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Canada 'will stand up to a bully', says Mark Carney (www.bbc.com)
submitted 6 months ago by MicroWave@lemmy.world to c/world@lemmy.world
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Summary

Mark Carney, frontrunner for Canadian Liberal Party leadership and potential prime minister, stated Canada will stand up to a bully after Trump imposed 25% tariffs on Canadian imports.

Carney vowed to retaliate by matching the US tariffs dollar for dollar, asserting Canada would not cave in despite mounting pressure.

He criticized Trump for undermining trade agreements, warning that the tariffs would damage the US global reputation and economic stability.

Outgoing Prime Minister Trudeau promised a forceful, immediate response, emphasizing unity as Canada defends its economic interests, ensuring national prosperity.

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[-] merc@sh.itjust.works 8 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

"Matching the US tariffs dollar for dollar" is such a stupid policy.

A better policy would be stopping flows of Canadian dollars to the US. Declare that US patents are no longer valid in Canada. Pass a law requiring that Apple and Google allow competing app stores on their phones with no strings attached. Remove any penalty from jailbreaking phones and allow anybody who wants to sell jailbreaking kits. Declare a universal right to repair in Canada, so that Canadian farmers don't have to pay John Deere if they want to repair their tractors. Say that all copyrights belonging to the Hollywood copyright cartel are no longer recognized, and let people trade their music, tv and movies freely.

Nobody's going to be brave enough to do that. But, really, the US declaring a 25% across-the-board tariff on Canada is basically an economic nuke. Don't respond with a measured and exactly equal economic war response. Canada can't win by fighting by those rules.

Edit: Better yet, because it's more likely to be possible, just decriminalize it. Don't change the laws. Just make it clear to police and prosecutors that someone who infringes on American IP should be treated like someone smoking pot in public in 2015. Imagine someone setting up a little kiosk in the Eaton Centre selling the latest movies and software for pennies while the cops just ignored them. If John Deere tries to get someone charged for selling "fix your tractor" software bundles that bypass the access controls on tractors, the police should just laugh at them. Picture a kiosk that roots your phone and lets you install a Canadian app store where the vendor's cut is only 5% not 30%, and all the profits stay in Canada. A thriving business could be set up where you bring in your HP printer, and walk out with a device that can use any ink at all. Canada could even host How-Tos and tools for the rest of the world on how to take control over your electronics. Can you imagine how quickly Tim Apple would book a flight to Mar A Lago to beg with Trump to back down?

I think this is much more likely in Mexico though. The respect for US intellectual property is already pretty low there to begin with. But, formally, the government still officially respects US IP. What if they let off the brakes entirely and just let the "invisible hand of the market" work without the handcuffs of IP law?

[-] Jhex@lemmy.world 6 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

You are not wrong in some of theses but they would requiere a legal framework that does not exist today to be created in a hurry.

Tariffs are literally easier so they are the first step and it does not mean they would be the last

[-] Dumpdog@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

Yes. This. Plus let's finally kill off Netflix in Canada. Who even uses that shithole of a service anymore?

[-] Dumpdog@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

Focus your anger on the American companies who have the money to buy up the mess after the economy tanks. Apple, Amazon, Google, Microsoft.

Pirate! Distribute! Destroy!

Also... don't buy their shit.

[-] nutsack@lemmy.world -1 points 6 months ago

what the fuck does this even mean?

[-] fine_sandy_bottom@discuss.tchncs.de 5 points 6 months ago

The text is hinting at a kind of conspiracy where you deliberately cause a market to crash and then just buy everything cheaply. I don't necessarily subscribe to that theory.

The meme is saying a blanket 25% retaliatory tariff is not a good idea but targeting specific items might be beneficial. I tend to agree with this. No point applying a tariff to goods for which there is no alternative.

[-] Dumpdog@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 6 months ago

Thank you for the respectful explanation even though you have other opinions.

I admit that the text is lacking in a detailed explanation. This comment was kind of a throwaway comment at the time, but there are certain aspects of these tariff actions that point to a reality.

  • Economists believe that these actions will have a detrimental effect on the US economy (All three North American Economies).
  • The administration is shutting down government services.
  • These services are necessary.
  • (This is where a possible "theory" may come in) The private sector will say they have come to "save" us and "bail out" these failing services. For example, educational institutions. Will they become privately run by Google ED, High School by Meta or some other company? Yes, This is definitely speculation but also not that far out to be tinfoil hat level.

We should recognize the importance of accessible public education because...if a fucking nutsack, dipshit can't read well enough to understand a throw away, 10 year old+ meme then we are already fucked.

[-] wise_pancake@lemmy.ca 3 points 6 months ago

I don't know a single person who isn't for a harsh retaliation. I haven't felt this united with my fellow Canadians ever.

