Airline demand between Canada and United States collapses, down 70%+
Why do you think this is about a trade dispute?
That makes me think this is all asinine rhetoric to
(1) squeeze Canada, Europe, and other allies of the trade deficit goodwill for a quick buck. That stuff America used to maintain global soft power and hegemony - cashing it in for a quick buck.
(2) run quick and chaotic pump and dumps where donors get to make enormous alpha on the market volatility (this could seriously just be market manipulation games?), and/or
(3) satisfy the geopolitical powers that may or may not be underwriting Trump, Musk, Gabbard, et al. Saudis, Russians, and Chinese. Several of this gang are politically exposed persons, possibly with exposure or debts to all three groups.
So if Canada were to join as states, it would be something like a Republican Western Canada and a Democratic Eastern Canada. Or some sort of strange split that gives 2+2. Definitely not the existing boundaries, because that'd likely be an 8/2 Democratic/Republican split.
Zero support for any legislation other than Canadian Separation. Be a poison pill.
And that's the non-violent response.
It's also not a coherent proposal at any level, how the hell does all of Quebec join the US, a country which is unilingual English by policy?
a country which is unilingual English by policy?
To be clear the US only has a unilingual policy because Trump signed an executive order this year (and I believe even this SCOTUS would strike the order down as unconstitutional if anyone had standing to sue over it).
The US has always been de facto unilingual, but de jure we don't have an official language since Trump has no legal authority to establish that. The "policy" is political and legally empty.
And not anywhere close to what would be tolerable for Canada's francophone population, and especially Quebec which would simply immediately begin separation.
And it's not "soft acceptance of Spanish here and there," all levels of government are legally required to print official documents in whatever languages their community speaks; cities usually have ballots in dozens of languages. This is a constitutional requirement, bolstered by the Voting Rights Act, and Trump has not yet done enough damage to make those legal requirements go away via diktat.
We are not kidding when we say that the American way of life and the Quebec one are incompatible. But this is all moot, the Canadian constitution would require a referendum to decapitate Canada, and that would never get the 50% vote per province that is required. Right now they'd get at most 10%.
All federally managed things & services, including travel on airlines, airporst etc, fully bilingual. All packaging of goods, across the whole country. Access to legal services, no matter where, bilingual. Highway signs, etc. The list goes on.
Here in Ontario, at least, right to full public school education in French, in the French system, if you come from a Francophone family.
The idea being that even in areas of the country that are not Quebecois or predominantly Francophone there are rights granted because of the French being part of the founding of the nation.
The US is de facto unilingual English since its founding. Trump's EO did not change that.
I come originally from Alberta, and I have certainly met my share of people whose opinions would not be anywhere close to the centre of American politics.
Broadly the conservative right in Canada tolerates socialized medicare. They'd gladly and instantly throw it under the bus the moment it being politically possible to do it. But for now at least it's still poisonous to make those opinions known.
Former PM Stephen Harper worked for the National Citizens Coalition for a period of time, and that organization was explicitly founded in the late 70s to oppose and try to stop/end public healthcare and the Canada Health Act.
I suspect if you get them in private and off the record, most Conservative leaders would admit to desiring to see change here.
President Xi: "we're going to take Hawaii and nuke Texas. JK jk. Or maybe not lol".
That's the timeline where everything turns to glass.
Were it not for the brutal disparity of power, the American ambassador would already be expelled. That's what would happen if this kind of thing were happening between any other two nations.
I am trying to put into words something here, and forgive me if I fail, but this discussion about what internal politics would look like in a hypothetical US that included Canada feels quite disrespectful to me. I think it's because it reads like an attempt to normalize the rhetoric, even when it isn't (based on the rest of your post).
The thing I don't get is that if Canada became part of the US, Republicans would never hold power again. Don't they know that?
Trump was asked[0] about that and gave a rambling answer about artificial borders, beautiful landmasses, and conservative candidates, without answering the question.
I think the truth is that he doesn't know how the world works, and he has gotten away with being a bs artist failing upwards his whole life.
The thing I don't get is that if Canada became part of the US, Republicans would never hold power again.
That depends, really. All of Canada? In what pieces and shapes? Alberta, for instance, might become a state, and I'm somewhat certain it could end up red. All of Canada as a single state? That's a little different. If Toronto and Ontario in general are carved up correctly, there's little worry of this backfiring. Hell, maybe they even end up offering Quebec independence... which would certainly make Canadian patriotism dry up quickly in those parts.
That is an interesting assumption.
Are Americans not aware that their head of state is threatening to annex us? Oh, and judging from social media comments, his supporters think this is a really nifty, clever idea. Why do you think this is about a trade dispute?
I don't see why you guys can't dislike us for more than one reason. The annexation threat, and then the weird tariff demands that came out of left field, they both seem like good reasons, and you could even treat them as addition.
Where it crosses the line is incidents like this:
https://www.montrealgazette.com/news/provincial-news/article...
e.g. yesterday's 25% auto-tariffs = potentially half a million unionized well-paid Canadians out of a job, in Canada's economic heartland, with no reasonable employment alternatives.
Basically a declaration of economic war.
The US can no longer be trusted. They’ve squandered a century of friendship. For nothing.
For nothing.
"Nothing" for most people, but for those building a fascist state, it's for lots of power and money.
Being a bully, making people pick sides (even for ridiculous things), making people fear your personal police/border force, etc - all part of the dictator playbook.
And really, the not-into-a-corrupt-idiocracy states -- one where lawless will-enslave-people-for-$ garbage like El Salvador and Russia are your besties -- should be openly talking about secession. The right likes to pretend it's unthinkable when the so-called "blue states" broach it, yapping some "indivisible!" line, but Texas has spent every Democrat government with in the open secession planning. Abbott was busy setting up Texas "consulates" of sorts, preparing to be their own little country. All because equal rights and healthcare offend them so. Now there's a grotesquely incompetent group of criminal grifters and clowns talking about abolishing federal courts, completely annihilating the constitution, and openly joking about invading literal allies. Mix in some advertising of their shitcoin crypto and getting rid of the gold stockpile for Bitcoin.
It's your time, blue states. What the hell are you waiting for?
The American idea and patriotism is so profoundly deep in the psyche of almost every American, I can't imagine any kind of post-USA state have any existence without profound catastrophe and violence. Maybe your country did a disservice to future generations by not just letting the southern states just... leave... because the cultural gap between north and south seems to be a source of serious long term and structural problem.
And from watching American discourse from a distance up here, I actually think the US is far less divided than American liberals would like to think. A large polity in the US has swung over to MAGA, more than in 2016. The trend is heading in the wrong direction. For now.
Trump 2016 looked like an accident and a huge but blundering catastrophe. Now it looks far more sinister.
But I mean Texas is as "blue" as New York is "red". Yet Texas is unabashedly, overtly a Republican state. 1/3 of extremely red Arkansas voted Democrat. If it came to shooting, it wouldn't be state vs state, it would be zipcode vs zipcode.
