SpankyMcFarland
-
Posts
5,126 -
Joined
-
Last visited
-
Days Won
4
Content Type
Profiles
Forums
Events
Posts posted by SpankyMcFarland
-
-
Here’s an editorial from the decidedly conservative National Review:
QuoteBelieving that a country is in bad shape if it imports more goods than it exports — i.e., if it has a trade deficit — is, in most cases, a harmless error in reasoning. It’s the sort of thing that seems to make sense at first glance, but any halfway decent economics professor can train it out of students in one or two lectures.
QuoteTrump likes to frame his trade policy as “commonsense.” To treat allies worse than enemies and raise taxes on consumers and businesses at a time when the cost of living is a major concern is anything but commonsense. Trump’s mistaken beliefs about trade have been a constant since the 1980s, but now they have been combined with an enormous grant of power, and Americans will pay the price.
https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/the-strategic-folly-of-a-global-war-on-trade/
-
3 hours ago, Deluge said:
You don't know shit in real time. MSNBC is for woke cultists only.
The truth is that we're going to feel some pain for maybe up to two years until Trump gets on top of things, and that beats the shit out of watching the country bleed out under Kamala Harris.
Some pain for two years? I don’t recall candidate Trump promising that.
-
2
-
-
Message discipline is eluding the Tories and giving more opportunities for Carney to don his gear and play Captain Canada:
QuoteLiberal Leader Mark Carney defended his understanding of Western Canada Friday and described Reform Party founder Preston Manning’s recent warnings of Western separatism as dramatic and unhelpful.
Mr. Manning, who served as the Leader of the Opposition in the House of Commons between 1997 and 2000, wrote this week in The Globe and Mail that a vote for Mr. Carney and the Liberals “is a vote for Western secession – a vote for the breakup of Canada as we know it.”
When asked to respond, Mr. Carney began by pointing out that he was born in the Northwest Territories and grew up in Alberta.
-
Forget about the old track. We’re on a new one now, courtesy of Trump.
-
4 minutes ago, August1991 said:
In 1910 or so, Europe was at the end of a structure of peace -created in 1815.
In 2020s, we in the world need a new structure of peace -1815 style.
The grip of the old empires was restored in 1815 but had been present a long time before the French Revolution as well.
-
1 hour ago, CdnFox said:
Meh.... i can see where you were going but i think him talking 2 times about a specific country and a specific industry does not constitute picking a trade war with the whole world and wanting to all his life
at best you can say he's had feelings in the past that america is being taken advantage of in trade by some countries. (or one at least).
And to be clear there's nothing daft about tariffs in general. We've always had tariffs. The us has always had tariffs. Most countries have tariffs.
What's new is this insane wide spread blanket tariff policy against everyone including penguins.
He’s been talking about it since the Eighties, took out ads on it and talked about it on TV, all as a private businessman. He also mentioned multiple countries back then apart from Japan. It appears in The Art of the Deal as well. So he has been carrying these ideas around for many decades. When he started with this preoccupation he had a more benign view of Canada. Obviously, now as president he has the chance to do it on a grand scale and make everybody come begging for mercy. It’s really one of his few fixed political beliefs in life. On most other things he has said whatever is expedient in the moment.
-
1
-
-
All political leaders ask whether a policy that’s good for the country is also good for them. Generally, a popular and effective policy will bring more influence and the possibility of re-election as well as more abstract benefits like serving the nation and entering the history books. But what of a policy that’s clearly bad for the country, both unpopular and damaging? How long would they persist with that if they made personal gains from it? I’d say most would find another course fairly briskly. Here’s where America may be with Trump. His tariffs may be dreadful for the economy and America’s geopolitical position but will mean that large numbers of wealthy, powerful people will come to him cap in hand looking for exemptions for their company or their country. That’s basically his dream situation. Great rivers of money and flattery will flow. Hard to let go of that for the sake of cheaper groceries.
-
3 hours ago, CdnFox said:
??
Not disagreeing with you but what are you basing that on?
He has publicly supported tariffs since the Eighties at the latest. Back then Japan was a major focus of his ire:
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/trump-tariff-history-1.7469877
Here’s some info from several articles:
‘Three decades before President Trump’s trade agenda jolted the world, he laid out his vision in full-page newspaper advertisements foreshadowing what was to come,’ writes Jacob M. Schlesinger of The New York Times in ‘Trump Forged His Ideas on Trade in the 1980s—and Never Deviated.’