[-] SketchySeaBeast@lemmy.ca 2 points 6 months ago

Smith isn't, and, as an Albertan, it's goddamn embarassing. Nothing authoritarians like more than a bigger authoritarian.

[-] sik0fewl@lemmy.ca 1 points 6 months ago

And Scott Moe in Saskatchewan.

[-] Voroxpete@sh.itjust.works 2 points 6 months ago

Honestly, all of this "51st state" bullshit has been a gift to Canada. For far too long the leaders on the right have been appealing to Canadian MAGA by emulating and praising everything Trump and his ilk do, and now they're being forced to either turn on Trump or turn on Canada. In something like a week he's shattered the alliance between the American right and the Canadian right, and left them absolutely spinning in the wind, searching for some sense of identity.

A smarter version of Trump would have kept his mouth shut until Pollievre was in, and then started to lean on him through back channels for consessions, just like Bush did with Harper. That filthy traitor would gladly give Trump everything he wants without a fight. But for Trump it's about the fight; slapping tariffs on other countries makes his tiny dick feel a little less tiny.

[-] SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca 2 points 6 months ago

All of these guys are stupid really. It would've made sense for Pollievre to not push for no confidence and just wait until October where he'd be up against Trudeau and probably win. But he got his way and Trudeau resigned. Now is he going to force an election in the winter where he's running against a stronger candidate? Last election the Liberals took a big hit in the polls from calling an unscheduled election. How many points will Pollievre lose if he makes a winter election happen?

Pollievre went all-in on US style politics and it's wearing thin. Running endless ads outside of a campaign has made people sick and tired of him. When his US brethren tank the economy people might question whether being "anti-woke" is sound economic policy.

It's still his election to lose, but it seems he's doing everything possible to make that happen.

[-] Voroxpete@sh.itjust.works 1 points 6 months ago

His other big problem is that he's just not very likeable. People hate Trudeau, so they were willing to side with anyone who would get him out. But with Trudeau gone voters are now faced with the fact that they really don't much like Pollievre either.

[-] SreudianFlip@sh.itjust.works 1 points 6 months ago

Yeah if you meet JT he’s just another confident politician in public and seems a bit shallow and kinda cringe, so whatever.

But everybody hates Skippy, the person. He’s a dick IRL and emptier than his résumé. The PP parade will just hold their noses and march anyway.

[-] merc@sh.itjust.works 0 points 6 months ago

But, they don't like Freeland either. And Jagmeet Singh has proven to be pretty useless.

It's still really likely that the conservatives would win in a landslide. But, at least now their rhetoric has to switch from copying the US to opposing the US.

[-] Voroxpete@sh.itjust.works 2 points 6 months ago

That likelihood has dropped a lot. Liberals are seeing a significant uptick in recent polls, and Carney has a very positive approval rating (+13 was the latest number I saw). He's a strong favourite to win the position, and he polls very well in hypothetical matchups against Pollievre right now.

[-] merc@sh.itjust.works 0 points 6 months ago

The latest polls still show a blowout victory for the Conservatives:

https://newsinteractives.cbc.ca/elections/poll-tracker/canada/

I don't think it's at all likely that the Liberals could win another majority, even another minority. That sucks because the conservatives always wreck stuff when they win. But there's this determined "things are bad, vote the current party out" mentality right now.

[-] Voroxpete@sh.itjust.works 1 points 6 months ago

It's not the current numbers in the polls you need to look at, it's the direction of the trend. Over the last few weeks if you compare numbers from the same pollsters you see a very rapid move away from the Conservatives. The polls still show a blowout for them, and even if current movements continue, they'll show a blowout for a while yet. FPTP voting systems produce very strong outcomes from very small differences, so it takes a while for trends in likely vote intention to translate into changes in seat counts. But if the current trends continue, you will see those seat counts change.

There are no guarantees of course, but also you need to keep in mind that Canadian politics are very different from US politics. Our polls tend to readjust strongly once an actual election is called. Polling outside of a campaign tends not to be as reliable an indicator of vote intention as it does in the US where they effectively have two year long elections.

[-] merc@sh.itjust.works 0 points 6 months ago

Canadian politics also has a very reliable cycle where the conservatives get elected, stay around too long, get blown out in an election that the Liberals win. Then the liberals get elected, stay around too long, and get blown out in an election that the Conservatives win.

When Pierre Trudeau lost his popularity, John Turner took over for a few months, but then Mulroney's conservatives blew him out of the water in the next election. When Mulroney became massively unpopular, Kim Campbell became PM for a few months until Chretien took over. When Chretien handed over to Paul Martin, he actually managed to win an election before it swung back to Harper and his Conservatives. The country is overdue for a swing back to the Conservatives. Changing the leader never works. Whoever becomes PM after a very unpopular leader quits gets a very short term.