I actually think the US is far less divided than American liberals would like to think
The US is approaching a 50/50 divide between extremely different political opinions, where each then changes everything to force their view on the other. It is extraordinarily divided. And that was before "MAGA" in the US decided that allies are actually enemies, Russia is a friend, and sending people charged with no crime and with no due process to a random corrupt banana republic -- El Salvador -- that will enslave them for $, and it's just grossly untenable: These are positions that are completely orthogonal to those that America has set for itself during all of modern history. It can't go on. There is no way that the alternate positions are compatible.
For Canada specifically, I would imagine the story of the Canadian woman[1] who was incarcerated without charges for two weeks(!!!) while holding a valid visa would deter a significant number of travelers. As an American, I would not travel to any country where stories like this one were emerging.
1 - https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/19/canadian-det...
I don't know how the US process works, but long ago when I worked in a foreign country, I was required to leave the country and get my work visa added to my passport upon reentry. Reading that article made me consider that she might have been in a similar situation, only she was incarcerated for two weeks in subhuman conditions due to (at most) a clerical error.
It's really a risk for people who are not US citizens to cross our borders right now.
The resolution was that due to prior visa issues, she needed to apply for her visa at a consulate. Then they imprisoned her.
Since all your ICE holding facilites are privately run, the incentive is to get people into incarceration as soon as possible and to keep them there as long as possible. Before Trump came back, the gloves were on and the capitalists running those prisons only made bank on the darker shades of people, but with Trump back it's time to make money with all the skin colours!
The second factor is multiple stories this month of non-criminals being treated like terrorists in cells and extrajudicial abuse.
The US now looks like North Korea from the outside.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada%E2%80%93United_States_s...
Unfortunately we are dependent on them. Hopefully, this will cause us to start weening ourselves off of a single predatory partner.
The US was never our friend.
Wouldn't U.S. assistance during WWI, WWII, NORAD, Afghanistan, the 1917 Halifax Explosion, the 2008 financial crisis, the 2016 Fort McMurray Wildfires, the COVID-19 pandemic, and other instances of disaster relief count as gestures of friendship?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada%E2%80%93United_States_r...
The United States has no closer and no more important friend than Canada ... And when we work together, as the closest of friends should, we only make each other stronger.
https://bidenwhitehouse.archives.gov/briefing-room/speeches-...
WWII
So fighting the Nazis was a favor and not a moral obligation? A war they didn't enter until Nazi-aligned Japan attacked?
WWI
I believe the US didn't enter until the sinking of the Lusitania.
Afghanistan
Isn't that a Canadian favor to the US?
the 2008 financial crisis
Precipitated by American deregulation and excess? What a gift!
I'm not saying the US is entirely bad, but let's not confuse small kindnesses with friendship. The lack of backlash to Trump's comments I think speaks volumes to the condescension that lurked for years. Even the "loving" comments about being America's hat. Or jokes and charicatures about Canadians that would be consider racist about anyone else.
No, America was never Canada's friend. Sometimes an agreeable coworker.
I believe the US didn't enter until the sinking of the Lusitania.
The Lusitania was sunk in 1915, the US only entered WWI in 1917, mostly because Germany had recommenced unrestricted submarine warfare and proposed an anti-US alliance to Mexico (the famous Zimmermann telegram).
I don't know why the media is assenting to this. I had thought they had at least some level of independence from policymakers due to being owned by businesses with distinct interests, but I am having to question that assumption. It is not entirely clear what they know that I don't that explains how this can be carried out.
https://news.gallup.com/poll/472421/canada-britain-favored-r...
No, America was never Canada's friend.
I'm inclined to agree simply because "friend" is too gentle of a term. But, if that's true, then which country has America really been friends with? It seems like if not Canada, then there's none. That may be true, but at least initially surprising.
Canada, through the (actually fairly limited!) existing free trade exceptions in NAFTA/USMCA - which, again, Trump agreed to in the past and, in his usually banal hyperlative word salad, described as "beautiful" and "wonderful" and "perfect" and "the best ever" - did not violate an established agreement. And, more importantly, Canada certainly hasn't gone on for months about how the US isn't a real country, shouldn't be entitled to self-governance, and how we're going to leverage our power to annex it. It's hardly "returning the favour".
That’s what “annex” means. It’s not a joke for him. He wants it to be his legacy.
US media seems to be sanewashing the annexation threats as a "joke", but we take it very seriously up here. Your president has said many times that it's not a joke. Believe him.
Kristi Noem went to a library that straddles the border and repeatedly stepped back and forth, saying "51st state" every time she stepped into Canada: https://www.ctvnews.ca/montreal/article/dhs-secretary-kristi...
Elon Musk called Canada "not a country". He deleted it but it was a real tweet: https://x.com/essenviews/status/1894270080206135705
This was in the WSJ on March 24th in an article about Canadian travel:
"The administration has held firm on its messaging. “Canadians will no longer have to worry about the inconveniences of international travel when they become American citizens as residents of our cherished 51st state,” White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly said."
https://www.wsj.com/lifestyle/travel/trump-canada-vacation-t...
-----
An administration official has a new comment more or less on a daily basis about how it's inevitable they'll take us over.
but we take it very seriously up here.
Canadians were always insecure, the recent events just exacerbated it and brought it to the fore. Canadians have to have a hard look at themselves, they overall fare poorly on many fronts: jobs, taxes, housing and (gasp!) healthcare compared to the US. If they fared better they would not feel so threatened/outraged. I'm however pessimistic that they are capable of that level of introspection, because the smartest/wisest Canadians have already left and immigrated to the US. These smart/wise people always knew their country was sub-par despite the delusional rhetoric of superiority that Canadians often indulge in against the US (we have 'free' healthcare!).
Unless those people come back with venture capital funding in their pockets, salaries here will be even more screwed than they already are.
It's an easy word to say, and the implication that it would be peaceful or non-violent because of economic pressures ignores the fact that Canadians don't want it.
What happens to you if you're in US and they invade Canada? You'll be an enemy national in the US. How's that going to go for you?
Why take that chance?
The magnitude is surprising for this to be attributed to the trade dispute - I wonder if this is primarily due to immigration concerns?
3d option: Being pissed off at orange man threating to break an annex Canada.
In the context of Canada, as an American all I can say is sorry and also thank you for doing everything in your power to resist "our" dictator since our own federal government is abjectly failing.
These are folks I know and talk to, and they're not even so much explicitly boycotting the US as the rhetoric is enough that they just feel sort of uncomfortable and unwelcome.
not voting is basically supporting whoever wins
This is just wrong. Contests happen mostly between top 2 candidates even if there there are more in the list. I'm taking from experience of other countries in the world not usa. By that logic, of anyone who votes anything other than those 2 most popular, is like voting the whoever wins.
How about if they voted in a state in which every elector was already going to vote republican anyway?
Or what if they voted to protest against Harris being chosen without a primary vote, against the basic principles of democracy? (And from a party so unwilling to pay attention to the situation on the ground that it had to wait until nearly the last moment just to be able to admit that Biden wasn't going to make it.)
