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Calgary & Alberta Economy

Well fentanyl is almost exclusively a problem with the southern border, and I expect we will see more migrants coming into Canada from the US than going the other way now. All smoke and mirrors, what he wants is to expand his empire, that's the biggest win he can give himself.

Agree about negotiation, hard to do that without knowing who the PM is going to be. Liberals need to hurry up and we need to call an election.
 
Mountain Man said:
I think Trudeau is actually showing pretty good leadership on this. Tough to say if Trump would work better with PP at the helm, he seems to prefer yes men and sycophants...
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Hard to know what's happening in these private conversations. But we've seen the Liberals and this government unable to communicate basic facts and issues in the last year, unable to explain their agenda. Can't sell the population on a carbon tax that supposedly gives more in rebates, can't sell the public on capital gains taxes. I don't agree with those policies, but little did I think being against a tax on people making over $250k in capital gains would be a winning issue and both Liberal leadership candidates would be running away from it.

It's a bit telling that the government has supposedly been seized with the issue, half the cabinet basically living in the US, rushing down there to have dinner with him, only for Mexico to avoid tariffs with 1 phone call. This is Trump's fault, no question about it, and we do need to pivot from the US longer term, but the negotiation strategy is not working.
 
trtcttc said:
Hard to know what's happening in these private conversations. But we've seen the Liberals and this government unable to communicate basic facts and issues in the last year, unable to explain their agenda. Can't sell the population on a carbon tax that supposedly gives more in rebates, can't sell the public on capital gains taxes. I don't agree with those policies, but little did I think being against a tax on people making over $250k in capital gains would be a winning issue and both Liberal leadership candidates would be running away from it.

It's a bit telling that the government has supposedly been seized with the issue, half the cabinet basically living in the US, rushing down there to have dinner with him, only for Mexico to avoid tariffs with 1 phone call. This is Trump's fault, no question about it, and we do need to pivot from the US longer term, but the negotiation strategy is not working.
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The relative success or failure of a negotiation strategy is hard to judge as you say, particularly when it's ongoing. There is no evidence to back up the claim if only we were as good as Mexico we'd be done with one phone call (and receive a generous a 30 day pause, which has no guarantee on anything). The real and imaginary harms that Trump is claiming the tariffs are in response to are wildly different between Canada and Mexico.

For example, of the many many different claims - Trump has said he might remove the tariffs if progress is made when migrants are deported to Mexico and more prevented from coming in.

Meanwhile, among the claims he wants to remove the tariffs in Canada is when we are completely economically dominated and annexed withing the US. How does one negotiation here? We might get a pause if we agree to talk about being annexed for the next 30 days? That seems existentially risky - and isn't us "winning" the negotiation.

We can all take a guess at which demands are "real" v. which are just blustering nonsense, but my point is that it's really difficult to gauge our skills at this from the outside with no consistency in demands, being made of the two countries, and obviously no consistency that the judge of our efforts is rational or fair either. The arbitrary nature of this is the whole problem - you can't actually win, just hope to escape with minimal damage and he moves on to another topic for a while.
 
Mountain Man said:
What he wants is to annex Canada.
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That's exactly what I've been seeing. He's eroding the right of our very existence in the American consciousness since day 1. This has all been planned. We're Sudetenland. Or, if PP gets in, we're at best collaborator Austria.
 
CBBarnett said:
The relative success or failure of a negotiation strategy is hard to judge as you say, particularly when it's ongoing. There is no evidence to back up the claim if only we were as good as Mexico we'd be done with one phone call (and receive a generous a 30 day pause, which has no guarantee on anything). The real and imaginary harms that Trump is claiming the tariffs are in response to are wildly different between Canada and Mexico.

For example, of the many many different claims - Trump has said he might remove the tariffs if progress is made when migrants are deported to Mexico and more prevented from coming in.

Meanwhile, among the claims he wants to remove the tariffs in Canada is when we are completely economically dominated and annexed withing the US. How does one negotiation here? We might get a pause if we agree to talk about being annexed for the next 30 days? That seems existentially risky - and isn't us "winning" the negotiation.

