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Transnational Thursday for January 9, 2025

Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.

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He didn't "ruin" anything. Neither he is intending to. What he is intending to is to inject this possibility as something to be discussed and by this highlight the (unfavorable) comparison between Canada and the US that you have described very well, and by this hopefully push Canada more to the right and being more open to whatever he needs the next Canadian government to do. Actually adding Canada as a state (or a number of states) would be, even if realistic (which it is not), very problematic for Republicans at the first place, and I don't even believe a serious trade war is possible since it would hurt so many people with serious money, and they speak the same language that Trump speaks and will not let that happen. However, by dangling this possibility and initiating discussion about the US-Canada relationship, Trump can advance his agenda much more than if he just said "you know, maybe sometime in the next 4 years we might initiate some discussions about US-Canada relationships".

That's classic anchoring. If you come to the jewelry store and see a ring sold for $100K, they aren't actually trying to sell you this ring. I mean, they would surely be happy to, but that's not their main point. The point is to make the ring that costs $2K to seem like a bargain - you get almost the same thing and it's 50 times cheaper!

He said he wanted to apply economic pressure for us to join the US.