I can see a lot of reasons to try sending a message that way, and as far as I know Stein didn't cost democrats the vote in any state, and certainly wouldn't have cost democrats the vote nationally even if the overall popular vote mattered (which as we all know, it doesn't); your message is extremely reductive and frankly seems like a purely emotional attack. You really aren't elevating the discussion.
Not protesting is basically supporting
If you want to live in a world as black and white and clear cut as this, I don't think anything I can say will stop you.
Needless to say, it's not that simple.
Only when there is enough full-throated protest will it, maybe, slow them down or force them to reconsider.
There might not be support for military invasion, but it's there for applying extreme economic pressure and seeing how much Canada can be forced to give up.
Agreed, but those are two quite different points, aren’t they? Isn’t it Trump’s job to extract the best deal he can from Canada? And the fact Canada has made itself utterly dependent on the US—economically and militarily—was Canada’s deliberate choice.
Let's stop coddling Trump supporters. They're adults, they knew who they voted for, and don't get to pretend to be surprised or outraged when he acts the way he does.
When tariffs spike inflation and folks watch their 401ks and SSA payments decline, I personally will have zero sympathy for anyone who voted for this guy.
When tariffs spike inflation and folks watch their 401ks and SSA payments decline, I personally will have zero sympathy for anyone who voted for this guy.
It's interesting that you assume the value of their 401ks is among their top concerns, when only about 50% of Americans (even older Americans) have retirement accounts at all, and among those who do, the median value is 30K.
https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2022/08/who-has-retir...
Capitol Switchboard: (202) 224-3121
Out of curiosity what works to obtain results beside voting every now and then ?
both parties live by “party over country” mantra so your phone calls won’t do jackshit. you can go look up votes by congressman/senator and see how many can you find where a congressman/senator voted for the good of his constituents and not rubberstamped it along the party lines. ballparking this is 0.0076% of all votes (say in the last decade)
However, I have to wonder: aren't they armed? They've been touting self-defense since Reagan and now they have the chance to demonstrate its efficacy.
He does all that, yet does not lose support. Something which he never said he would do during his campaign.
yet does not lose support
Trump is losing support at unprecedented levels. Typically new presidents have a honeymoon period for the first ~6 months or so were they actually go up a little bit in support. Trump has been losing support from day 1.
https://www.natesilver.net/p/how-low-is-trumps-popularity-fl...
Given that he and his allies hold ~100% of the political power in the country, whether you cynically don't care, or are actively supporting it, the result is the same.
They don't get wash their hands of this.
But the thing is there's a playbook. Even in Russia they didn't start by saying "We are going to start a formal war against international law, who is with me?"
1. They called Ukraine not a country.
2. They said Ukranians in certain regions wanted to be Russian, or should be Russian.
3. They cultivated politicians and figures of influence in Ukraine to join them.
4. They sent unmarked troops into limited regions and started a purported separatist movement. These were the little green men, actually Russian soldiers in generic fatigues.
5. They formally joined the fight once the separatists were losing.
6. They agreed to a ceasefire and kept violating it.
7. In 2022 they started a "special military operation" (still not a war!) on a pretext.
8. Now it's a war
The process took a decade. Currently the US has done steps 1 through 3. On a nearly daily basis the president and multiple admin officials call the border artificial, say Canada isn't a country, say we must be annexed (the word means taken against our will).
The US admin has cultivated the separatist leader of Alberta, who has made multiple visits to Washington and who has admitted to asking Trump to pause tariffs in order to help a pro US far right politician win the upcoming elections.
A journalist who is a fellow traveller of the movement has asked Trump about the practicality of starting by taking Alberta and Saskatechewan and then the rest of the country and Trump said taking Canada had to happen.
We also saw that after the Zelensky oval office visit US public opinion shifted about 20-30% against Zelensky in lockstep with the president making clear his opinion.
So I agree, right now the idea seems ludicrous. But the US admin is at the beginning phases of preparing the info environment to accept escalations. And any discussion of this online now has bot accounts parroting the same lines.
Frankly in Canada we're very glad at the domestic resistance to war. I'm not sure they can actually pull off getting support for invasion. They might think they need not go that far. But what's clear is that for whatever reason they do seem serious about taking us over; Canadian official have expressed as much.
Prewar, polls showed about 18% of the Donbas were interested in joining Russia. About the same percent of Alberta is interested in joining the US. It's enough to work with, if their narrative isn't actively resisted every step of the way.
Just like they don't support insurrection against the government. We saw that when insurrection happened here, they are quite appalled! "That's not who we are!" they said say as they recoiled from the images.
But then something amazing happened. They were fed lines about how actually, it was Antifa; and actually, it was the FBI; and actually, it was Nancy Pelosi; and actually, they were patriots, and this was peaceful protest, and it was all legitimate political action. And the real villains are the people prosecuting us for this! How dare they!
Then all of a sudden people who were not okay with it were fine with what happened. So today, they support and vote for the people who enabled the very thing they said is beyond the pale.
So it will go with Canada.
First it was a joke, and people laughed.
Then it's said a little more seriously and there's a reason - trade deficit.
Then there's some negotiations about trade but it's not good enough, there's a new thing - they are sending drugs.
And it will go like that with increased urgency. Next it will be they are sending rapists and criminals across the border. The "Mexicanization" of Canadians will begin.
It will be framed as a need to defend ourselves, but also we will be told the Canadians want it. They are welcoming us to invade them, and bring them into the American fold.The New York Times will probably run headlines stating as much. So for those who aren't swayed by the stick, they will be swayed by the carrot.
When the invasion happens, it will be predicated on lies. See Iraq / Afghanistan. It will not be supported by most people, but it will happen anyway.
I see comments on here from very smart educated "libertarian" types about this all the time. Canada is anti-freedom, etc. etc.
So in some respects the ideological justification has already begun. Both inside and outside of Canada. If the Liberals win next months election, expect it to go into overdrive both in the US but also in Alberta/Saskatchewan.
When they take Alberta it will because they're saving it from oppression. Or something.
Americans do not support going to war with Canada in the abstract, but many of us will find a way to support whatever specific casus belli Trump comes up with. It's what I like to call the "Trump Derangement Syndrome" - these people know right from wrong, but when Trump is involved they lose their sense of reality.
9/11 and then a year and a half of constant "axis of evil" propaganda and suddenly a majority in congress was behind those actions.
But if you'd told people in May, June, August of 2001 that the US would be mobilizing for full invasion of another country, they'd tell you there was no support for that. And Bush's approval ratings were really low, too.
but driving around with Ontario plates now that 30-50% of the population has been told to hate me isn't inviting.
I went to Idaho once in a car with California (CA) plates, ended up stopping in a fairly small town overnight before heading to see some of the parks. The person at the front desk of the hotel I stayed at noticed the CA plates and suggested I remove them (even offered a screwdriver they kept at the front desk for the situation) because they've had multiple cars with CA plates vandalized, specifically for being from CA. This was years ago, so not even strictly related to the current insanity.
I can absolutely believe that with the current climate, there are places close to the Canada border where parking in the wrong area with Canada plates would draw unwanted attention.
