4 ms·

The End of North America

33 points by rbanffy 4mo ago

zulux 4mo ago
We learned that free trade has costs, and we're adjusting. That's ok too.
- g8oz 4mo ago
  It's part of a general retreat from the world on the part of the United States.
- readthenotes1 4mo ago
  Krugman--often wrong, never in doubt
- betaby 4mo ago
  Indeed. I live in Canada and while USMCA benefited some industries it did not others. Also as a Canadian I suspect the new agreement most likely will be even less beneficial to Canadians.
  - actionfromafar 4mo ago
    Yeah, especially if the deal has "50-something or other state" in it.
  - gumby 4mo ago
    > Also as a Canadian I suspect the new agreement most likely will be even less beneficial to Canadians. I think Carney is unlikely to let that happen. Australia’s most recent FTA with the US was lopsided because AUS still had a policy of hoping the US would come to her aid if necessary and so placated the giant, and the GWB administration took advantage of that. These days that’s unlikely to happen because people understand that that era is over and the current government has more spine.
- bigbadfeline 4mo ago
  > We learned that free trade has costs, and we're adjusting. I doubt it. Learning too slow is sometimes worse than not learning at all. During the heyday of globalization I was repeating a single message - this is going too far, too fast, it'll hit a brick wall. Curiously enough that's exactly what I'm repeating these days too - this time about the wild, erratic swing to the side of isolationism. We're still operating in the same market bubble conditions as before, driven by the same people, for the same reasons - globalization and shmobalization are just means to an end, the means might be different but the end is the same.
jmward01 4mo ago
Cooperation leads to higher value for everyone. We are now only getting the maximum minimum value because we are actively destroying cooperation. In other words, borders are stupid. When they go away you see prosperity and reduced tensions. When they go up you see inefficiency and distrust. Borders aren't the result of distrust and economic issues, they are the cause.
TMWNN 4mo ago
Krugman implies that the US-Canada (not Mexico) integration of the auto industry came from NAFTA. Not so; The Auto Pact <https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Auto_Pact https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Auto_Pact> preceded NAFTA by 30 years. Krugman avoids answering the interviewer's question about whether Michiganites support having so much of the automobile supply chain outsourced to Canada, because he knows that the answer is "No". He instead says that the US has more auto jobs because of the cross-border integration than otherwise. The decline of the US auto industry began very soon after the start of the auto pact. I don't mean to say that the latter caused the former, but it would certainly be possible to make a case for such. Trump's view is that Canada needs the US a lot more than the other way around. He's right. Every Canadian province except one trades more with the US than the rest of Canada, and every Canadian province is (far, far) more dependent on international trade than 48 of 50 US states. <https://www.linkedin.com/posts/goldfarbdanielle_we-make-things-together-this-has-been-activity-7249861838236999680-wtVG/ https://www.linkedin.com/posts/goldfarbdanielle_we-make-thin...> At the end of the day, there is no way to get around the verity of another Krugman observation, that Canada is closer to the US than to itself. <https://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/13/eh/ https://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/13/eh/> With the above in mind, consider the Trudeau government's bold talk in early 2025 about "dollar for dollar" tariffs <https://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2025/mar/12/dollar-for-dollar-canada-announces-25-tariffs-on-nearly-30bn-in-us-imports-video https://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2025/mar/12/dollar-f...>. How that would devastate an economy 8% the size of the US's was, of course, unsaid, because vibes are all it takes to fight Trump fascism, amirite fellow Canadians? Of course Trudeau's replacement Carney is not stupid like Trudeau, so abandoned that policy during the campaign <https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/stock-market-trump-tariffs-trade-war-04-17-25/card/canadian-prime-minister-abandons-dollar-for-dollar-retaliatory-tariffs-Tyfe6r6jvwSQGDz5XXup https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/stock-market-trump-tariffs-...>. But still.
- gumby 4mo ago
  > He instead says that the US has more auto jobs because of the cross-border integration than otherwise. The decline of the US auto industry began very soon after the start of the auto pact. His topic is NA as a large single economy, and on that basis auto production (in both employment and GDP) has grown and productivity has grown since NAFTA was signed (and has gyrated wildly as well due to idiotic auto industry management, which is unrelated to NAFTA). The jobs had indeed moved around to the detriment of regions in the US, Canada and to a lesser extent Mexico. But if you look at the US alone, you see that process happening as well (e.g. aircraft and auto mfg moving to the non-unionized south). It’s economically superior to integrate these three countries and beneficial overall: but the US has been the laggard in helping those regions who have suffered. NAFTA is also a condemning example for the EU: a free trade region based on propinquity where different languages and systems are used yet the free trade works.
k310 4mo ago
It's time for USONA, the United States of North America. North America consists of 22 sovereign nations plus one Apartheid republic. (more, see link below) [0] AMERICA WAS NAMED FOR AN ITALIAN. Amerigo Vespucci. [1][2] The Unired States of Apartheid would get two senators, as would the other 22, countering some of the racist bullshit. Musk and Thiel would do nicely., [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_and_dependent_territories_in_North_America https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_and_d... [1] https://www.biography.com/history-culture/amerigo-vespucci https://www.biography.com/history-culture/amerigo-vespucci [2] https://www.wetheitalians.com/news/amerigo-vespucci-begins-new-north-american-mission-in-2026 https://www.wetheitalians.com/news/amerigo-vespucci-begins-n...