- “Japan and other nations have been taking advantage of the United States” for years, wrote the New York real-estate developer, in the typewritten letter addressed “To The American People,” his signature affixed to the bottom.’
- “ ‘Tax’ these wealthy nations, not America. End our huge deficits, reduce our taxes…” the September 1987 ads demanded.’
- “Let’s not let our great country be laughed at anymore.”
‘Asked in a recent Wall Street Journal interview about the origin of his views on trade, Mr. Trump said, “I just hate to see our country taken advantage of. I would see cars, you know, pour in from Japan by the millions.”
- ‘In the interview, Mr. Trump called Japan “interchangeable with China, interchangeable with other countries. But it’s all the same thing.”
‘Shortly after the 1987 publication of Mr. Trump’s book, “The Art of the Deal,” he applied his world view in speeches and television interviews to a raging trade debate as Japan flooded the U.S. with inexpensive, high-quality autos and electronics.’
- ‘He continued gaining attention, and the book became a best seller.’
'He followed his newspaper ads—they ran in the New York Times, Washington Post and Boston Globe—and a brief flirtation with the 1988 presidential campaign with appearances on talk shows, telling hosts such as Larry King and Oprah Winfrey:’
- “I do get tired of seeing the country ripped off.” He told Diane Sawyer in 1989 he would impose a 15% to 20% tariff on Japanese imports, adding: “I’m not afraid of a trade war.”
- ‘He complained specifically about the persistent trade deficit with Japan costing the U.S. money, as well as Japanese “import quotas and tariffs to protect their own interest,” as he put it in his 1990 book “Trump: Surviving at the Top.”
-
1
-
2 hours ago, SpankyMcFarland said:
The Falkland Islanders better mend their ways, all three thousand of them:
- Falkland Islands: 41% (charges U.S. 82%)
And those nasty-radical-left penguins on the Heard and McDonald Islands are asking for it. No more will they mock us:- Heard and McDonald Islands: 10% (charges U.S. 10%)
And we’ve just obtained exclusive footage of White House negotiations with a Heard Islander:
-
3
-
In days of yore, it was left-wingers who couldn’t follow the party line during campaigns. Now Tory insiders past and present are making Poilievre’s life a lot more difficult. This time it’s Preston Manning threatening the rest of Canada.
-
1
-
-
B’y, his surname is listed on the video in block capitals - Hanson with an ‘o’.
-
1 hour ago, BeaverFever said:
Nobody is a hypocrite except Trump I explained this already.
And I very much fear you will have to explain it again. You’re a bit of a saint in your spare time, BF, with tousands of patience as we say on the Rock.
-
1 minute ago, TreeBeard said:
He wants Canadians to believe that Trump is the Libs fault. It’s a weird talking point that makes zero sense.
Clearly it doesn’t resonate. People take it as blaming their fellow Canadians for the actions of the orange menace. Very unpatriotic and doesn’t play well to normal Canadians.
He has to inspire trust on the Trump file. That’s what he’s missing I think.
-
1
-
-
The US still runs a large trade surplus with us on dairy products and a truly YUGE one on agricultural products overall. How do they manage that despite all our nasty, unfair trade practices? Might it have anything to do with the large subsidies paid to farmers down there or the army of illegal workers who do the milking and picking? I didn’t hear much talk from Trump about all that in yesterday’s deranged borefest.
-
On 4/2/2025 at 11:55 AM, Gaétan said:
Trump wants to introduce tariffs just to get people talking about him on TV
He’s had this daft idea most of his life.
-
16 minutes ago, CdnFox said:
But the very same liberals who voted that tax plan in are still there. Carney was the top adviser for trudeau when he came up with it.
So he's cancelling it right now because he knows it's unpopular, but he was part of the team that brought it in and the rest of the team is the same.
Why would you vote for people who brought in bad ideas before and only changed their tune long enough to win an election?
It would extremely odd to agree with everything a party proposes or did.
-
1
-
-
53 minutes ago, CdnFox said:
But he's not competing with trump. He's competing with Carney. By your own logic that's what he should focus talking about.
As it is he does talk about trump but his campaign is built on the idea that no matter what happens with trump canadians are still going to need to solve the problems they had before hand, namely they can't afford homes or food. It's hard to control trump, and carney hasn't done a thing to show he has any ability to do so. We still have new tariffs as well as the old, and we're still going to get clobbered.