I would expect many conferences to have less and less international attendees in the coming years.
I would expect many conferences to have less and less international attendees in the coming years.
It's starting: https://boycott-ietf127.org/
I do not need thugs at the border to give me a hard time because they feel empowered to do whatever they want. My non-white (but Americans born) partner is even more concerned. Sure, they have to let you back into the country, but they can make it painful.
I flew back in from Costa Rica to ATL and went through customs. Nothing has changed.
I’m flying into BUF in July and taking a cab to the Canadian side of Niagara Falls and back. We will see what happens.
As an American citizen, you can refuse to have your electronics searched to reenter the US
Sure. And lose your day to being held for fuck all. Like I hear you, and I absolutely have the vindictive streak that would drive me to do this under the right circumstances. But you should be prepared to be detained, harassed, all while maintaining your cool and collecting detailed mental notes for follow through with a lawsuit.
Memorize your lawyer's phone number, and make sure you can get to a phone
If you’re planning on pulling a stunt like this, a better plan is to have someone on the outside who will call your lawyer. Or better yet, tell your lawyer what you’re doing so they can call you.
you will then be harassed every time you cross the boarder again. After all, you're one of those trouble makers
I’ve honestly been a dick twice through immigration, once accidentally and once a bit more purposely. I haven’t seen any evidence of this pattern of retribution. Like, civil-rights activists exist and aren’t constantly held up at the border.
Unless you have friends, family or empathy.
And if there's no due process for non-citizens, there's no due process for citizens either. That congress is allowing this to happen is deeply, deeply fucked.
one of the failings behind their unprofessionalism is that the civil case treatment doesnt afford the same protections and right to legal counsel as a criminal case
is this one of those things you need a source for, or can you listen to the concerns of other people and find the source yourself
Or you could be a birthright citizen in which case you can be detained just to be the test subject in the supreme court case.
In summary no one is safe except Trump at this point.
If they can put people onto an airplane and fly them to a Salvadoran gulag in the middle of recess in a court case about how they can't do that - and then laugh about it - the law is very clearly not a limit they care about.
I have doubts that waving your passport or your service medals in their face will at the end of the day, prove very convincing either.
[1] https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/P-19.32/FullText.ht...
[edit] There's also pre-clearance facilities at Dublin and Shannon in Ireland, and sprinkled around the Caribbean. Abu Dhabi has one but visiting Emirati jail is not top of my to-do list.
Trump has made a point of not caring about stuff like that, so who really knows?
[edit] Ah, I see, I didn't catch that you meant on arrival. I suppose that is a risk, but it does seem like you'd really have to make someone's shit list to be admitted only to then immediately be removed.
They can only detain you until they hand you over to the Canadian police.[1]
Section (2) clearly states...
(2) A preclearance officer is not permitted to exercise any powers of questioning or interrogation, examination, search, seizure, forfeiture, detention or arrest that are conferred under the laws of the United States.
[1] https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/P-19.32/FullText.ht...
Much like Trump's last term. He certainly said he would do a lot of things.
The faith, respect and trust of the US to follow its own rules is utterly destroyed.
It's really hard to overstate that the trust level is now a hard zero and it's likely staying there for decades.
Let's put this another way as an extreme. If this relationship existed for somewhere like Myanmar, Yemen or Turkmenistan it doesn't mean you can trust your safety once you're in the country.
Many Americans refuse to travel to Mexico on this premise. This is what I'm talking about. The US is now on that list.
I live in a border down. There are two border crossings here. I recently had something shipped to me using UPS as the courier. I did not engage the shipping. I did not pay for it. It was something that someone owed me, and they made these arrangements entirely themselves without my involvement or input.
UPS nonetheless wanted to charge me around $100 for "customs brokerage fees." I told them no way and that I would self-clear.
I had never self-cleared a package before, so I was in very new territory. But I was highly driven by my desire to not give UPS one penny of what I felt was a ransom demand (they were holding my property hostage unless I agreed to pay them money for services I did not solicit).
In order to self-clear, you just have to take a slip of paper that UPS gives you to your local CBSA office (Canadian Border Security Agency). The offices for these places in my city are at the border crossing.
I took a wrong turn, because I had no idea where I was going, only to find myself crossing over to the USA with no ability to turn around because it's one-way.
I did not have my passport with me!
The US border patrol officers were extremely nice. They assured me that it happens all the time. They had to pull me in and did search my vehicle but I was sitting in immigration for all of 20 minutes waiting for them to do some paperwork. As soon as they found out that I hold a valid passport, I just didn't have it on me, they gave me a visitor's visa and sent me on my way.
This was a week ago.
So yeah ... we hear horror stories. The news is alarming. And one single anecdotal data point does not statistics make.
I just want to offer a counter example to the horror stories because the news cycle loves to get people freaked out. That's their job.
We're (the US) are done. We're cooked. We have destroyed critical institutions and burned through all remaining international goodwill we had in less than a hundred days. No amount of judicial reversals can undo the harm done. It would take years of concentrated, uninterruptible effort to mend that damage, and that's assuming we start today.
This is just one more sign of things to come as the world (finally? belatedly? regrettably?) reorients into a multi-pole system again, and migrate away from American Hegemony. The ball has already started rolling abroad in terms of divesting away from US Clouds, and that'll just keep snowballing as time goes on; after all, once orgs realize how easy it is to leave AWS or Azure for something more local, they'll also reconsider the value of Oracle/Salesforce/IBM/Dell/etc.
It's going to be a painful decade ahead of the USA. The real winners will be the governments and companies abroad who seize upon this opportunity to grab US talent and help them immigrate to safer countries, especially LGBTQ+ and minority groups who are already being victimized (similar to how the US benefited from immigrants fleeing Nazi Germany in/before WW2).
We're (the US) are done. We're cooked.
I think I've written this comment a few times already, but it'll never stop being relevant:
The curse of growing up in a rich country during prosperity is that every single issue is the most serious problem your country has faced in your entire lifetime.
Chill out. It's going to be fine. You're still going to be a high-income country with good standard of life, even if it falls a little.
And even if you're right and the US as we know it is done, it's not because of one orange man with an attitude. It's because of bigger forces. The US became so strong because it used right the once-in-a-millenium opportunity where its engineers would run circles around other countries. When US was sending men to the Moon, China was recovering from an unfortunate incident of having forgotten how to grow rice. That's how big the gap was. Circumstances for such a situation to arise appear extremely rarely, and during "normal times" country's wealth is pretty much tied to its population size. With China and India being together seven times as populous as the US, it's just not possible for the US to maintain its hegemony no matter whether you vote Republican, Democrat, or draw a penis on your ballot, unless the US happens to be lucky enough to again stumble upon some revolutionary discovery comparable to the invention of computers, and have it impossible to produce in rival countries. Spoiler alert: seems like AI is the next big thing, and even if the US still has the lead, China is already technologically closer than Soviets were during their peak.
The curse of growing up in a rich country during prosperity is that every single issue is the most serious problem your country has faced in your entire lifetime.
