Saturday, June 16, 2018

Just Say "No" to You Know Who


An Ipsos poll released Friday finds that 70 per cent of Canadians intend to boycott American goods.
Seventy per cent of Canadians say they will start looking for ways to avoid buying U.S.-made goods in a threat to ratchet up a trade dispute between Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and U.S. President Donald Trump, an Ipsos Poll showed on Friday. 
The poll also found a majority of Americans and Canadians are united in support of Trudeau and opposition to Trump in their countries’ standoff over the renegotiation of the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).
...Canadian respondents also signalled approval of the united front their politicians have shown, with 88 per cent saying they welcomed the support of politicians from other parties for the Liberal government’s decision to push back on tariffs. 
The Ipsos Poll of 1,001 Canadians and 1,005 Americans – including 368 Democrats, 305 Republicans and 202 Independents – was conducted June 13-14. It has a credibility interval of 3.4 percentage points.

16 comments:

Anonymous said...

Excellent! Protectionism creates jobs. Free-trade globalization turns them into slave labor.

Buy more Canadian, create more Canadian jobs, create more economic growth. It's a virtual circle/spiral of human development. Buying locally is better for the environment as well.

Of course, Fair Trade is good too. Donald J. Trump plans on raising the maximum you can buy online from US retailers from $20 to $800. First thing I want to buy is a $50 MAGA hat from the White House online gift shop.

Trump is not only making America great again, he's making Canada great again!

Of course, Trump's long term game plan is settling out on low levels of tariffs, even lower than the managed-trade post-war era. Unlike "far right" free-trading globalists, Donald J. Trump is a centrist moderate!

"The gig is up." (The 'g' is for 'globalist'.)

rumleyfips said...

So,protection is good and fair trade is good. Thanks ; that clears it up.

By the way, fair trade is just free trade spelled by Trump.

The Mound of Sound said...

Only in your dreams, Anon. Trump does not think that deeply. He never has. A person would at least have to have some facility with reading to devise the plans you imagine. Trump is not that person. He's a huckster, a con man and he preys on people exactly like you. I think you've been dining too indulgently on Sean Hannity's horseshit.

Anonymous said...

If you put trade on a left/right economic spectrum, you get:

a) Mercantilism on the far left (full government control over trade.)

b) Protectionism around the center (moderate democratic protection of jobs and markets from bleeding out in trade imbalances.)

c) Free-trade on the far right (no government involvement in trade – aside from corruption: socialize the costs, privatize the profits, tie the hands of democratic government.)

If we lived in a true civilization, free trade would be possible because living standards would be relatively equal across the globe like they are across states and provinces of developed countries.

But free-trade in a barbarian, neocolonialist hellhole just means more tyranny, oppression and deteriorating living standards from bleeding out.

That's why Fair Trade tariffs are needed to bring balance to trade and to civilization itself.

With social tariffs, you can force oligarchs to pay workers living wages. Trump is giving Mexico the option of paying a 2.5% tariff on autos or pay its workers $15/hr (from $3/hr.)

This has Trudeau and Mexican oligarchs outraged. (Tariffs during the post-war managed trade era were around 7%.)

Fair Trade also allows trading blocs to take action on environmental freeloaders with green tariffs.

This has been the progressive labor position for decades. I never would've imagined that Donald J. Trump would be the one bringing it to the world. I'm just grateful SOMEONE is finally talking sense about SOMETHING after 50 years of downward spiral.

Anonymous said...

"He's a huckster, a con man and he preys on people exactly like you."

America has had 55 years of huckster presidents. If Donald Trump turns out to be just another, then hopefully the Democrats will offer some alternative vision in 2020. So far all they seem to have come up with is a big fat nothing.

They should stop playing politics and get behind good ideas whenever they come up from whomever they come from. THIS SHOULD BE THEIR IDEA! But now they are shouting it down. Pathetic.

Jay Farquharson said...

LMFAO,

Havn't heard anything so dumb since Eric Ericsson tried to argue Adam Smith with Eric Loomis, where in Eric Ericsson, also known as "The Dumbest Man on the Internet", made it clear that the only Adam Smith he had ever read, came from Wikiquote.

LMFAO

The Mound of Sound said...


"This has been the progressive labor position for decades. I never would've imagined that Donald J. Trump would be the one bringing it to the world."

Don't eat that stuff, Anon. It's horseshit and you've already had your fill. Trump just lined his own and his family's pockets to the tune of many millions of dollars and those of the top 1% with many hundreds of millions of dollars in tax cuts. That lost revenue coupled with the expanded military budget is going to have to be made up with what? Foreign borrowing to the tune of well more than a trillion dollars. That will be a millstone around the necks of blue and white collar workers for decades.

Progressive policies begin with progressive taxation. With the solid economy that Obama bequeathed to the States this is the time that America should be paying off debt not adding to the deficit and the national debt. Instead, Trump is making America broke again by adding to the mountain of debt in a time of relative prosperity.

Unaffordable tax cuts for the rich, a burgeoning deficit projected for a decade or more, defunding government so it has few or no options for the next rainy day and you claim this guy is progressive.

How fucking stupid are you? I'm tired of your endless drivel. Like most of Trump's Gullibillies you wallow in some fantasy world purposefully ignorant of fact and reality. No one needs to read your nonsense. Just go away.

the salamander said...

