This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Happy tariffs eve, to those who celebrate.
With by all accounts the tariffs against Mexico and Canada going into action tomorrow, actually for real maybe probably this time, let's have a slice of cake and blow some party horns. This is quite a significant change of political fortunes - symbolically at least, and one would presume economically too, depending on how quickly the reshufflings happen or if this actually goes through at all. Since the 1880s, and more definitely since the 1980s, the world and its various regional economic blocs have moved towards the free trade of goods and services between nations. It has not been uniform or without reverses, but the trend has been unmistakable.
Often I like to wonder how a given event might be thought of 100 or 1000 years from now - will some future textbook see this as the high water mark of globalism, some point in the line of history that is forever after viewed with special significance? As much as people have claimed Donald Trump has been hindered by the Deep State, they seem to be slow to react to him ripping up one of the signature features of American hegemony (something he himself has contributed to, given that it's his free trade deal that is essentially being dissolved).
At the very least this is all going to be fascinating - one of the ironclad, universally agreed-upon tenets of a social science being put to the test. Markets have not reacted well so far, but that's as much a feature of groupthink as it is reflective of material reality. It's a good time to be a prospective PhD in Economics. You're about to have more than you could have ever hoped to work with.
So, have a Happy New Era. If this is actually happening, which I'm sure a lot of people are still unsure about (certainly I am). See you on the other side.
As an American, I'm glad that after four years of pointless struggle under Biden Trump has finally taken bold steps to normalize relations with inflation.
Seriously, these tariffs are an absolutely bizarre own-goal.
More options
Context Copy link
Do they have any reason to? Honest question.
I assume you mean "do they have any reason to [react negatively]", to which the answer is very much yes. The North American economy is very integrated by nature of its geography; Pennsylvania is a lot closer to Ontario than it is to Oregon, Nova Scotia is much more enmeshed with Maine than British Columbia. When American and Canadian firms search for raw materials or markets or services they have previously looked regionally because the regulatory and economic circumstances allowed them to essentially ignore borders. This is going to play out in a million different ways; every Canadian and American firm sources goods, materials, or services from some other company on the other side of the border, and now the economic rationale for that has changed dramatically - with an accompanying uncertainty whether it will ever change back.
Mexico's relationship to Canada and the US is different in that the flows of individual goods and services tend to be unidirectional rather than hopelessly entangled. But Mexican trade with the US and Canada isn't just peppers and tomatoes. There's a lot of industry in Mexico (the #1 export of Mexico to both the US and Canada are cars; their biggest import from both is industrial components).
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
This is like firing up the Large Hadron Collider for the first time for macro-economists right?
More options
Context Copy link
Speaking as a Canadian, we are so, so boned. Things were already looking bad for us economically, with poor productivity, insane housing bubble, and crumbling infrastructure while debt keeps piling up. I keep hearing from my fellow citizens that we are going to need to diversify our trading partners and I really can’t believe they can be so insane. Like, you thinks it’s gonna be easy to freight our goods across the second largest country in the world, to get it across an ocean? And the buyer won’t even have dollars to trade us for it?
So boned
Canada is so easily fixable.
Step 1) Elect non-retarded government
Step 2) Immigration moratorium. Evict the temporary residents who gamed the student visa system.
Step 3) Deregulate economy
Step 4) Let capitalism do the rest.
Canada's advantages are numerous. High IQ population. Low population density. Immense natural resources. All Canadians have to do is get out of their own way, and the future is going to be great.
Unironically, the biggest threat to Canada is Trump. Not because of anything he will do. But because of the allergic reaction he provokes that causes Canadians to self-own and double down on socialism and open borders. Sadly, this is the final boss that most Canadians can never defeat.
It’s worse than that. Our biggest threat is America. Trump is the epitome of Americans to Canadians. But you’re otherwise entirely correct. We self own all the time just to pretend we are better than America when in reality we are worse and getting worse all the time
More options
Context Copy link
As a Canadian, the first step is impossible. We're under the permanent rule of theater-kid occupied government: all optics, no substance.
Damn. I just checked the polls and Trump is killing Poilievre's chances. I'm sorry for the collateral damage.
Any chance to move to the US? It's nice here.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
On the plus side container export to China is incredibly cheap. Shanghai to LA is like $4000, the reverse is $700. If you guys have the port capacity, there's a huge market out west in the far east.
Not sure about bulk rates tbh, and a lot of Canadian exports are bulk iirc.