Oh, no, it's not just me saying this. Friends who grew up in dirt poor countries with totalitarian regimes and fled to the USA, are now openly wondering if they should've gone to the EU instead given the sudden about-face. Peers who lived through democratic collapses into authoritarianism are screaming that "this is how it ends, not how it begins". I'm hardly the only one saying this.
And even if you're right and the US as we know it is done, it's not because of one orange man with an attitude.
Never said it was? Like, their actions certainly acted as a strong wakeup call to the rest of the world that we are done, that the era of American Hegemony is over, but it's also a long time coming. My personal argument is that this has been in motion since midway through Carter's administration, and has been its own snowball of policy decisions and dismantling of institutions for short-term gains, seizing acquired capital from profitable enterprise rather than reinvesting it into future growth.
The US became so strong because it used right the once-in-a-millenium opportunity where its engineers would run circles around other countries.
Yeah, nah, that's a side-effect of good institutions but not a root cause of prosperity. We used to have the best engineers, manufacturers, refineries, and extraction companies in the world, until we kept the Corporate HQs and outsource everything elsewhere. We sacrificed long-term growth for short-term gains, and that's something that causes harm regardless of population density or growth.
Your argument kinda goes all over the place to try overplay how important the US' highly-educated domestic workforce was to its successes, and downplay the harms to the underlying systems caused by a rejection of long-term strategic planning in favor of wealth pumps and short-term thinking. I don't quite know how to respond to that without picking it apart line-by-line, and that time would be better served finishing my dang essay.
orgs realize how easy it is to leave AWS or Azure for something more local
Have you ever tried to migrate anything non-trivial on one cloud to another? Vendor lock-in is very real.
Over in my part of the world, I'm in year three of moving one (1) app off AWS and we'll be lucky if we finish this year. The app isn't even that complicated, but it was built entirely on AWS-only tech (Lambda, DynamoDB, etc) and migrating clients (esp. authentication) to the new backend without downtime or breaking legacy clients is very tricky.
Have you ever tried to migrate anything non-trivial on one cloud to another? Vendor lock-in is very real.
Yep! It's very real if you use vendor-exclusive tooling, and it's why I was the perpetual wet blanket in meetings where leaders would push for said tooling over, say, Terraform or Kubernetes.
Still, it's easier than you think for most LOB applications out there. It's really just the in-house custom stuff or products that will take longer to move, but make no mistake - the smart players have already started said moves elsewhere in some form. Maybe it's tasking the architects with identifying gaps between cloud vendors, or adding new sprint backlog items to remove proprietary dependencies on AWS/Azure/GCP over the coming FY, or tasking Engineering with a POC for a major application component "just to weigh our options".
It's in motion.
So when I say we're done, it's because I genuinely see so much smoke on the horizon that I know there's a wildfire there. Companies and governments don't start openly talking about changing vendors or building out infrastructure for funsies - they do it after they've made the decision internally to NOPE out elsewhere. The amount of harm and damage done already simply cannot be overstated, because we're only seeing the damage they haven't hidden. While everyone focuses on one Signal chat a journalist was invited into, people like me are worrying about how many more have already disappeared forever, and how widespread its use internally is for avoiding records and accountability laws.
The snowballs have already started down the hill, and it takes years to stop them. By the time we get into a position to stop these, they'll already have grown into avalanches of knock-on effects and repercussions - nevermind the hundreds of other snowballs having been sent downhill since we started responding to this initial volley. Institutions take decades to build, and minutes to destroy; it's why they're entrusted with so much power, after all.
All of this is to say that I really think people need to stop thinking we have time to reverse or stop these harms, and accept the harms have already happened, so what do we do now?
The promise is that Americans will be better off, and it's not a terribly hard sell: why should you pay to defend the world, why shouldn't you take more when you're the strongest. I doubt it'll work out that way, the problems that have been building up for so long are the result of inequality, corporatism and internal social factors. Maybe your snowballs were rolling long before you noticed.
Looking back, I think this started well before Trump anyway, probably with Obama.
In said essay, I make the argument that the original inflection point was the rejection of Jimmy Carter's policies of self-sacrifice today for a brighter future tomorrow, in favor of Reagan and that hot new girl at the party, Neoliberalism. From there it was a cancer that just ate away at institutions, traditions, policies, decorum, and every level of government as voters time, after time, after time, adopted a position of "F*k you, got mine". Everything after - Bill Clinton's welfare reform and Lewinsky scandal, the Bush-Iraq double-features, Obama's and the Dem's non-punishment of the finance sector post-'08, and the failure to properly hold accountable Trump et al after Jan 6, all contributed to the decline in their own ways.
That's why I'm so confident that it's over: it's been in progress for decades.
TFA's situation (tourism to the US) is probably the area that will be hit the most. Outside of that, business is mostly based on economics not politics.
Companies do business with China because it was cheap, and now because they must. China could quintuple prices overnight, and nobody (outside the EU, and even then only in part) could do anything about it. Everyone else dismantled domestic supply chains for manufacturing, resource extraction and refinement, and assembly. They lack the educated and diverse workforces needed for modern labor, opting instead for a wide chasm between office workers and everyone else with little to no in between. The only reason China doesn't do this is because it'd be politically disadvantageous, which is the side of the game they're playing right now (hence the military buildup, provocation of the USA and neighboring countries, and an expansionist foreign policy). India and SEA are years away from being comparable in capacity and scale to China, and that assumes no geopolitical instability in the region that disrupts their own progress.
Economics is as fungible as business and politics are at the end of the day, because they're all on the same triangle. Entities align to different parts of that triangle, sure, but there is no "sweet spot" that guarantees a given outcome, nor is there some magic force that will "fix" the balance of the triangle. Economics, politics, and businesses aren't equivalent to some "moral arc of the universe" argument - they're just points of a shape that everyone and every action must fall between, with varying outcomes.
We're (the US) are done. We're cooked. We have destroyed critical institutions and burned through all remaining international goodwill we had in less than a hundred days. No amount of judicial reversals can undo the harm done.
I mean, as you mention, see Germany. Took them a while, though.
The CTA portion is pretty straightforward though, and worth sharing now: stop trying to revive a rotting corpse (America), and start figuring out what we can build to replace it that addresses its flaws and harms. Now's the time to do the big, hard work like equal rights, universal healthcare, eliminating monopolies, fixing taxation, limiting scope of government structures, reforming the MIC, streamlining immigration, protecting workers, etc, because the America of old is dead.
Grab the Constitution, hold a Congress of representatives put forward by like-minded states, and rebuild. It's what the Founding Fathers intended, after all, when their grand experiment finally ran its course. It wasn't the final deliverable, just version 1.0 - so now let's sit down and write version 2.0, a modern Constitution for a modern people.
And the definition of refugee is frankly rather strict.
So, no, I can't really see it.
Much improved planning/bylaws, and a strong densification story with a lot of infill developments.
Very different story when I visit there now vs when I lived there in the 90s.
The Republican trend has been to worry less about their constituents as Republican voters care less and less about the actions or policy of their representatives and more about what conservative media is focused on. This makes money a far more effective means of deciding who holds seats. Money has always had an outsized effect on who wins their seat come next election, but where some candidates could succeed despite their oponents out-spending them, the republican party has become almost entirely "pay to win."