We can't control trump, but we can control our own actions and economy. And even carney has been switching to that message copying PP.
Poilievre doesn’t have to mention Carney and the Liberals every time he talks about Trump. It’s mixing domestic and foreign policy in an awkward way. He’s already seen as too divisive, partisan and extreme by many in the centrist target group he needs to win over and not a committed Team Canada player. Let people draw their own conclusions about how he measures up to Carney on the Trump file. By contrast, he can talk about affordability and the Liberals as much as he likes. That’s a regular election issue where he has credibility across a wide swathe of the political spectrum.
Just my opinion.
-
The Falkland Islanders better mend their ways, all three thousand of them:
- Falkland Islands: 41% (charges U.S. 82%)
And those nasty-radical-left penguins on the Heard and McDonald Islands are asking for it. No more will they mock us:- Heard and McDonald Islands: 10% (charges U.S. 10%)
-
1
-
I didn’t like the way Trudeau wanted to deal with the capital gains tax issue, including for medical corporations. I’ve never had a corporation myself and I’m agnostic as to whether medical professionals should be considered as small businesses, given that the business risks they run are much, much smaller than your average guy opening a restaurant or store who faces the prospect of customers disappearing on a daily basis, but once you set up up tax rates that people make long-term decisions on, then arbitrarily increasing them by a large amount seems like a bad idea to me. Anyway, Carney says such changes will not happen which I think is a wise move.
-
41 minutes ago, PIK said:
How so?
But the cons have a larger motivated and engaged followers. Carneys support is very soft. Cons will still win. Listen to a lady that does polls at a regional level, different numbers than the national CTV, CBC polls. If PP wins a majority, I would call in every pollster to have them explain how they could be so wrong.
Let’s not be too tough on the pollsters. They are in a fiendishly difficult line of work. It’s like watching a soccer game at field level behind one set of goalposts - you just see people chaotically running about most of the time. Some pundits are saying what you’re saying and I think some of them are pollsters too, so in the event of a Tory win they’ll explain that they weren’t all that wrong. We all know the Liberal rise is new and what rises so fast can fall again just as rapidly. Mark McQueen’s recent piece in the Toronto Star points out that affordability polls as a substantially bigger issue than Trump in one poll.QuoteIn our hearts, many Canadians know that the Liberals blew repeated chances to make life more affordable. When the 2025 election is framed as “cost of living vs. dealing with Trump, affordability wins out by a margin of 58% to 42%,” according to Abacus Data. That’s Poilievre’s strong suit.
Will it be enough to top the Liberals’ lucky streak?
-
At least we’re not alone now. Trump has made the fateful decision to take on the rest of the world and for the moment we’re all singing from the same songbook.
The US tech industry must be worried. In most markets, they’ve wiped out advertisers and local media while providing very little local work or income and have accentuated polarization and alienation among young people. What’s not to dislike for foreign governments? Many of them must be thinking about digital services taxes at the moment, if only to pay for the damage these arrogant, unaccountable foreigners are wreaking.
-
2
-
-
1 hour ago, CdnFox said:
Says the guy voting for mark carney, who's bought and paid for by the chinese
My hypocrisy meter just exploded
Shouldn't have shown it your post LOL
Of course there are people out there who imagine Chinese influence is confined to the Liberals, bless their hearts.
And you think Smith has been helping the Tory campaign? Would you like to give her a bigger role?
-
Poilievre doesn’t seem to understand that you can compete with somebody without even mentioning them. When it comes to Trump he should talk just about that absurd balloon and not bring Carney into it at all. Voters are bright enough to draw their own conclusions, thank you very much.
-
I would say I’m a Blue Grit politically but the smallness of Newfoundland blurs the partisan lines. Provincially, I can go either way as there’s no difference in the two main parties on anything really. Federally, I’ve generally voted Liberal although I donated to the campaign of a friend of mine who ran for the Conservatives. I had to break it to him afterwards that I wasn’t a true member of his tribe. It has also happened that I wasn’t a big fan of the candidate whose party I’d like to vote for, one of FPTP’s many, many failings. You can get to know people close and personal down here, sometimes too much so.
Beyond policy, I think I liked Erin O’Toole the most of the recent federal leaders. He had an almost anti-charismatic feeling about him, no theatrics.
The trade war is back on
in Canada / United States Relations
Posted
And a great article in The Bulwark:
https://www.thebulwark.com/p/the-american-age-is-over