We can all take a guess at which demands are "real" v. which are just blustering nonsense, but my point is that it's really difficult to gauge our skills at this from the outside with no consistency in demands, being made of the two countries, and obviously no consistency that the judge of our efforts is rational or fair either. The arbitrary nature of this is the whole problem - you can't actually win, just hope to escape with minimal damage and he moves on to another topic for a while.
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The Executive only has the authority to implement tariffs in response to issues of national security, which is why Trump is conjuring drug and people trafficking. It also lacks the authority to pursue annexation. There are probably some legal avenues and appeals to Congress to nullify the false justifications for these tariffs, but that would take too long. Canada needs to open formal negotiations to end the game playing.
 
Apparently Canada is now getting the same 30 day reprieve Mexico got. Here's hoping Canadian leaders use that time wisely to work towards a tolerable outcome.

Edit: Mountain Man beat me to it
 
We need to stop pretending that Trump has a plan. His reasoning is made up. You cannot negotiate when all you have to do to stop the tariff is do what you already said you were going to do. Damn the politicians being rewarded for re-announcing something!
 
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CBBarnett said:
The relative success or failure of a negotiation strategy is hard to judge as you say, particularly when it's ongoing. There is no evidence to back up the claim if only we were as good as Mexico we'd be done with one phone call (and receive a generous a 30 day pause, which has no guarantee on anything). The real and imaginary harms that Trump is claiming the tariffs are in response to are wildly different between Canada and Mexico.

For example, of the many many different claims - Trump has said he might remove the tariffs if progress is made when migrants are deported to Mexico and more prevented from coming in.

Meanwhile, among the claims he wants to remove the tariffs in Canada is when we are completely economically dominated and annexed withing the US. How does one negotiation here? We might get a pause if we agree to talk about being annexed for the next 30 days? That seems existentially risky - and isn't us "winning" the negotiation.

We can all take a guess at which demands are "real" v. which are just blustering nonsense, but my point is that it's really difficult to gauge our skills at this from the outside with no consistency in demands, being made of the two countries, and obviously no consistency that the judge of our efforts is rational or fair either. The arbitrary nature of this is the whole problem - you can't actually win, just hope to escape with minimal damage and he moves on to another topic for a while.
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I guess it's looking at this government's ability to sell their own citizens on their message has been abysmal, it's hard to see they suddenly have the capacity that's not been seen for a while. Trump's demand are indeed all over the place and unreasonable, and that's why I'd support avoiding US products regardless of any future change in tariffs. The times we've seen any relevation of internal discussion between leaders and Trudeau, it has not been good. The blow up with Xi at the G20 and Trump at the last Canadian G7. These aren't necessarily leaders we'd consider good, but the concerns we've heard were around dishonesty and lack of respect, which falls pretty in line with Trudeau's frequent grand standing. Like how he said Harris lost because she was a woman.
 
I give the bureaucracy credit, not Trudeau, he gets the credit but that's just because he's wearing that hat. The Canadian government is known for having respected people working in these areas, the previous Trump administration mentioned it after CUSMA. For this, they prepared, knew how to hurt the USA and gave the government the plan. I hate how long it takes government to do things and I do not like how bloated the government is but we do need to credit the people who deserve it.

Also those people who were like, "they should be negotiating". You don't think we were in almost constant contact with someone in the US Government? Of course we were, they just had no idea what Trump actually wanted. I assume the reason for the pause came from people inside the US (business, governors, etc.) you can say there's a trade deficient but there's no credible person saying the US doesn't need what we sell it. The Canadian Government, like the Mexican Government, found a way to give Trump a win that was what we were doing anyways. If we can keep doing that, we'll get through these four years.
 
CalgaryTiger said:
there's no credible person saying the US doesn't need what we sell it. The Canadian Government, like the Mexican Government, found a way to give Trump a win that was what we were doing anyways. If we can keep doing that, we'll get through these four years.
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👍
 
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