Americans need to expect their living circumstances to continue to decrease as representatives increasingly service wealth holders instead of constituents.
The reality is there's a dark thing at the heart of most people which tends towards an ethic of "might makes right", and holding government over the most powerful nation in the world and then explicitly propagating that as official national religion is absolutely seductive.
Americans -- like many others -- crave supremacy. Fate and fortune has given them some form of it, and they've been told their whole lives how they deserve it.
But they feel it slipping. "Make America Great Again" is just about that. Others must submit and we will be most powerful.
This Canada stuff is just one small instance of it. The Greenland stuff is even more disturbing.
Their major concerns are God, Guns, sticking it to the “college educated elite”, getting rid of “illegals”, fighting against the demographic shift of the US becoming majority/minority, protecting Israel so Jesus will have some place to come back to (no exaggeration) and woke something or other.
You can’t get enough money to compete against Musk and the true MAGAs who vote in the primaries and forgive anything that Trump does.
Besides with gerrymandering, most Republican seats are safe Republican seats.
Even without gerrymandering, there are entire states that are never going to vote for a Democrat.
This is map of red vs blue counties.
https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:720/format:webp/1*86sU...
I wonder if they will still do that. My next time crossing will be the first with US citizenship and passport.
US border patrol has generally been less than pleasant (coming back as a citizen) at the car crossing for decades.
No matter where I've visited or how repressive the regime, in all of my years of travel, I've never seen worse human beings than the US border patrol in Washington State. There's something fundamentally wrong going on up there and it's been like this for decades.
Stop threatening to annex us, apologize at a diplomatic level, and drop the unjust tariffs.
I don't even know why the US ambassador hasn't been summoned before the PM for scolding at this point.
USMCA is also up for renegotiation in 2026, so if the US is upset about tariffs on things like dairy, the appropriate venue would be to negotiate at that time. The US already agreed to the existing tariff structure when the first USMCA deal was signed in 2018 under the previous Trump administration.
To specifically address dairy tariffs, US dairy in Canada is actually currently tariff-free because there is a volume cap and the tariffs only apply when that volume cap is exceeded. Currently the US is only using about 40% of that cap.
Finally, the U.S. President is extremely serious about his annexation threats. He said this multiple times, it's not a joke. We do not treat it as a joke in Canada. Please do not insult us by trying to gaslight us.
To specifically address dairy tariffs, US dairy in Canada is actually currently tariff-free because there is a volume cap and the tariffs only apply when that volume cap is exceeded. Currently the US is only using about 40% of that cap.
And let's be crystal clear for the Americans: Canada uses supply management for dairy and poultry. We don't allow for free trade in, but we also don't want free trade out. The whole point of supply management is that we only produce for domestic consumption.
So when we sign free trade agreements, we exclude those things, or at most offer a quota. In the case of USMCA we gave the US 4X the quota to send to Canada than in reverse. Meaning those poor Wisconsin dairy farmers got a billion in extra exports, with marginal new imports competing with them.
And within the quota the tariff is 0.00%. Precisely the same for the 1/4 allocation of imports of dairy the US gives Canada. BOTH have largely the same tariffs if you exceed that.
And in the hypothetical that Canada were enticed to remove dairy quotas, no we wouldn't just get flooded with massively subsidized dairy from the US. In reality we'd pull a New Zealand and go wild with production and absolutely devastate your agriculture industry. It would not be the outcome you want. We have the land, the means and the capacity to absolutely take the knees out of US dairy.
So what the US really wants is unrestricted free trade in...but also keep supply management so you don't compete with our industry. ROFL. Nah.
To be fair, setting up any kind of serious supply chain with that hard limit on growth isn't going to be a terribly appealing investment on either side of the border. Not approaching the cap now does not imply that volume wouldn't increase if all tariffs were eliminated.
In the meantime, the US has total dominance over our economy and food supply, and ownership of most of our large companies, resources, products. (As a lot of us are finding out now as we try to boycott...)
So, what exactly is the problem? A few small bits of our economy that the US doesn't have total and complete control over and now they just need to go for the jugular?
What, exactly, are you referring to? A statement of observance does not imply there is a problem, and it most definitely does not imply that one would take in interest in talking about problems. Was there something in particular in the comment you replied to that mislead your understanding – that can be fixed to not confused others in the future?
Canadian tariffs on American imports pre-Trump.
Please explain to me why a 0.98% average effective tariff rate justifies retribution in the form of 25% to 50% tariffs.
Please also explain why it's justifiable, again, for a 0.98% effective tariff rate, to threaten to economically destroy a country and force it to be annexed. To be clear, even with massive economic damage to Canada, we will not be willingly annexed, ever. If you want our country, you must invade. That is ultimately what the annexation threat is. It is a threat of invasion.
It's like trying to joke about touching little kids -- why are you even thinking about that?
Why would anyone even think it’s funny?
I see this sentiment a lot -- that for some reason the U.S. naturally "should" be a well-run developed country, and so it's surprising that it scores worse on various metrics than, say, Western Europe. But why? Is it just because the US is wealthy? Saudi Arabia is wealthy too and an absolute monarchy.
If it's not fair to compare the US to Eritrea, then it's not fair to compare it to Norway. It just is what it is, somewhere in between those two on the spectrum.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/airbnb-hosts-ditch-platform-billi...
At least that's been my anecdotal experience flying in and out of those cities. In Buffalo for example I distinctly remember literal bus loads of Canadians staying at nearby hotels before boarding US carriers headed for warmer destinations.
I suspect with the current environment, both are down. Still would be interesting though.
Historically, Canadians will drive across the border in search of cheaper airfare in the US. Cities like Buffalo, NY, Burlington, VT, Detroit, MI, Minot and Grand Forks, ND.
I don't see that being the case for quite a few years. USD 1 has been ~ CAD 1.30 for a few years, so any US flight would need to be 24% cheaper dollar-to-dollar to even consider it. And that is before taking into account driving costs, traffic jams and wait times at the border crossing.
Flying from Canada to non-US destinations is often MUCH cheaper because there's no TSA fees (which the US puts on the departing airport) for the return leg.
I have also set expectations with my leaders at work that even work travel to the US beyond previously booked trips (the last of which is next week) is off the table, and I would prefer to find a new job than continue to travel to a country that is treating it's allies so poorly.
US CBP Traveler and Conveyance Statistics - https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/stats/travel
10% of the US is still huge in absolute terms, though.
Most people I know who voted for Trump claim to have done so "because the alternative is worse".
Worse in what way exactly?
This kind of statement is a lot like the old "states' rights" pretense where the right in question was slavery -- the dishonesty is clear under even the barest comparative scrutiny.
10% of the US is still huge in absolute terms, though.
Exactly. 'Proportion' doesn't imply majority, and in a country of about 350M people, that's 35M people that look at what's happening and go "I like this!"
