Hacker News Reader

Comment by FridayoLeary | Hacker News Reader

[flagged]

It's fundamentally insane that the conclusion you come to is blaming Doug Ford and not the toddler who would sabotage his own country's international negotiations over a benign advertisement.

The US is going to feel significantly more pain from its completely irrational approach to global economics than Canada is. Canada has historically had a close economic relationship with the US because of shared values, but they do not strictly need a close economic relationship with the US to thrive. There is an entire world out there happy to trade with Canada. Meanwhile the US is alienating itself from every single one of its allies simultaneously.

The US has a much stronger hand than Canada. The majority of our exports go to the US, but only 17% of US imports come from us.

For now, but that isn't immutable. Canada can build relationships with other nations instead. That's the neat thing about free trade.

It's hard to say what the effects are so soon. Americans are starting to wake up to the impact of tariffs, R pols are starting to talk negatively about them, Dear Leader changes his mind quite often, and the tariffs issue is slated to be before SCOTUS (they have often been in the King's corner, but not always)

Play devils advocate with me: how do we know this isn’t staged?

> Play devils advocate with me: how do we know this isn’t staged?

Nobody involved has the attention span.

Trump is a narcissistic bully who will change his mind in a heartbeat and who wants mafia like payments to stay in his good graces (look who is paying for the Whitehouse remodel)

If you pander to the bully you will always be on the hook. Every country will be better off just not dealing with them at all. Sure there is some short term pain there, but that’s better than coughing up lunch money forever.

I mean, Canada has had a tepid response to the implosion of their neighbour and relations - I think they have done little outside some retaliatory tariffs and “committing” to a 10 year plan to double trade with non American partners.

Is that really such a bold set of accomplishments that Ford should be shutting his mouth and falling in line behind? Trump could change his mind because Putin or Miller or Vought tell him to, no need to act like precarious progress is precious from my perspective

>> Doug Ford, the governor of Ontario in his wisdom thought it would be a good idea

> "Doug Ford’s approval rating rocketed to a four-year high for reaction to Donald Trump’s trade war"[0] (Mar '25)

And, Doug Ford was right. Baiting Trump is a _great_ idea for Doug Ford.

[0] https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/doug-fords-approval-rati...

Premier of Ontario. The Governor General and Lieutenant Governors in Canada are the King's representatives, their non-executive heads of state/provinces.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com