What is the point of tariffing Canada? It would piss off an “ally” for no good reason.
He’s trying to break Canada and Mexico before going after the rest of the world with tariffs while also locking down common investment in the American security complex.
If global powers united for tariffs on the US to prevent further crackdown then he just gets another failed Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act (link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smoot–Hawley_Tariff_Act)
You can read and infer his strategy from Stephen Marin’s paper on remaking the global trade system here:https://www.hudsonbaycapital.com/documents/FG/hudsonbay/research/638199_A_Users_Guide_to_Restructuring_the_Global_Trading_System.pdf
Liberals act like it’s irrational behavior, it’s not, more like desperate behavior. The PRC flimflammed the US in a spectacular move, forcing the US to make a critical, possibly terminal mistake. China took on market changes to build up its productive powers. It’s in line with Orthodox Marxism that a nation has to go from primitive communism -> feudalism -> mercantilism (early-style capitalism) -> (mid-stage) capitalism -> neoliberalism (late-stage capitalism)-> socialism -> communism But China was intelligent enough to always have the Party in charge, unlike other times when the US ruined communist projects by having them adopt capitalism which led to the corporate oligarchy of liberalism…
So now some people in the US want to attempt to reindustrialize to compete with China at a break-neck speed, even if that means hurting American citizens and breaking ties with key allies.
Like he originally said during the maralago dinner with Trudeau, the tariffs are moreso about “border security”, meaning militarization, metering, and holding cells on either side (Mexico is already considering to hold non-mexican deportees in their facilities). And if they don’t play ball, it’s tariff time baby.
It was conveyed to the Canadian delegation the tariffs are unavoidable in the immediacy, but solutions in the longer term are on the table, particularly if the border is better secured.
I’m a big believer in tariffs. I think tariffs are the most beautiful word. I think they’re beautiful. It’s going to make us rich
Trump said in an interview with NBC’s Meet The Press that aired Sunday. In that interview, the U.S. president-elect later reiterated his border concerns:
We can’t have open borders. And I said to the president of Mexico and to Justin Trudeau, if it doesn’t stop, I’m going to put tariffs on your country at about 25 per cent
It seems that the goal is to make it so prohibitively expensive to import things that it opens up niches to start producing them domestically. It will necessarily drive prices up in the near term, but it’s also not clear that it would achieve the desired effect long term either. Traditionally, the kinds of investments that would be needed require state involvement, and so far my impression is that they’re just going to leave it to private business and hope that magic happens. I don’t think they’ve really thought this through, but they’re starting to realize that lack of domestic self sufficiency is a really weak point for them in the contest with China.
Yeah the idea behind the tariffs, in addition to the simple extortion aspect where they believe that the mere threat of them is enough to get other countries to bend the knee and do whatever the US wants, is that they are supposed to foster a regrowth of domestic industries by raising the prices of imports. The problem is that this only works if you actually have a proper domestic industrial economic policy and you don’t continue to follow the same neoliberal financialized model that hollowed out your industries in the first place. Since they will not and cannot break the power of the finance monopolies, these tariffs are not going to do what they did back in the 19th century and instead will just lead to further economic deterioration and isolation for the US.
Michael Hudson explained this very well in an interview in which he appeared together with Richard Wolff a couple months ago: https://youtube.com/watch?v=r6Ovguv1BSA&t=7819s
Precisely, the only way industry would come back is through massive government programs that are not politically possible in the states.
At a bare minimum they would have to massively bring down cost of living so that labor prices can be competitive with the rest of the world and such that industry will want/be able to hire US workers. Which won’t happen because that threatens the profits of the rentier class (which includes things like the whole healthcare industry racket and various other effective monopolies like tech, telecom, pharma, agribusiness), plus it would crash the housing market on which a lot of people’s household wealth and savings/pensions rely making it politically a non-starter.
On top of that you would then have to uproot the entire parasitic system of finance that prioritizes investment according to short term stock market gains over actual industrial growth. And the only real way of doing this is the nationalization of banking, which is never, ever going to be something that a US politician would even dare consider. It wouldn’t even cross their minds that’s how taboo the very idea of that is.
So how can you ever hope to solve a problem when your entire ideological, social and cultural indoctrination has literally left you incapable of even imagining the kinds of solutions that would be required? Well, you can’t and so they won’t.
Meaningfully bringing down labor cost would require inevesting in public services, and you’re right that it can’t happen. It would mean providing things like universal healthcare, public transit, pensions, etc. That goes completely contrary to the dominant narrative in the states.
I think the approach they’re gonna try to go with is to try and create a huge reserve army of labor by first creating mass unemployment. At that point people will be desperate enough to work jobs in terrible conditions just to feed themselves. They basically want to bring back Dickensian times.
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
It’s kinda like a body without a brain
Its kinda comedic relief ngl
Thing is, conditions suck so much for a lot of Americans right now that blatantly extorting other countries for money (or they believe so at least) is pretty popular right now, which countries exactly doesn’t even matter much anymore.
Except they’re not really extorting other countries (unless those countries are stupid enough to give in to the mere threat) since tariffs are not paid by other countries. They are paid by US importers and as a result by US consumers. Really they are just taxing their own citizens. Problem is that a significant chunk of Americans have no idea what tariffs even are, they just support them because they think it sounds like they’re “being tough” on other countries, they mistakenly assume that it’s a way to punish/tax other countries. It’s the good old combo of ignorance+vindictiveness which explains so many of the policies that a quite sizeable chunk of the US population support.
But Americans had always extorted further European colonies though debt trapping and military invasion to support property governments, especially to enrich the European immigrant oligarchy. What is the difference of Trump’s tariff other than to extort another free rider?
downfall of the us empire begins saturday bring your snacks
As far as i see it this is a win-win. Either this gambit fails and the US comes out of this looking weaker than ever with its grip on its vassals diminished, or it succeeds and shows to the world that the US does not have allies but rather only subjects that it keeps in line through bullying. Either way a further nail the coffin of the myth of the liberal “rules based order” upon which US hegemony relies.
At this point the geopolitical situation for the US is like quicksand. If it does nothing it continues to slowly sink, but if it struggles aggressively it only sinks faster.
The liberal establishment can just say “Trump bad” though.
Exactly, and I’d argue whether they back down or not, the cat is out of the bag. US vassals can now see that US is willing to bully them.
Angela Merkel basically admitted it in 2014 when she called for proactive security measures against Russia for invading? Crimea, she was asked, “Why didn’t Germany call for sanctions on the US for invading Iraq?” and she said something like “We know the US is bad on foreign policy but at least they never attack their allies”.
🤣