33 points by rbanffy 4mo ago

zulux 4mo ago

We learned that free trade has costs, and we're adjusting. That's ok too.

g8oz 4mo ago
It's part of a general retreat from the world on the part of the United States.
readthenotes1 4mo ago
Krugman--often wrong, never in doubt
betaby 4mo ago
Indeed. I live in Canada and while USMCA benefited some industries it did not others. Also as a Canadian I suspect the new agreement most likely will be even less beneficial to Canadians.
- actionfromafar 4mo ago
  Yeah, especially if the deal has "50-something or other state" in it.
- gumby 4mo ago
  > Also as a Canadian I suspect the new agreement most likely will be even less beneficial to Canadians. I think Carney is unlikely to let that happen. Australia’s most recent FTA with the US was lopsided because AUS still had a policy of hoping the US would come to her aid if necessary and so placated the giant, and the GWB administration took advantage of that. These days that’s unlikely to happen because people understand that that era is over and the current government has more spine.
bigbadfeline 4mo ago
> We learned that free trade has costs, and we're adjusting. I doubt it. Learning too slow is sometimes worse than not learning at all. During the heyday of globalization I was repeating a single message - this is going too far, too fast, it'll hit a brick wall. Curiously enough that's exactly what I'm repeating these days too - this time about the wild, erratic swing to the side of isolationism. We're still operating in the same market bubble conditions as before, driven by the same people, for the same reasons - globalization and shmobalization are just means to an end, the means might be different but the end is the same.

jmward01 4mo ago

Cooperation leads to higher value for everyone. We are now only getting the maximum minimum value because we are actively destroying cooperation. In other words, borders are stupid. When they go away you see prosperity and reduced tensions. When they go up you see inefficiency and distrust. Borders aren't the result of distrust and economic issues, they are the cause.

TMWNN 4mo ago

Krugman implies that the US-Canada (not Mexico) integration of the auto industry came from NAFTA. Not so; The Auto Pact <https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Auto_Pact https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Auto_Pact> preceded NAFTA by 30 years. Krugman avoids answering the interviewer's question about whether Michiganites support having so much of the automobile supply chain outsourced to Canada, because he knows that the answer is "No". He instead says that the US has more auto jobs because of the cross-border integration than otherwise. The decline of the US auto industry began very soon after the start of the auto pact. I don't mean to say that the latter caused the former, but it would certainly be possible to make a case for such. Trump's view is that Canada needs the US a lot more than the other way around. He's right. Every Canadian province except one trades more with the US than the rest of Canada, and every Canadian province is (far, far) more dependent on international trade than 48 of 50 US states. <https://www.linkedin.com/posts/goldfarbdanielle_we-make-things-together-this-has-been-activity-7249861838236999680-wtVG/ https://www.linkedin.com/posts/goldfarbdanielle_we-make-thin...> At the end of the day, there is no way to get around the verity of another Krugman observation, that Canada is closer to the US than to itself. <https://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/13/eh/ https://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/13/eh/> With the above in mind, consider the Trudeau government's bold talk in early 2025 about "dollar for dollar" tariffs <https://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2025/mar/12/dollar-for-dollar-canada-announces-25-tariffs-on-nearly-30bn-in-us-imports-video https://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2025/mar/12/dollar-f...>. How that would devastate an economy 8% the size of the US's was, of course, unsaid, because vibes are all it takes to fight Trump fascism, amirite fellow Canadians? Of course Trudeau's replacement Carney is not stupid like Trudeau, so abandoned that policy during the campaign <https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/stock-market-trump-tariffs-trade-war-04-17-25/card/canadian-prime-minister-abandons-dollar-for-dollar-retaliatory-tariffs-Tyfe6r6jvwSQGDz5XXup https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/stock-market-trump-tariffs-...>. But still.

gumby 4mo ago
> He instead says that the US has more auto jobs because of the cross-border integration than otherwise. The decline of the US auto industry began very soon after the start of the auto pact. His topic is NA as a large single economy, and on that basis auto production (in both employment and GDP) has grown and productivity has grown since NAFTA was signed (and has gyrated wildly as well due to idiotic auto industry management, which is unrelated to NAFTA). The jobs had indeed moved around to the detriment of regions in the US, Canada and to a lesser extent Mexico. But if you look at the US alone, you see that process happening as well (e.g. aircraft and auto mfg moving to the non-unionized south). It’s economically superior to integrate these three countries and beneficial overall: but the US has been the laggard in helping those regions who have suffered. NAFTA is also a condemning example for the EU: a free trade region based on propinquity where different languages and systems are used yet the free trade works.

k310 4mo ago

It's time for USONA, the United States of North America. North America consists of 22 sovereign nations plus one Apartheid republic. (more, see link below) [0] AMERICA WAS NAMED FOR AN ITALIAN. Amerigo Vespucci. [1][2] The Unired States of Apartheid would get two senators, as would the other 22, countering some of the racist bullshit. Musk and Thiel would do nicely., [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_and_dependent_territories_in_North_America https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_and_d... [1] https://www.biography.com/history-culture/amerigo-vespucci https://www.biography.com/history-culture/amerigo-vespucci [2] https://www.wetheitalians.com/news/amerigo-vespucci-begins-new-north-american-mission-in-2026 https://www.wetheitalians.com/news/amerigo-vespucci-begins-n...