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PaperclipPerfector  8d ago (text post)   35793 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 27, 2025

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What are his actual motivations?

He's in the tank for Xi Jinping

The hysterical critics were correct. Donald Trump is a thug who thinks he can extort concessions from Canada because they are weak and the US is strong. Best case he wants to get some symbolic concession in exchange for dropping the tariffs so he can tout it to his guileless supporters as proof of what a tough negotiator he is. Worst case, he's really serious about trying to use economic coercion to force Canada to accept annexation, which will almost certainly fail, but will have the added side effect of absolutely shredding American international standing. Somewhere in the middle is thinking he can force Canada to equalize the balance of trade between the two countries.

How is forcing the annexation of Canada through economic pressure supposed to work? It would require a constitutional amendment with the agreement of all ten provinces. This would never happen. He'd be lucky to get one, and he is especially not going to get Quebec, which would never want to give up its language laws. Canadians are very proud of not being American. We're the product of 250 years of selection of people who did not move to the U.S. for better weather and better economic opportunity.

I don't know, but Trump seems weirdly persistent about it and I don't think he's overly concerned about legal details.

I'm guessing someone gave him the idea that Canada wasn't a real country and Canadians were really Americans who had been propagandized into believing they were a separate nation.

Best case he wants to get some symbolic concession in exchange for dropping the tariffs Canada already responded to Trump by increasing the funding for border control. https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/canada-announces-new-border-funding-after-trump-tariff-threat-2024-12-16/

We're past the best case scenario already.

Eh, if we can get rid of the current (Canadian) leadership it might be possible to have some productive negotiation in which the chiefs of both sides don't hate each others' guts.

No chance of that until March 24, thanks to Trudeau proroguing parliament, right?

He's trying to play a trick -- he wants to introduce "tariff relief" on the COVID skymoney model; for that he needs to recall parliament.

I'd guess his idea is to put the other parties in a double-bind where if they bring him down (as they've all now promised to do at the first opportunity) they will be (accused of) siding with the Orange Man; if they don't, it will probably not happen until fall.

I maintain that the fucker engineered the whole situation on the Canada side -- Trump probably doesn't really care too much either way.

side effect of absolutely shredding American international standing.

I'm not being obtuse when I ask: what value, exactly, does American international standing have?

Being able to get people to cooperate with you on economic, military, and political matters. We have neither the ability nor the interest to obtain everything we want by coercion, and the more we try the worse the case for working with us versus our rivals becomes. If you're going to start mashing the defect button just to prove you can, eventually your partners are going to look for someone more reliable. If you're going to start running around trying annex your neighbors, people are going to start forming alliances against you.

Having allies do the bleeding and suffering while the US takes the spoils of war. That's the tried and tested American strategy for winning serious wars.

Having other countries comply with US sanctions and generally cooperate.

Avoiding unpleasant situations like having strategic resource imports cut off or sudden price hikes, though Trump doesn't seem to care much about this.

Getting to keep overseas bases in foreign countries.

American companies being allowed to get lucrative overseas contracts, merger approvals, market access.

Getting more generous terms in multilateral free trade agreements.

Diplomatic credibility. It helps diplomacy if its generally thought that America won't renege on agreements, being seen as trustworthy (though this has basically vanished).

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