.. we're already starting to examine labels more closely..
Food, drink, clothes, music etc etc
At the same time, I hate to penalize decent Americans
because their president is a buffoon as is the ruling Party.. But what the hey..
We tend to buy Canadian and local anyway
I buy music CD's so I own them & can give em away

We have no real current intentions to set foot in the US of A again..
Turks n Caicos is our pick and we went to Havana recently.. such an unusual place !
No toilet seats or paper at the airports and many restaurants, no aspirin
Have friends in Anguilla.. so there's a trip.. and Roatan !

I believe Mueller is the 'bullet'
and we can see what a suckhole Trump really is

Lorne said...

I am one who enjoys bourbon (in moderation, of course), Mound, and I will no longer purchase it as long as this trade war goes on. I will not buy it up preemptively, either. All of us have to be prepared to sacrifice something if we feel anything remotely resembling support for our country in the face of American madness.

Anonymous said...

Free trade jingoism.

Let's turn Canada into a Chinese resource colony! Canadians can visit the West coast and watch the train of bitumen super-tankers going by. Hell of a sight!

Let's screw the US and free-trade with Mexico directly. Ship out the auto sector and other manufacturing industries so the rich can make free money turning living wages into slave wages. Quintessential progressive!

Trump is dropping these bombs because the globalists can't get it through their thick skulls that the era of Friedmanian free-trade globalization has bitten the dust. "The gig is up."

Once they figure it out, like Kim Jung Un, the negotiating table is waiting for them to take their seats. Trump will warmly welcome them!

If Trump doesn't drop these bombs, free-trade globalization continues on by default. You have to take action to get things done. There is no other action that can be done – other than weakly acquiescing to foot-dragging globalists.

Trump isn't giving in. These "terrible trade deals" will be redone in the democratic interests of all nations involved to restore Ricardian balance of trade. No more free money for plutocrats and oligarchs.

Trump holds all the cards because all these countries have big trade surpluses with the US. The less they trade waging trade wars, the more they lose than just doing a fair balanced trade deal (with proper democratic oversight: "sunset clause".)

Trump has already won. And this is a wonderful thing for the entire world. If anyone can point out a bigger "progressive" victory over the past 50 years, I'd like to hear it.

Lulymay said...

Ohmigod! Anon @5.12 pm. This is an old saying, but you are dreaming in technicolour. Bullies will aways be bullies and people living in fear will easily be bullied. I can remember being in constant worry because the US vs Russia brought about the notion of building concrete bunkers in everyone's basement. I can remember that while I worked full time, how would I find my children when the "big" one happened. Fear is the best weapon of all politicians to keep us in line.

All these FTAs were never meant to enhance the financial position of us peons. I can remember Mulroney's successor (short term) screeching out at a political campaign "what are you people afraid of???" Well, now we know. We no longer have a manufacturing sector in Ontario, we no longer know where food on the local supermarket actually come from and we are shipping pretty well all all of our resources out raw, rather than gaining any value added component to them, and we ask ourselves "are we better off having FTA's"? That is the burning question.

Anonymous said...

The Fake Media – which is owned by upper-crust moochers – is inciting people to fear, hate and hysteria. Why? Because Donald J Trump is putting an end to the biggest and most destructive gravy train in the history of the world: free-trade globalization.

They are the bullies. They have always been the bullies. For the past 50,000 years – back when they figured out they could use human sacrifice to manufacture crises and terrorize the people into submission.

Trump is delivering on Fair Trade BIG TIME. My position has always been and will always be: facts or GTFO!

I've consistently been anti-free-trade, anti-neocon and anti-neoliberal the past 3 decades. (I.e., opposing the far-right neoclassical economic ideology of Milton Friedman.) Not because I joined some clique or cult. But because of the research and thinking I've put into these issues over time.

It's all a bill of goods. Upper-crust looting schemes that have been the source of skyrocketing debt and inequality and the erosion of our democratic institutions that culminated in global economic fraud and collapse.

Trump isn't fixing all the world's problems. But he is getting the ball rolling after 50 years of post-modern decay where leaders accomplished nothing but corruption serving upper-class excesses.

Anonymous said...

BTW, isn't dreaming in technicolour a "hopey changey" kind of thing? (One where you keep dreaming long after it's become obvious you've been had?)

I remember Chretien bringing this bullshit to Canada back in 1993. I wasn't fooled then either.

People who say I'm fooled by Trump seem to be greater fools as far as I can see.

the salamander said...

.. the comments of Anonymous 1:18
who is seemingly 'the smartest guy in the room'
grate on me.. pulled out of his ass, know it allness
Main theme is Trump 'getting the ball rolling'
Whatever.. wish there was a way to ID his comments
up front so I could just akip over them..
Its just pithy pissy smarm - extended play versions
adoration, veneration of delusional Trump
& hectoring & lecturing other comments
or the original article.. its so repetitious
and a waster of people's time

Jay Farquharson said...

It's why many blogs have moderated comments and banhammers.

Anonymous said...

"It's why many blogs have moderated comments and banhammers" ...so they can become echo chambers... and the past ~50 years of oligarchs pillaging the West can extend even farther. Status quo ante Trump is gone, and hopefully is not coming back.