trump shtick is just more faux populism.
the other side is not???
Sides. But try not to get caught up in the us vs them drama.
The key point is that Mr Ford is using populism to promote populism, with no actual history where he stands up to bullies as much as he stands up to caregivers and citizens; and populism is the schtick of his party and the national cons, but isn’t a common thread in other parties as they campaign on rights and consolidated services instead.
The centre to left is against it as much if not more than the conservatives. If anything, PP has been awfully silent on the whole thing. And don’t even look up how Danielle Smith (conservative premier of Alberta) is responding
Trump is purposefully threatening Canada to give his canadian conservative buddy Poilievre something to “fight” against, to make him look good
This theory is predicated on 1) Trump remembering who PP is, 2) caring enough about who is running Canada to have it drive policy.
I don’t think either of these things are true.
They literally have meetings, and Trump obviously cares about conservatives willing to help him grift being in charge…
I don’t think the liberal party has a good play against it, other than if our new liberal leader challenges Trump and musk to a boxing match and literally bears the shit out of them on live television
Ahh, well that’s not good. Love him or hate him, I think one thing everyone could agree on about Trudeau is that he’d do pretty well in a politician boxing league.
I’m going to keep posting this every time I see a reference to US tariffs against Canada.
https://pluralistic.net/2025/01/15/beauty-eh/
The TL;DR is that tariffs would violate the NAFTA / USMCA treaty in which Canada agreed to respect US copyright law in exchange for free trade. No free trade? Canada doesn’t need to respect US copyright any longer and can become a flourishing economy of products to compete with US products that are massively overpriced. Think printer ink and other stuff.
That’s amazing. He’s going to absolutely tank the US economy in his first financial quarter of his term.
Sweet. Host all pirate sites in Canada.
Idk if it’s just for individuals, but our ISPs generally don’t care about pirating already. I use a VPN to pirate here but just set to another city in Canada. I only even do that because I run jellyfin and have terabytes of downloads a month.
Worst case scenario is the ISP sends you a notice that the media companies are mad, but that’s the end of it. They won’t pursue anything further because they don’t care
It’s not illegal to download something, it’s illegal to host something (seeding)
ISPs are compelled to notify you of copyright notices but they can’t hand your information over so you can only get caught if you respond
And even if you are dumb enough to respond to one of those emails, the liability is limited to something $50 per title. So it’s not worth the money to pay a lawyer to go after anyone. They will however try to trick you into a private settlement.
Reminder that Tariffs dont work as a threat to other nations.
The selling price is the same for the seller, they already give the lowest price they can profit from because the modern era allows international distributors to find a demand anywhere, the buyers are the ones paying the import tax for the same goods.
If you were selling and then the buyer had a tariff you wouldn’t just agree to take less money as a result.
That’s not strictly true, they don’t “pay the tariff” obviously but they do have to balance profit margin and lost sales. Tariffs are likely to decrease number of sales which does hurt their bottom line, the question then is if they just take a loss in sales, cut into their profit margins trying to lower the price to the US (very unlikely the margins are nearly enough for this to be viable let alone preferable) or increase prices further to offset the lower sales. Probably will be mostly the former with raw material type goods and mostly the latter with high end finished goods.
Isn’t the point to make the domestic customers choose products from other nations? Why wouldn’t that be a threat to the nation that is selling?
I think it’s a “threat” but not a very good one.
There might be 3 brands of toothbrush available to buy in the US but maybe all of them are manufactured in China. If you just tariff everything from China then US consumers will just pay more because there’s no incentive for manufacturers to absorb the tariff.
It’s a threat to Chinese toothbrush manufacturers because it creates an incentive for other manufacturers to pop up elsewhere, maybe someone will start manufacturing toothbrushes in the US. These toothbrushes would be cheaper than the tariffed ones for consumers to buy, but obviously more expensive than toothbrushes used to be before the tariffs.
