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Literally just lying might work fine in business as long as you avoid legal troubles, the same way that stiffing contractors might end up working out perfectly fine if you're the bigger company but proper governing is a different beast entirely. Risk taking like that in real estate just means you might pay for a few fines if the zoning board says no, risk taking in government can mean tons of people lose their jobs, lose their homes, or even die depending on what you're taking a risk for.
And unlike with venues or contractors where there's plenty of fish in the sea so pissing them off isn't too bad, there is not another Canada or UK or EU to turn to. You can poke the bears a little especially with a country as powerful as ours but this is an iterative game and defecting is way less useful. Likewise there's a reason why his measures still have us at -8% from 6 months ago and Polymarket has been hovering around 50% chance of recession, people and the overall market want and need long-term reliability.
Edit: And not even to mention, what are we getting out of it? Even if we settle into a "win" for him on getting high tariffs implemented, there's plenty of strong evidence that it will hurt the economy, reduce downstream jobs that use those inputs, and make us poorer.
Edit2: Also here's a really great example of how this approach seems to be failing, Canada. Everything was lined up for a Conservative victory, it was basically taken as a given. PP would have been really Trump friendly. Instead he rallied the Canadians so hard that the odds have shifted massively and Carney will be elected not just as a liberal party pick, but an anti-Trump pick.
Politics is an iterative game, and defecting so hard with aggression towards Canada has most likely lost him in the long run. And there is no other Canada to turn to, he can't just run off like you could with contractors or venues or city zoning boards. Our closest and friendliest neighbor economically and geographically has been pushed away
Please don't mistake politicking for reality -- we are right here and not going anywhere. (not least, but not only -- because we can't)
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Contra point on Canada. PP was never the "pro-Trump" pick. He's Trudeau lite, instrad of Carney as Trudeau 2.0. Trump supporters cheering him on are missing the point just as badly as Trump haters cheering his downfall. Frankly there is no pro-Trump option in the Laurentian elite, and there is unlikely to ever be with the current arrangement of Canadaian politics. You would need one of two things to happen- a PM from Alberta, or the current Canadian politcal class to have it hammered into their skulls that they are truly a vassal of the US, probably by a trade war that crashes their economy but leaves America unnoticably effected.
PP might not be perfectly Trump aligned but in the question of who would be more accommodating of MAGA idealogy and Trump foreign policy, it's definitely him over Carney.
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Is it really "lying" though if the statement is objectively true?
By the same token, if the statement is true, where exactly did "the defection" occur?
You seem to be arguing for a concept "truth" that is independent of ground level reality.
You said
I think yes, they did lie. They made a guarantee that they knew had decently high chances of not being true and did not express this to the contractor. Even if we don't label it as lying, it is certainly misleading and it is done so intentionally as most people in good faith understand the contractor to mean "Is the project currently approved?" and playing tricky semantics doesn't absolve the developer of deceit. The developer could simply express the truth "It is not currently approved but I am confident in my ability to get it done and believe the chances would be all but guaranteed if we pour early" if they wished for honesty.
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