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Culture War Roundup for the week of March 3, 2025

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Markets have not reacted well so far

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).