Thinking this time is going to be different is just wishful thinking.

[-] Voroxpete@sh.itjust.works 2 points 6 months ago

OK, but we're talking about the next election, not the next ten years. And of the two examples you just offered, one of them was a case where the new leader won an election and stayed in for three more years before the other party got in.

And you used that to back up your claim that the Conservatives are guaranteed to win the next election. You see how that literally undercuts your own argument, right?

Personally, I'm not betting either way on how the next election is going to go. But that, in itself, is a drastic shift from where we were a few weeks ago when a Conservative victory was all but guaranteed. The current political reality has changed, that's a simple and unavoidable fact. Whether it has changed enough is not something that anyone can predict at this point.

[-] gift_of_gab@lemmy.world 0 points 6 months ago

And Jagmeet Singh has proven to be pretty useless.

Other than getting us pharmacare and dental added to our health care, sure.

[-] merc@sh.itjust.works -1 points 6 months ago

Pharmacare? Has it arrived? Or is it something they're still working on? As for dental added to healthcare, are you sure? Or was it just added for people with low-income?

[-] HellsBelle@sh.itjust.works 1 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

As for dental added to healthcare, are you sure? Or was it just added for people with low-income?

Jfc. Every Canadian knows that dental care has been enacted for under 18, 65+ and people with disabilities for over a year now.

Not knowing that kinda outs you as someone whose opinions mean nothing at all.

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[-] gift_of_gab@lemmy.world 0 points 6 months ago

Pharmacare? Has it arrived? Or is it something they’re still working on? As for dental added to healthcare, are you sure? Or was it just added for people with low-income?

That's on the Liberals, the NDP forced them into action.

This is like the fifth time the NDP has managed to change all our lives for the better while not even the official opposition, but they get called 'useless' either way.

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[-] Snowpix@lemmy.ca 0 points 6 months ago

As if the Australian ScoMo wasn't bad enough, now there's two of them...

[-] MonkeMischief@lemmy.today 1 points 6 months ago

now there's two of them

"This is getting out of hand!"

[-] Stalinwolf@lemmy.ca 1 points 6 months ago

Heard an old bitch (Alberta) complaining yesterday in my store about something Joe Biden did.

[-] SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca 1 points 6 months ago

Probably has more to do with her being in the pocket of the oil industry.

[-] Makeshift@sh.itjust.works 1 points 6 months ago

There are plenty of people in the US cheering for harsh retaliation, too. Despite being directly harmed by it.

This man is going out of his way to hurt everyone he can regardless, and everyone who can do anything here is just sitting down, shutting up, and obeying in advance.

I am glad that other countries are ready and willing to to hit this bully back. Seems like the best hope we have is from people on the outside.

[-] Azal@pawb.social 2 points 6 months ago

I'm in the US. Fucking make it hurt. Maybe it'll make the shitstains finally learn, or at least kill off enough that this shit won't be a worry in the near figure.

Is it gonna suck for me? Yup. But it is anyways, so instead of the frog in the pot lets flambe this shit.

[-] djsoren19@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 6 months ago

I'm cheering for harsh retaliation because it's the only language the orange man will understand. If the economy has to collapse for us to have any chance of getting Americans to ditch their support of fascism, well we've already fucked up a million times to get this far so we'll have to struggle through it.

[-] faythofdragons@slrpnk.net 1 points 6 months ago

If y'all want to burn the white house down again, I'll bring marshmallows for us to roast on the flames.

[-] Stalinwolf@lemmy.ca 1 points 6 months ago

I'm an expat who has been a permanent resident of Canada since 2017, and it's a horror show watching Trump receive a second term and then turn on Canada. I know his threat of invasion/buying Canada or whatever is all peacocking, but if in ten years I've been thrust back into the American healthcare system, I'll throw myself off of a bridge.

[-] SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca 0 points 6 months ago

Canada won't willingly be part of the US. If the US invades Canada, it would be the end of the US.

The US gets boners over their military tech, but they weren't able to successfully occupy Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, etc. Canada is bigger than those countries, and this would not be an overseas war where they can just go home when they fail. Americans don't have the willpower to succeed with a long drawn out occupation. They freak the fuck out over a few drones in New Jersey, they obviously wouldn't be able to handle a war on the North American continent involving drones flying over them carrying explosives and searching for targets. And that's just the tip of the iceberg of what a US war with Canada would be like.

[-] Grimy@lemmy.world 2 points 6 months ago

Imagine fighting a resistance that can just cross over the border and perfectly blend in with your population. It's madness to even suggest it even if they weren't important allies.

[-] merc@sh.itjust.works 1 points 6 months ago

The whole idea is ludicrous. There are so many things that would make it utterly impossible.