It's cheap because there's no market there.
There is for raw materials, which is what Canada exports.
That's a different shipping contract than the on @SteveAgain and @The_Nybbler are talking about. They don't put bulk goods into container ships.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
If we can manage to elect somebody who's not a total moron (so yeah, probably boned) I think it can be OK -- the current sabre rattling (pocket-knife rattling?) is exclusively to play to domestic morons for a sugar rush in the polls. The political is very very personal for Trump, and since he & Trudeau already hate each other deeply there was never going to be any rapprochement until he's gone -- the upside is that there is an opportunity there for the new guy to, um, build back better?
I do hope that during the campaign somebody will be able to convincingly point out that adding to the burden of American tariffs on our producers' exports with an additional domestic tariff burden on a big chunk of their input costs is the most retarded idea I've ever heard -- are we really that dumb?
Canada has no culture...except when Americans say it. Nationalism is finally a thing again and it must get its due.
Nah, it's inorganic, and probably astroturfed to a large degree. People will settle down soon enough.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
You already know the answer to that question.
You also already know the election's going to come down to being a referendum on who wants to prosecute the war; that is, in part, why the Reform party (in blue) doesn't have much room to campaign while the Conservative party (in red) is going full bore on the war- the Red party will attempt to get voted in before their idiotic policies really start taking their toll, because by then it'll be too late to do anything.
The tariffs are a liability for the Red party (no matter what they do, they lose), but abandoning the last 6 months of agitating for non-confidence votes only to suddenly slam on the brakes for political expedience is a huge liability for the Blue party. All that remains to be seen is if the Red party calls an election immediately, or tries to force the Blue party to vote for a non-confidence vote (and the pattern of constantly doing that only to not do that now is itself a liability).
They've got their sugar rush, I think they will go for it -- I do think there's some Kamala effect going on here at the moment and they will still lose, but I guess wrecking the country to avert a landslide is what these fuckers would consider a win.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I've been reading Richard Gwyn's two-part biography of Sir John A recently and it's interesting to see how many direct parallels there are. Confederation was essentially premised on economic rationales in order for the British North American colonies to be able to compete against American tariffs, and much of the post-Confederation work of Macdonald was to try and cobble together a semblance of national identity and acquire the rest of British North America as a way to forestall American annexation. We've been in tough times before. The problem is I don't know if there's any politician of that caliber around today. The people who would be that kind of leader generally aren't in politics to begin with.
More options
Context Copy link
Looks like trade with the US is ~20% of Canadas GDP. Imports are also sizeable. This will not end well for Canada - my sincere apologies from the US. I honestly wonder what Trump is after.
It's all so petty. Trump wants Trudeau to bend the knee. Trudeau sees #resist as a strategy to improve his own popularity, and if average Canadians get fucked all the better. That's been his MO from day one.
In the end, we have two vain leaders peacocking for their respective audiences.
Trudeau already negotiated a deal with Trump last time around.
And then Trump shows back up treating Trudeau as a domestic partisan enemy because ??
Like, I don't think this is a "both sides" thing: Trudeau/the Liberals would probably love to head this off again but nobody is sure what's going on with Trump (who chose to be obnoxious even by Trump standards) which cause a backlash within the population any leader would have to be wary about meeting head on.
Like, the perception of hesitation alone has caused the only blip in what should otherwise have been a cakewalk for the CPC into power.
Because he is?
Trudeau (like Zelensky, maybe) made the mistake of aligning himself with the (current) losing side on US politics, strongly and explicitly. There's no way he's walking back from that; he also hates Trump, and Trump knows it.
Everything is personal with Trump; kind of a weird way to run a country, but easy enough to work with if you aren't an idiot.
That may be his thought process, but it's retarded.
Trudeau is who he is because that's (apparently) what plays for Canadians. His domestic policy is as a theater kid lib with delusions of "punching above our weight" in international relations. When it comes to actual relations with America he plays ball with Trump or Biden because everyone understands the reality that Canada is the junior party.
There was no Zelenskyy/Hunter Biden issue. Trudeau just is a lib why would he agree with Trump politically? It's one thing to say one should not personally wrong Trump (already crazy, given his nature) but another to say no one can differ on policy. And if being a lib is an issue what of Starmer?
This isn't some Vance dressing down via speech.