In summary, because consumers are unlikely to buy less toothbrushes, they just end up paying more.
Idk but Trump just tried to threaten Canada with them so clearly some Americans don’t know.
Even if Canada would merge with the US, surely it wouldn’t become a state. We all know the importance of the Senate at this point, and how the two-senators-per-state rule affects things. At the very least, each province would want to become a state to get more senators, and it may be in the best interest of some of the larger provinces like Ontario or Quebec to subdivide to gain even more, if they can get away with it. Goodness knows the idea of splitting California has been floated by some to try to get something closer to senator-per-capita parity.
We all know the importance of the Senate at this point
Trump does not understand how anything in the U.S. government works, you must know that.
Y’know, I can see a future where Canada gets annexed, but not Quebec. Those francophones will burn down the whole province down and salt the earth before they became US citizens. I just know it. And I wouldn’t blame them one little tiny bit.
The FLQ rises again.
Maybe Alberta would accept being annexed fairly quickly but the rest of the Canada would fight just as hard as the Québécois. Part of the Canadian identity is not being American and like hell you’re taking that away from us.
I’m not suggesting the rest of Canada would lay down and take it, just that the image in my head of Quebecoise is one of salt of the earth and die on that hill type. Like, Canadians are Not American™, and Quebecoise are Not Any Of You Fuckers™
Idea: split canada in 200 states, take over the senate!
Besides this being a distraction, it’s more likely that in this case Canada would end up politically annexing the USA:
- The 2 Senators and 50 something electoral votes for “Canada State” would mean that Canadians would end up controlling US politics. :D
Of course if one assumes that elections remain binding in the Turd Reich.
And if we get any representation.
And Canada collectively tells him to go fuck himself. Seriously, he really thinks that will make them want to join him?
There are a lot of MAGA idiots in Canada, weirdly enough, and Canada is about to elect the Conservatives under a MAGA-style populist hate-monger who borrows his promises directly from Republicans. As a Canadian, I don’t wholly trust Canadians to resist this hard enough, especially with almost all Canadian media being right wing and the Conservatives promising to shut down what isn’t.
Yup. America is currently riding the brain rot rollercoaster, and we’re waiting in line holding our ticket.
The US consumers voted for Trump to lower the price of eggs.
The price of eggs is soaring today. Why? Because bird flu is killing chicken.
So what does Trump do? He cancels research on bird flu. Surely the irony won’t be missed on the magats who voted him in.
And now this: aggression against allied nations that will result in more price hikes. More irony for the maga morons to enjoy.
It’s only been 4 days. It’s gonna be a long 4 years…
Surely the irony won’t be missed on the magats who voted him in.
Oh… You have some completely unrealistic faith on Humanity…
Of course they will miss the irony. And in 4 years, they will claim the constant 4 years of inflation on Biden.
Someone forgot their /s
You might have hit reply on the wrong comment
If he slaps massive tariffs, the prices will go through the roof. If USA annexes Canada, the prices should go down, and I guess that’s was the plan.
Cause it’s working so well for Russia.
It’s working OK for Putin. Trump sees this.
Been a while since Canadians burnt down the white house. Looking more and more like the Americans need another spanking to put them in their place.
At this rate, I think a few Americans might help.
Plot twist: USA ends up joining Canada. Oh, and the dairy prices go down as a result of trading flourishing inside a new vast nation.
Oldie but a goodie https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=o7jlFZhprU4
The stupid fucking idiots in the maga party will blame Biden.
I still remember fondly the Trump speech at the UN when the whole assembly laughed at him.
I suspect that there’s going to be a lot more of that to come.
Ummmm… we’ll take the tariffs. Some offense, Americans. (jk love you guys)
Idk, some offense maybe. Not super pleased about half the US voting for a guy threatening to invade us.
Stern uncomfortable eye contact, then.
Why the fuck is this asshole fighting with fucking Canada? Goddamn I can’t wait until he dies.