  1. The border. Ignore everything else, just think about the border. The US/Canada border is the longest land border on the planet. It's utterly impossible to defend that border.
  2. Utter lack of support for the war. Even the Vietnam War enjoyed a decent amount of popular support for the first few years. Imagine starting a war that more than 50% of the population opposed right off the bat.
  3. Conflict on US soil for the first time since the Civil War. Sure, the US participated in WWI and WWII, and they were the main military force in the Korean, Vietnam, and Gulf wars. Those were all wars that happened overseas somewhere. A few thousand people died on Sept. 11th and the whole country freaked out for decades. The US psyche isn't ready for a war on US soil.

Militarily, Canada couldn't stand up to the US at all. But, the "Troubles" in Northern Ireland show what guerilla tactics can achieve, especially when it's almost impossible to distinguish the "bad guys" from the "good guys". And, that's without even talking about all the Americans who would take the opportunity to turn against their own fascist government.

[-] brucethemoose@lemmy.world 0 points 6 months ago

Troop morale would be incredibly low, too. I would be pissed if I somehow got drafted to invade Canada. It’d be like something out of a cartoon.

[-] SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca 2 points 6 months ago

It would literally be asked to potentially die for the cause of betraying an ally for money. And not money for you, money for already extremely wealthy oligarchs.

[-] TipRing@lemmy.world 0 points 6 months ago

The population of the US has no appetite for invading Canada, many of us have close friends and family there, we consider Canada a friend and ally and Trumps hissy fit doesn't change that.

If the US invades Canada there will be a lot of Americans aiding resistance.

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[-] Furbag@lemmy.world 1 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

Good on Canada and Mexico for sticking to their guns and not rolling over for Trump. Show him that winning trade wars isn't as easy as he likes to think it is, and then force him into favorable terms when he implodes his own economy.

edit: lmao, well that was short. Tariffs don't go into effect until tomorrow and Trump already caved to pressure from Trudeau and Sheinbaum. Trump got the massive conciliation prize of... Canada and Mexico agreeing to do stuff they had already agreed to do under the Biden administration. lol.

[-] fine_sandy_bottom@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 6 months ago

There's a few comments like this, but what would rolling over look like and / or why would a country do that?

The entirely expected and appropriate response is to apply retaliatory tariffs. This doesn't take bravery and isn't "standing your ground" it's just the obvious default response.

[-] Furbag@lemmy.world 1 points 6 months ago

There’s a few comments like this, but what would rolling over look like and / or why would a country do that?

Look no further than Colombia, who was likewise threatened with tariffs by Trump if they refused to accept our deportees. They caved and accepted them after initially refusing them.

Now, in that case, I'm sure some people in the Colombian government likely did the math and determined that it would be cheaper to just accept the few hundred people Trump deported than to have the tariffs damage their economy by depressing the demand for exports like coffee.

The entirely expected and appropriate response is to apply retaliatory tariffs. This doesn’t take bravery and isn’t “standing your ground” it’s just the obvious default response.

It is if the tariffs were meant to stand on their own merit. Trump has only historically used tariffs as a threat to get what he wants. The one time he implemented targeted tariffs on China in his first term, it led to him having to bail out farmers with the money that was collected from the tariff revenue as a result of the retaliatory tariffs on agriculture exports. You would think he would have learned his lesson about using tariffs as a bluff and then following through anyway when it's called, but then again, we are talking about Trump here. You don't get to bankrupt a casino and still claim to have a shred of business acumen.

[-] fine_sandy_bottom@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 6 months ago

Yeah ok. Good points about Colombia. I think that's quite different given the trade surplus for them - they would sell a lot more coffee to the US than goods they import surely.

[-] Sanctus@lemmy.world 0 points 6 months ago

This isn't a bully, our organizations and institutions are under attack from an unelected billionaire who bought the president while he was still a candidate. This is a coup by neo Nazis. We are fucked and they will start a war with you.

[-] Agent641@lemmy.world 2 points 6 months ago

The moose cavalry will handle it.

[-] FlashMobOfOne@lemmy.world 0 points 6 months ago

God I hate trade wars, but good on Canada for not rolling over for Trump.

[-] shiroininja@lemmy.world 0 points 6 months ago

I really really hope they continue resisting. My biggest fear is everyone gives him what he wants and the idiots I’m surrounded by cheer his victory.

[-] synicalx@lemm.ee 1 points 6 months ago

I don't want to be a downer, but realistically considering the impact of this Canada is probably going to have to acquiesce at least temporarily.

Trump is applying cold, calculating business logic to this; Canada needs to do business with the US to a large degree, if that becomes costly their (relatively) small economy becomes less viable without reform which they don't have time to implement.

Don't get me wrong, I'm 100% behind Canada in fighting this but realistically it's not a fight they're going to win.

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this post was submitted on 01 Feb 2025
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