Considering the situation in the US with how political representation is calculated, gerrymandering, non-proportional representation of high and low-population states, that 10% of the population can easily have outsized representative power at the federal and state levels. Which is exactly what we see right now.
Reality is there are zero pro-Trump rallies, and plenty of very angry former Trump voters making their rage felt at Town Halls.
This will only get worse over time as cuts to essential services start to bite hard.
I've said all along I think the MAGA cult thing is going to blow up in the faces of the people making this happen.
Anecdotally, only one person I talked to was willing to admit that they would have voted differently if they knew what was actually to come (which they should have given the first take at his presidency.) Also anecdotally, many that do seem to be raging at what's happening at the federal level don't have much concern with their local politicians being cut from more or less the same cloth. Granted the local ones, especially in lower-population areas, know they might actually have to face their constituents in their day-to-day lives, so tend to spout rhetoric without acting much on it, so there's less to rage about at them.
I've said all along I think the MAGA cult thing is going to blow up in the faces of the people making this happen.
Maybe, but unfortunately we're all in the last radius.
Anecdotally, only one person I talked to was willing to admit that they would have voted differently if they knew what was actually to come (which they should have given the first take at his presidency.)
One interesting thing that showed up before the US election in 2008 was the bizarrely small number of people claiming to have voted for Bush. It was a big enough effect that it messed up the polling to some extent. Some unhappy Trump voters are likely claiming not to have voted, now.
Carney is now reviewing Canada's F-35 order. They'd be fools to buy from us.
We'd be a fool to buy them, but we will be absolutely punished if we don't. Last time this was under question Bombardier -- one of our largest companies, and employers -- started to "suddenly" lose contracts in the US and the Canadian gov't backpedaled (for other reasons as well) and went ahead with the F35. They're worried that will happen again
That and so much money and time have already been invested on this, and the alternatives are not super compelling.
To people who voted for Trump, it expands to "see - he's the victim of partisan/predatory prosecution." Furthermore, it emboldens them to use the courts to advance their own partisan agenda.
It feels like the robe of impartiality has been falling away from the justice system in an alarming way. People look the other way when the lack-of-impartiality leans the direction they want (SCOTUS making up the right to an abortion in Roe v Wade), but it's scary when it goes the other way.
I dislike "convicted felon" as a descriptor for Trump. It serves as a dogwhistle rather than a helpful shorthand. He's an asshat, but he also got charged with a rare felony so his detractors could go around calling him by a name usually reserved for rapists and murderers. It doesn't signal anything meaningful, except that you're in the opposition, and it potentially riles up his adherents to also use the courts for revenge.
Everyone can draw their own conclusions as to what’s causing this. It’s also anyone’s guess if we’re at rock bottom in terms of consumer sentiment, and if we’ll see more close-in bookings than in past years. But either way, April is right around the corner, and those drops are massive.
One point I’ll make is the Canadian economy is not doing well regardless.
They are actually being treated differently by people they use to consider friends because their friends are believing everything they hear and read.
Now, they are looking to spend winter in Costa Rica and Panama City.
It’s mostly the older Canadians who are snowbirders who are thinking about Costa Rica.
In fact, in a few years, my wife and I are thinking about snow birding in Costa Rica from Florida for a few months and eventually establishing permanent residency down there while still keeping our Florida home.
I’m more than willing to pay into their government run healthcare - Caja.
https://torontolife.com/real-estate/real-estate-florida-snow...
EDIT: Your link saddens me.
"Come on, you can't be taking that seriously" "That's not serious" "It's a joke" -- US liberals and some "moderate" Republicans
or "You deserve it" "<something something dairy tariffs>" "It will happen" -- GOP voters, MAGA types
And then there's question about why Canadians might not be coming to the US and are boycotting US products?
The level of discourse is beyond disheartening, and I expected better from this forum of all places. Comments made by official head of state, and agreed to by his entire cabinet. Including by Marco Rubio while on Canadian soil for a G7 conference.
Consider an incident like this:
https://www.montrealgazette.com/news/provincial-news/article...
By the head of U.S. Homeland Security. Not Trump.
Yeah, we just can't take the joke.
Trust, and travel and full trade, will be restored when we see Americans deal with the mess they've made at home, and stop acting in this fashion. In the meantime in the words of a rather awful but funny Canadian We've "got more than enough to eat at home"
All of this was reported with a bit of speculation here and there but not once mentioning what is the most likely reason:
The largest liquor importer in the world (Ontario LCBO) just removed all American products from its shelves and in some cases was even able to return those products back to the distributor with refund.
Those products are on American shelves because they are no long being sold to non-Americans. Because of actions by the Trump regime. Not mentioned in the article I read (major US newspaper)
I also saw a series of articles about oceanside properties in Maine being in trouble because their Quebecois regulars are cancelling bookings for this summer.
They kept saying it was about tariffs. I didn't see a single article that mentioned annexation threats and digs at our sovereignty.
It's really weird, the selective blindness.
I think US moderates want so badly for things to be relatively normal that they can't take this stuff seriously or it's a complete demoralization.
That and the press is completely under his thumb this time around.
It's almost like nearly everyone on earth thought it was really dumb except Donald Trump.
We just don't want to spend our money there, or be around MAGA apologists.
It's amazing how well they can project the direct consequences of their actions onto some other people.
Trump and his incompetence is fkn the United States. He thinks he's tough. Maga thinks he's tough. He's a clown.
I flew into the US two weeks ago and the immigration queue was a) short and b) the officers were super-friendly, I did my Global Entry interview on arrival, was basically a quickly friendly chat plus a photo and fingerprints. Way better than it was a year ago the last time I entered the USA.
My wife flew into the US earlier today and the immigration process "took seconds" (her words).
I understand that people have concerns about the "new management" but - as always - don't believe everything you read in the media.
what the probability / details are for the non-happy-path processes
Why would one expect to enter a country via a "non-happy-path" and expect a happy outcome?
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/18/glenn-greenwal...
"The partner of the Guardian journalist who has written a series of stories revealing mass surveillance programmes by the US National Security Agency was held for almost nine hours on Sunday by UK authorities as he passed through London's Heathrow airport on his way home to Rio de Janeiro.
David Miranda, who lives with Glenn Greenwald, was returning from a trip to Berlin when he was stopped by officers at 8.05am and informed that he was to be questioned under schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act 2000. The controversial law, which applies only at airports, ports and border areas, allows officers to stop, search, question and detain individuals.
The 28-year-old was held for nine hours, the maximum the law allows before officers must release or formally arrest the individual. According to official figures, most examinations under schedule 7 – over 97% – last less than an hour, and only one in 2,000 people detained are kept for more than six hours.
Miranda was released, but officials confiscated electronics equipment including his mobile phone, laptop, camera, memory sticks, DVDs and games consoles."
The non-happy-path didn't start under the current POTUS...
And a whole contingent of Americans who don't seem to recognize this as a serious diplomatic concern. Look at the bulk of comments in this post trying to handwave this away as some kind of "trade dispute" or "irrational fear of ICE" or "Canadian dollar is low."
No, your president and his entire cabinet say they're going to annex our country. Gee, I wonder why we wouldn't travel there.
