The lack of homework and research, the inability to track what is happening, and letting all that show. Like the clueless teacher in high school who gets a “Kick Me!” sign taped to his back without realizing what has been done to him.
Emphasis mine, but only here on the ‘Grok.
This time, the Clueless One is an American – although I will give him props for remembering NAFTA (but forgetting that USMCA replaced it). And yes, as he admitted, “something I’m missing here.”
I am really at a loss here as to why the U.S. would want to place a 25% tariff on goods and materials moving across the border between the United States and Canada and between the U.S. and Mexico. I keep hearing from different sources about how Canada, Mexico and the United States are allies. I have never known the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) to cause such consternation as these tariffs appear to be causing.
Personally, as an American, I don’t want to pay more as a consumer for imported products and materials coming across the United States’ northern and southern borders. But isn’t that what’s effectively going to happen with these tariffs in place?
Unless there’s something I’m missing here, the only possible good that I can see coming as a result of these tariffs being imposed, is a lowering in emissions mucking up the common air that Canadians, Mexicans and Americans all share.
COJ1, a conservative commenter (one of maybe 4 of us) piped up to give him a clue:
I am not sure where you are getting your news from, but the reason is illegal immigrants and drugs. And a little bit of a trade imbalance. But the former is the most important. Notice not one thing was said about the illegals and drugs. Now you know where their priorities are.
And in return, this Alan Kandel points to Paul Krugman’s Substack as his “knowledgebase” – heh! So I tried to summarize this topic again – and torqued off Lloyd Alter again (it’s become so easy!):
Summary: not enough people, as seen by Lloyd’s writing and the commenters here, understand that tariffs are not just about taxes against other countries’ products and services. It’s a tool that can be used in negotiations – and Trump used it to get what he thought was best for the US. Not everything, but enough.
It was a nudge and neither Trudeau and Sheinbaum didn’t “get it”…until they did. It was never about shutting out Canada and Mexico from the American marketplaces. It was always to get something else.
And for the record, both Trudeau and Sheinbaum understood that neither of their countries had any economic leverage against the US during the negotiations so threatening retaliatory tariffs were meaningless. However, Trump believed that it was necessary for both to act in their own self-interest that also served the US’s.
And no one here, I’m thinking, still understands. But then, again, most of you don’t play in the political realm at all. COJ1 got it, however.
Again, Trump is no politician and certainly doesn’t behave like one, and that’s what’s giving everyone fits. Even those prior Presidents who came out of the business world became part of the “Political Blob” that, in an unwritten way, that Presidents act in only certain ways.
Trump is continuing to act like a business man – a highly successful one that doesn’t care a whit what “Presidential norms are”. He’s not just a shark – he’s an Orca and Trudeau and Sheinbaum is his big fat slob blue-fin tunas. “Ding Ding Ding” went his dinner bell and he came to feed. And feed he did – he ate their dignity while getting his goals – more security for our borders.
One could also call him a magician of sorts – like in his first term, he calls peoples’ attentions to the Glittering Balls In The Air he creates with one hand while his real work is being done by the other. Or another analogy is apt – everyone is rising to the chum he throws out and when being distracted in their media/political frenzy, he’s got the real targets in process that no one is noticing.
Certainly, Lloyd isn’t looking for that second hand – yet:
You don’t beat your best partner over the head with a club and kick their entire economy into turmoil a a “negotiating” tool. We have spent 40 years since Reagan integrating our economies and now nobody trusts anyone. As Premier Doug Ford, a trump supporter said, “you stabbed me in the heart.” I was not going to engage in comments but I have been in real estate development too and I know negotiations. I wouldn’t deal with people like this, I would rather leave money on the table. I was not going to engage here but you guys take this all so lightly. “Just stop the drugs” but there are almost none and they are all carried by Americans. It is much bigger than that and the goalposts change every day.
So, an elementary level class was needed first followed up by what is really going on.
Lord Palmerston, a 19th-century British Prime Minister – “We have no eternal allies, and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual, and those interests it is our duty to follow.”
Your first problem is that you think that countries are always friends; reread that quote.
A nation should ALWAYS put their interests FIRST above other nations. Cooperate when there is a common interest but there are times when a “common interest” needs to be forged (or has to be dissolved). Trump saw that a US self-interest / common interest need had to be forged – he got it. I’m also sure that both Trudeau and Sheinbaum got things “behind the scenes” as well to fulfill THEIR country’s self-interest as well.