He thinks he’s doing that Art of the Dipshit “Anchoring” shit.
I’ll make it a holiday. I’m going to have to remember that.
I want to piss on his grave. Seriously, they better have that shit locked down or at the top of a mausoleum or something. Otherwise, I want to try and make it a national pastime.
I actually thought about this a while ago. Surely there are many hated people in the world, but some world leaders take the cake. I would pay to piss on Putin’s grave for example. So… Why isn’t there a business opportunity here? Buy the graveyard holding them, sell tickets to piss on Putin/Trump/Kimjong/Xi/whoever. You can make it into a holiday - 1000 euro for a weekend in a Moscow hotel, you visit the Kremlin, you piss on Putin’s grave, you go home with a shirt that says “I literally pissed on Putin and all I got was this lousy Polonium-engraved t-shirt”. I almost bought pissonputinsgrave.com when I thought about this, but I lack the funds to actually buy their graveyards.
Surely there’s something here for our society, right? We’re all tired of oppression at the hands of a few power-hungry old fucks and are just waiting for them to die so that we can finally release our common prostate. Or is it just me and you that would love the satisfaction of defiling the corpses of these cunt dictators?
If only Saddam and the other fuckface hadn’t been wasted like that! They just got removed, one sunk into the ocean, the other hung and buried. We…err…the world could have made millions, even to this very day. Like if you hung a drape and told people Saddam was on the other side, they would pay you good money to punch the drape for a chance to actually punch Saddam. But to make this more accessible and make more money efficiently, pee is the key! Its universally understood. It would be a huge 2 floor shrine. You create a transparent fishtanks musuleum on the first floor, and toss the evil in there. People park, pay the entrance fee (which includes a large drink), and they make a line to go see the assholes decomposing. In due time, they need to pee so they head upstairs where urinals and restrooms are all setup accordingly. Then all that flows down and pours over the evil before heading to the general drainage. Done? Head back down and you can pay extra for a remote controlled super soaker fed with pee that you can use to shoot the poop off with. You may pay extra for the 3rd floor which offers a direct line of sight opportunity for you to personally peen on the evil. Everyone would enjoy this! And we can keep tossing in more evil as they fuck up and find out. A few decades later we would have bones for sale by the piece at auction. All clearly marked so you know which evil you are peeing on. And all this would be perfectly sanitary and safe and good smelling. Good for the environment too if we treat the swage correctly.
Canada please join the EU!!!
We’ve been trying but our current leader is pro-US
I’m willing to die not to join the US.
Putin hired him to start pointless nonsensical arguments with our nearest and most vital allies and that’s what he’s gonna do.
Otherwise he publishes the pee tapes
Any taped content wouldn’t sway his cult of loonies. The guy rapes and fantasizes about shooting people on the street. Could be just psycho machismo why they’re colluding
Nobody would give a fuck about pee tapes. Cee-pee tapes, maybe, but even then it might still not be enough to bring him down at this point.
Otherwise, it’s 100% clear Trump is doing this shit because he’s a Putin fanboi and fascist true believer, not because he’s somehow being coerced. Stop giving him the benefit of the doubt.
I’d like to see MAGA’s cognitive dissonance in trying to conceptualize Trump getting peed on as a power move of his
Trump getting peed on
That didn’t happen. Trump is famously a germaphobe.
What allegedly happened:
Trump “hated” Obama so much that when he stayed at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Moscow, he hired the presidential suite (Report 80), but did not stay in it.[233] There he employed “a number of prostitutes to perform a ‘golden showers’ (urination) show in front of him”[127][225][234] in order to defile the bed used by the Obamas on an earlier visit. The alleged incident from 2013 was reportedly filmed and recorded by the FSB[235] as kompromat.
They’d blame Obama for being president while Black
They’d manage to do it
Soaking in their precious bodily fluids while denying them his essence.
Something along the lines of this