Hence the famous quip by the Fox News host to Doug Ford that he was "offended" or surprised that Canadians wouldn't want to be part of the US.
To many, I suspect, "51st state" was supposed to be some kind of compliment or favourable invitation.
The GOP, not just Trump.
Pretty sure the GOP is just Trump MAGA now. Not sure who, if any, the holdouts are now.
I guess the answer if you are Canadian is sort it out at the embassy or if you are chancing things do it at the Canada/US border not the Mexican one.
It might not be wise to loudly declare yourself American in the EU or Canada right now.
No one wants to go on a vacation where they have to deal with unnecessary stress.
Europeans tend to understand that it is not your parents fault.
Also, Europeans don't tend to put as much identity in what party you vote for.
I have a lot of US friends, a lot who voted for Trump.
I would never hold any grudge to them.
What I do find insane is the US two party system.
Plus, it's not like we saw Americans as god's gift to the world prior
Add to the mix of Boeing planes falling apart mid-flight doesn't fill me with confidence either.
Many people over here echo the same opinion and where-by Disney Land being one of the popular summer destinations; co-workers I spoken to are looking elsewhere.
The UK is one of the few countries that provide tourism for the country. So it's not just local it's global.
Given this is an obvious outcome, the question remains - what purpose does that serve?
Go listen to knowledge fight if you want. The Trump fans are over the moon on him right now. They are besides themselves in jubilation.
If you're looking for a rationalization you aren't going to find it. They believe in the supernatural, pseudoscience, and conspiracies. Their assessments are based on a collective imagination, not on any material reality.
That's why accelerationism or collapsing under the weight of the contradictions doesn't and won't happen. New imaginations to rationalize will simply be invented
And when it's not possible they always have their scapegoats. For instance, https://www.oann.com/ lead story as I write this isn't about the leaked Signal controversy but instead about Obama and George Soros
I'm Canadian, and it's pretty clear to me that most of us just don't want to give the US our business anymore. At least as long as this whole trade war thing is going on.
Canada itself is barely a blip on most people's radar, as usual.
Many Americans don't seem to have noticed that their official head of state is threatening to annex us and that it's not a joke.
I've traveled to the US extensively for work in the past. It's the most inward facing country I have ever seen. The international news items that virtually every other western country reports on the front page of news reports get buried in the USA. Everything we see shows that Americans just don't care about the impact of their actions on people outside of their country, even when those actions are military invasion.
It's deeply disturbing to Canadians.
I've never been so deeply ashamed of my country as now, and primarily not because of Trump, but because either (a) so many people just actively cheer this on (like before he went on his tirade most MAGA people probably wouldn't have a bad thought at all about Canadians) or (b) the people that obviously know how stupid this all is are being quiet in the stereotypical "for evil to flourish, it only requires good men to do nothing" way.
That said, it seems like the figure is simply some estimate from an analytics/forecasting shop, not authoritative data. Reminds me of folks who (mis-)predict Apple revenues based on component manufacturer's output reduction.
I call bullshit on the OAG estimate. We'll see...
you mean the 1.43 USDCAD, where its been since Dec 2024, and where it was in 2003, and is on the higher end of the very tight 1.25-1.40 range that it's been for the last 10 years?
that horrible exchange rate?
as a former currency trader, common people are horrible at blaming macroeconomic things for idiosyncratic situations
Air Canada, the largest airline by seats between the U.S. and Canada, disagrees with the analysis. > "We can confirm that [the preliminary OAG data] is not reflective of Air Canada's booking patterns, nor the state of the market, based on all information sources available to us," an Air Canada spokesperson said.
The tariffs are one thing, and pissed people off, but the rhetoric is what has really done the damage.
It’s viewed as a complete betrayal, and as a real and serious threat to Canadian sovereignty.
I work for an American company from Canada, and have changed my financial planning because I’m not sure if I’ll be able to keep doing that.
When I see a 70% drop I’m surprised it isn’t more.
It may be that your question is fundamentally not based in fact. You ask "why aren't they doing X", as though it were certain that they were not doing X. This may not be the case. Airlines may indeed have adjusted their scheduling.
It may simply be that not enough time has passed for the shift to affect scheduling.
It may be that airlines view the current state of affairs as temporary. Airport gate spots are difficult to come by, and one airline cutting flights grants those gate slots to a competitor, so they may think it's more profitable in the long run to take the short term hit until the international situation changes via election, impeachment, natural causes, or conquest.
the table below shows that over 320,000 seats have been removed by airlines operating between the two countries through to the end of October
And given the focus is on summer flights that haven't happened yet, those cutbacks would largely be in the future.
The A380 was built to get around landing slot rules.
We had a valid trade agreement that we negotiated, but now we will tariff your economy into recession. Or you can join us.
You don't want to join us? Have more tariffs!
You are fighting back with tariffs? Have more tariffs!
You are discussing increasing trade with others? What happened to our friendship?!
Close to 3 million Taiwanese have travelled to mainland China for tourism, study and work this year, according to official data from Beijing.
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/politics/article/3283272/bei...
And unlike the US, China is actually engaged in live fire exercises around the island: https://www.economist.com/content-assets/images/20241019_CNM...
We did something else instead, and the kids had fun, so w/e. It's just not that compelling to visit the states right now. There are a lot of alternatives.
I actually do think we're being too cautious, but I just didn't want to have to follow the reality tv show you call news to see which way the wind was blowing every day.
Purely hypothetical as I can't see why customs officers would want to deny citizens entry (providing they're not racist etc).
Would your citizen rights disappear and then you could have no way to defend your position?
They would be delayed.
They can/will detain you for made-up reasons if they want to.
Simple example:
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/rcna195406
Folks I know who are concerned about this:
- folks of Latino heritage
- folks with African (black and Arab) or Asian (East, South… really all of it) heritage
- naturalized citizens
- Muslims
- anyone who may share a name with a criminal immigrant by coincidence —- I have a super Anglo name, but I was almost locked up once by police for sharing a name with a guy with a long rap sheet
Eventually your rights will come around, but they can put those on hold for way longer than one may want.
Another simple example — an acquaintance of mine was arrested for dui on a Friday night. He was “lost” in the system for four days, and that was with people at the jail ready to pay bail the next morning. It turns out that he was to be released without bail after he sobered up, but… whoopsie. He has no recourse, and those four days in jail were not good for his mental health.
Purely hypothetical as I can't see why customs officers would want to deny citizens entry (providing they're not racist etc).
Well, you already provided one answer to your own question. But another is that plenty of people in law enforcement in the US are there because they want to have power over people, CBP included. So why would they deny entry, or make it a hassle? Cus it's fun to them to have the ability to ruin someone's day on a tiny whim; It makes them feel powerful.
Someone recently asked at an all hands meeting whether there were contingency plans if Trump tried to shut down the CBC by telling AWS to cut their servers (they apparently use AWS).
No shit that travel is down. People casually ponder in conversation up here whether there will be a war with the USA. Our newspaper of record has published op-eds saying Canada needs nuclear weapons.