“I wouldn’t deal with people like this, I would rather leave money on the table.”. I remember you once answered me that if a client wanted something THEIR way that you thought was wrong, you’d quit. That’s not a lot of negotiating.
Trust me, I don’t EVAH take politics lightly because I know how important it is (and most people don’t) and this post is ALL about politics. So are the negotiations that Trump starts and usually from starting points that most people, especially those used to only “just politics as normal”, have no idea how to respond or think about someone who comes at it from an entirely different orientation.
You, and the others, responded exactly as I thought you would. MY first reaction to the tariffs against Canada and Mexico, however, was “I do wonder exactly what he wants but it isn’t about financially punishing either country – it is something else (and I was partially right)”. He just wanted to put in a bit of chaos, get attention knowing that both countries would be too blinkered to see his other possibilities, and then get what he wanted because the price of not negotiating was so high for them.
Trust me, when some locales (like mine) and small industries would bear some burden, the outsized difference between the US economy and them, it would not be hurtful to ours as we have far more alternatives to switch to. When US Senator Schumer tried to shame us by shaking a Canadian beer and a Mexican avocado, I laughed as I don’t drink alcohol and I don’t eat guacamole.
The real target, btw, was China was the 10% and removal of “de minimus” shipping exception if you’re not tracking.
So, I’ll ask – do you know what Trump wanted when he said that the US should take over Gaza? Another country has already bought into the idea of “the Riviera of the Red Sea”. It won’t be the last country in on this deal nor the last time and he’ll still get what he wants…do you know what that is, Lloyd?
It’s like Mexico and Canada now paying to guard our borders (just like he got Mexico to pay for “the wall” in his first term – just not in the manner that most that had too much tunnel vision to focus on.
Oh, this too – do you understand what the end result of the “Riviera of the Red Sea” would be?
Sadly, I don’t think it was enough – he still doesn’t “get” Trump and I got him mad:
I know that very well, I was working for a real estate developer in the 90s and built a condo in Jaffa, going every month to get rocks thrown at me by the Haredim (Orthodox Jews) who said I was building on an ancient cemetery. This will not end well.
I know also that in a world full of enemies, you don’t start by f**king over your friends, which is what Trump is doing to Canada. Bad plan.
Well, to that last point, I’d rather see a more closer scenario on trade and it’s not like, if attacked by “our enemies”, that Canada is going to be able to provide much help – my response:
>> “you don’t start by f**king over your friends”
So what was the financial harm done to Canada, as you claim Trump has done by the threat of a tariff? Is it a financial harm to have the trade imbalance, to the tune of $65 to $100 billion, favoring Canada?
And Canada is only spending 1.37% GDP as a NATO “partner” – it isn’t even doing the old standard of 2% much less the 5% that is the newer standard. But it assumes that the US of A will protect it against a surging China as well as Russia over the Arctic?
Certainly, Trump was correct as Mexico has been allowing illegal aliens to traverse its nation to enter the US in not following our laws. Add to it, allowing its cartels (that have almost turned Mexico into a failed [narco]state to bring in illegal drugs. With that, isn’t that the case that Mexico was screwing over “its friend”?
In the end, no tariffs were enforced – I’d say there was no harm.
>> “This will not end well”.
So if you are not in favor of Trump’s opening gambit for Gaza, what is your solution? And how does that ever compare in context and proportionality in the religious politics (which Gaza/Israel is ALL about) to the Haredim?
Seriously – what kind of an extremely bad example was he trying to have me believe that rock throwing Jews protecting a cemetery is equivalent to the war that Hamas brought to Israel? And Trump making a case to get Gaza rebuilt?
UPDATE – Now both Egypt and Jordon are signing onto this project. Perhaps not the way that Trump presented it but the conversations have started – exactly like I knew would happen. So I’m betting Lloyd’s “this will not end well” won’t stand much of a chance of being correct and won’t age well.
And then he stopped replying.
Tell me, dear readers – am I being too “problematic” and harsh? Is it me that is getting this all wrong?
Or is this just another case of TDS and a failure to see that sometimes, solutions out of the blue can be effective to get to a positive outcome?
(H/T: Carbon Upfront!)
