Mercantilist or Medieval?

[Chloe]

I hope Trudeau and Canada wins this unnecessary fight and shows Trump that insults and bullying are unacceptable.

[Chris]

Uuuugh. That's the last time I trust the World Socialist Web Site for quotations! I got the line from an article of their's at the time. The context was:



Since the line had been placed in quotation marks, and seemed believably like something Trump would, in fact, say, I assumed it to be a literal excerpt from the speech rather than an ideological paraphrase.

They're a pretty terrible news source anyway, I've found. Way too hyperbolic. Sorry about that.

Well it wasn't the only place with that. I think they were just paraphrasing, saying here's what I think he was saying.

[Chris]

I hope Trudeau and Canada wins this unnecessary fight and shows Trump that insults and bullying are unacceptable.

Economically their tariff will only hurt them by making Canadians pay more for imports.

[Captdon]

Strictly economically speaking, yes, we should let other countries harm their own citizens with tariffs and ourselves turn to a policy of free trade which will help us prosper as a whole.

I'm not convinced of the logic of that. How to we compete with countries with high tariffs?

[nathanbforrest45]

America first has been his guiding principle. Does he not believe that all deals should be in America’s favor??? He constantly says that.

Why would you not want any deal to be in our favor. If you went to buy a car would you want the deal to be in the car dealer's favor every time? That's absurd. Any deal should be beneficial to both parties. Why would you accept a trade deal that harms us but helps them?

[Chloe]

Why would you not want any deal to be in our favor. If you went to buy a car would you want the deal to be in the car dealer's favor every time? That's absurd. Any deal should be beneficial to both parties. Why would you accept a trade deal that harms us but helps them?

In most cases when you collaborate and meet in the middle both sides end up happy. But when one side publicly insults and bullies the other it hurts any chance of friendship and collaboration. There’s a special place in hell.

[nathanbforrest45]

I hope Trudeau and Canada wins this unnecessary fight and shows Trump that insults and bullying are unacceptable.

No, President Donald Trump should be like every other liberal politician in the last 150 years and kiss every other country's ass and give them everything they want. Maybe we should just stand in the square in sack cloth and ashes and tell the world how evil we are for being as successful as we have been.

[nathanbforrest45]

In most cases when you collaborate and meet in the middle both sides end up happy. But when one side publicly insults and bullies the other it hurts any chance of friendship and collaboration. There’s a special place in hell.

They have been insulting the United States for 100 years or more. Who cares about Canada anyway? What do they have to offer the United States that we can't provide for ourselves? If it weren't for the United States military Canada would be a providence of Russia or China today.

[Captdon]

In most cases when you collaborate and meet in the middle both sides end up happy. But when one side publicly insults and bullies the other it hurts any chance of friendship and collaboration. There’s a special place in hell.

Meet in the middle? No one has ever offered that.

[IMPress Polly]

There is literally no constituency for the Trump Administration's current policy on trade. I mean there are Midwestern labor unions (like the United Steelworkers, for example) that understandably support protective tariffs on the import of certain products from certain places to protect the jobs of the workers they represent, but none of them support a trade war with the likes of Canada and the European Union. That is the exclusive political territory of the alt-right movement.