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As President. Trump hit Canada and Mexico with widespread tariffs the two countries have announced their “retaliatory” tariffs and it just shows how they are trying to lash out but cannot follow through.
With Canada they announced 25 percent tariffs on imports amounting to up to $155 billion, including alcohol and fruit…. Remember they got hit with 25% tariffs on everything except energy which was hit with 10%. Canada in particular could make the easy move to fix this and they didn’t. Remember mere hours after Trump became President a border patrol agent was murdered along the Canada US border.
Mexico has a much bigger issue in that there federal government is extremely weak. The cartels sadly run vast amounts of the country and their former President allowed it to happen to try and lessen the murders. Sure murders went down but it made more areas narco states and not under the governments power. Now the US is standing up to the BS border policies Mexico allowed and wants the Mexican government to crack down and they have refused.
Both of these governments cannot outlast the US and while the US might take some damage it cannot be compared to what the Canadian and Mexican governments are facing.
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What is Trump's goal here? To get Mexico to crack down on gangs? To get Canada to... ?
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Canada is a huge gateway for precursor chemicals for drugs. Now it’s Fentanyl but before it was for MDMD (Molly) so they have a clear and known issue here. Plus oddly enough Canada is the gateways for Indian illegal immigrants into the US. The northern border has been a quietly growing issue.
Mexico has had the cartels shoot at people in the US for years. In El Paso they have hit both pregnant and other US civilians before and the violence hasn’t gone down. I mean if the US shot into Mexico they would have a meltdown but they shoot into the US and at our people and expect nothing to happen. Well now it is.
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51 sats \ 0 replies \ @Jer 2 Feb
Canada is a huge gateway for precursor chemicals for drugs. Now it’s Fentanyl but before it was for MDMD (Molly) so they have a clear and known issue here. Plus oddly enough Canada is the gateways for Indian illegal immigrants into the US. The northern border has been a quietly growing issue.
Asking in good faith: can you post links to the source for this statement? Problems do exist, no doubt. Both our border agencies have work to do. All I keep reading from the Trump machine are vague comments like "it's very bad, terrible really. We won't talk about how bad, but I think you know".
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The cartels are based in Mexico, not in Canada.
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And I wonder how China’s 10% tariffs relate to this 🤔
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And the point of 25% tariffs is to make drugs more expensive so that Americans won’t be able to buy them anymore.
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From what I've heard, it's border related in both cases. He wants improved border security.
I do wonder if there's another element of getting people used to high tariff rates, as a precursor to moving away from income taxes and towards tariffs/excise. Obviously, heavy tariffs on our main trade partners are the only feasible ways to generate that kind of revenue.
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He wants improved border security.
Has he considered building the walls?
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I think he's considering everything: walls, drone swarms, sharks with frickin' laser beams on their heads...
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I can’t believe he went with tariffs having sharks with laser beams as an option…
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There's no accounting for taste. Plus, I hear it is pretty hard to train those sharks.
0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Jer 2 Feb
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Austrians and classical liberals have their popcorn ready. (Not the assholes at mises.org, I assume)
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9 sats \ 0 replies \ @Jer 2 Feb
Canada in particular could make the easy move to fix this and they didn’t. Remember mere hours after Trump became President a border patrol agent was murdered along the Canada US border.
I'm uncertain about the discussions between the two governments behind closed doors, but finding a solution isn't straightforward. As a Canadian, I believe our federal government should increase spending to combat human trafficking and fentanyl within our borders. If this benefits the US too, that's great! However, it seems Trump views Canada as the major issue, contrary to the data. How can governments negotiate when they can't agree on basic facts and reality.
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Did it work? Anyone?
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Remember that Canada did not "pick a fight". They're on the receiving end here.
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @galt 2 Feb
For people interested in understanding the drug angle for Canada, Sam Cooper gives a thorough investigation in "Wilful Blindness: Election Interference | Elite and State Capture (Holding the Chinese Communist Party to Account)"
Synopsis:
"In 1982 three of the most powerful men in Asia met in Hong Kong. They would decide how Hong Kong would be handed over to the People’s Republic of China and how Chinese business tycoons Henry Fok and Li Ka-Shing would help Deng Xiaoping realize the Chinese Communist Party’s domestic and global ambitions. That meeting would not only change Vancouver but the world. Billions of dollars in Chinese investment would soon reach the shores of North America’s Pacific coast. B.C. government casinos became a tool for global criminals to import deadly narcotics into Canada and launder billions of drug cash into Vancouver real estate. And it didn't happen by accident. A cast of accomplices — governments hungry for revenue, casino, and real estate companies with ties to shady offshore wealth, professional facilitators including lawyers and bankers, an aimless RCMP that gave organized crime room to grow — all combined to cause this tragedy. There was greed, folly, corruption, conspiracy, and wilful blindness.
Decades of bad policy allowed drug cartels, first and foremost the Big Circle Boys — powerful transnational narco-kingpins with ties to corrupt Chinese officials, real estate tycoons, and industrialists — to gain influence over significant portions of Canada’s economy. Many looked the other way while B.C.’s primary industry, real estate, ballooned with dirty cash. But the unintended social consequences are now clear: a fentanyl overdose crisis raging in major cities throughout North America and life spans falling for the first time in modern Canada, and a runaway housing market that has devastated middle-class income earners. This story isn’t just about real estate and fentanyl overdoses, though. Sam Cooper has uncovered evidence that shows the primary actors in so-called “Vancouver Model” money laundering have effectively made Canada’s west coast a headquarters for corporate and industrial espionage by the CCP. And these ruthless entrepreneurs have used Vancouver and Canada to export their criminal model to other countries around the world including Australia and New Zealand. Meanwhile, Cooper finds that the RCMP’s 2019 arrest of its top intelligence official, Cameron Ortis, raises many frightening questions. Could Chinese transnational criminals and state actors targeting
Canada’s industrial and technological crown jewels have gained protection from the Mounties? Could China and Iran have insight into Canada's deepest national security secrets and influence on investigations? Ortis had oversight of many investigations into transnational money laundering networks and insight into sensitive probes of suspects seeking to undermine Canada’s democracy and infiltrate the United States, according to the evidence Cooper has found.
Wilful Blindness is a powerful narrative that follows the investigators who refused to go along with institutionalized negligence and corruption that enabled the Vancouver Model, with Cooper drawing on extensive interviews with the whistle-blowers; thousands of pages of government and court documents obtained through legal applications; and large caches of confidential material available exclusively to Cooper.
The book culminates with a shocking revelation showing how deeply Canada has been compromised, and what needs to happen, to get the nation back on track with its “Five Eyes” allies."
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Aren't things not just gonna get more expensive for Americans by imposing tariffs on foreign products? It's the American consumer who will pay more, no?
Not too familiar with the dynamics, but can't see this being a net positive for anyone, other than some political posturing.
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