It's retarded to even care about Canadian domestic politics in the first place given that it's irrelevant to a fundamentally subordinate relationship with the US. It may be annoying for Trumpists to see pretty theater kid Trudeau on the Daily Show being fellated by whoever has that now (even that more or less stopped as his popularity dropped) or to see libs whine about going to Canada but none of that matters. Nobody actually goes to Canada because America is richer and better, and when the US says "jump" (like "arrest a Huawei exec and hurt relations with China") Canada jumps.
But, if you do care, it's retarded because Trudeau was already a dead man walking. The only thing standing in the way of the CPC sweeping him and his party into the dustbin is Trump himself.
There's nothing "easy" about dealing with this sort of retardation.
Like, I think the case that this is just fundamentally predatory - targeting a nation that is both inherently weaker than the US and has actively made itself moreso due to bad policy - is actually a much sensible one. If this is actually his thinking...yikes.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Increasingly, personal vanity seems to be the explanation that makes the most sense for most of what Trump is doing. After decades of the left talking about the "American Empire," Trump is embracing that view and demanding fealty from his vassals.
Fealty would make more sense. It seems that a lot of this is driven by basically projecting domestic cultural battles and petty resentments and weird fixations out into international politics.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Obligatory "anschluss", but Southern Ontario is still more industrialized than the US North East is with a government more sympathetic to natural resource development than the Blue states that it supplies with energy.
And it'll effectively be a 50% tariff if the Canadian government decides to "retaliate" (less cutting off its nose to spite the face, and more cutting off its head to spite the rest of its body): 25% on the way down for the raw resources, and 25% on finished goods on the way back.
The Federal government has already abdicated. This country is post-national- the Provinces are conducting the foreign policy now.
Why stop at two tariff payments on the same materials? Raw aluminum goes to the States ( about $15B), then aluminum products come back to Canada ($4B), I'm sure some of that gets put into manufactured goods for the States, and...
I heard that it's much worse for the automobile industry, with semi-finished parts hopping back and forth several times.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
What odds do you place on this causing local depressions or a global recession?
I’d go for at least single digit.
The fed's already changed US Q1 growth forecasts from 2% to -3%: https://www.atlantafed.org/cqer/research/gdpnow
No. They did not update their forecasts by 5% because of today's news, and this is not an official forecast.
With understanding he is quite o'errun;
And by too great accomplishments undone:
With skill she vibrates her eternal tongue,
For ever most divinely in the wrong.
More options
Context Copy link
It isn't a forecast at all - it is a nowcast. It is the Fed's best estimate of what is happening right now, but won't be officially reported until Q1 GDP comes out at the end of April (provisionally) and late June (as a final official number). The numbers are annualised quarterly numbers, so a 5 percentage point shift in growth means that (if the nowcast is correct) the economy is, right now, 1 1/4% smaller than predicted.
DOGE has fired about 35,000 people so far who won't have new jobs yet. In addition, about 75,000 workers are on the payroll but not working because they took the 8-month buyout, and 10,000 are locked out at USAID. That means 120,000 former government employees are no longer contributing to GDP. There are 133 million full-time workers in the US, so ~0.1 percentage points of the 1.2 point drop is due to government cuts.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Trump's core appeal was an improved economy, particularly comparisons between the 2016-2020 economy and the 2021-2024 economy. Not that he has to run for re-election, but if he tanks the economy chasing tariffs, he might end up disgraced even among those who voted for him.
Negative partisans will still hate him less than Democrats, and his core will still love him, but he has a chance at destroying the future of his movement. It was already looking shaky whether MAGA could outlive Trump.
The US could easily crush Canada or Mexico in a trade war. It would do fine against the EU or China. It’s suicide to attempt all at once! The bargaining position of the US isn’t going to be better after a year of tariffs with neighbors that hate us and -10% gdp growth.
Fucking up the economy has got to be the one way to get congress to step up.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
For the life of me I don't understand why the Fed started cutting way before it was clear they got the job done.
The worse sin was the Fed not raising in 2021. But, sadly, I think the Fed is in the bag for one party.
I don't think it's so much that (The Fed did keep rates low in Trump's first term, after all.) as a bias toward "low rates good", belief that inflation was "transitory" and would correct itself more quickly than it did (Strictly speaking, it was, in the sense that inflation in the late 40s was also transitory.), and fear that raising rates would slow down the economy more than it did (Volker's rate hikes made for a nasty recession in the early 80s.). There's also the inconvenient problem that high rates are bad for the government's balance sheet.
Trump actually bullied Powell into that, IIRC.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link