This ignorance makes it very clear that the American voting populace does not take positive relations with erstwhile allies seriously. Increased trade integration may not be the ideal situation for Canada, but nothing about the situation is ideal. At least we won’t be subjugating ourselves to hostile hegemons like China and the USA.
While there are troubling developments in EU countries as well, there is also the converse (e.g. Hungary), and the EU parliamentary systems are significantly more resilient than the US two-party presidential system.
Mistakes happen but this same buffoon got elected twice. That's no fluke, deep down the american population likes him enough to give him two chances.
The US is on the path of Russia since the end of the iron curtain, moving to a kleptocracy ruled by (tech br)olichargs.
The electoral + two-party system makes it nearly impossible to break out of this.
When it's Hungary it's funny, because it doesn't matter, when it's the US it's not, because it fucks up the entire world's order. It really is not that hard to understand the problem
Until the USA fixes their broken political system, it would be unreasonable to seek to create major bonds with them.
They will remain a partner, but they should be a minority partner.
A necessary move, because the US isnt acting like an ally anymore.
Hence the increased cooperation and agreements with the EU and China.
The US government has repeatedly called for invasion of Canada. Canada would be insane not to find allies against the American threat.
The EU has built the world's largest trade zone, from Mercosur to South Korea, Japan and India to Canada.
I believe they are currently outmaneuvering the rest of the world by quietly binding everyone to themselves while the US, Russia and China are caught up in their saber rattling.
The US and China are fighting a 20th century contest of hard power. The EU is the only 21st century superpower of soft power.
Which of those agreements are fully ratified by the EU?
If there's an apt non-baseball metaphor, it's perhaps that USA is a circus we are compelled to pay attention to for now. We'd rather just not
The next phase of history is China's, and broadly Asia's. Everyone on the planet, but Americans, can see this. It is indisputable.
Everyone else is finding a place within that new reality, and no one else wants to play along with American delusions that they're going to hold onto their place and everyone else are their supplicants.
At this stage, the US should be begging every like-minded nation to be friends. Instead you elected a grotesque embarrassment farce that coddles up to two-bit clowns like Milei, while endlessly attacking allies. ROFL.
Enjoy the coming crash.
Yeah, we don't want to be under the "umbrella" of a terroristic idiocracy menace. You can become the worldwide pariah on your own, without our offering of legitimacy for your terrible behaviour.
Even if Democrats were to be back in power and devote their 4 years to restore things and apologize, that wouldn’t be enough.
Americans have shown they can vote TWICE for a fascist regime that is willing and eager to generate chaos.
Their political system is foobar.
The US is a completely broken country, and simply switching governments will not change that. Without a complete and utter change in how that entire country operates -- including dissolution -- no country should ever normalize relations with it again.
The US is by far the world's most dangerous rogue nation. It is a terroristic nation. It is a bully. It not only elected a rapist self-dealing criminal imbecile to president, it elected him again, seeking a round two after the utter debacle the first term was, and the disastrous results are exactly what everyone could predict, but you know...this is who America is now.
And a big reason Canada is moving on is that it's pretty clear that the US is a country in spectacular decline, and it is China's century now. Which is maybe why the US is electing disgusting garbage like Trump -- and he's certainly not alone, and there are various garbage "football coach" type creeps filling the entire US political class -- lamenting the position they once held, now going down the Russian/Putin path where they'll accelerate the crash just to reminisce about a past that mostly never existed.
EDIT: I should add that agreements with the US are worthless, and this has been amply demonstrated. As Carney noted, the US' signature is written in pencil, and even agreements signed by this very president mean nothing, and will be dishonoured at the earliest convenience. In recent trade negotiations, where Canada almost made a horrible mistake of accepting ridiculous terms to maintain the status quo as much as possible (sidenote: Canada absolutely must withdraw from USMCA, a Trump-signed and negotiated agreement that the US is in utter defiance of), they asked "so when we sign this, you'll then honour it?", and the US side couldn't even commit to that. They knew that it could be days before the rapist toddler had a twitter tantrum after one of the kleptocrats whispered in his ear and imposed new barriers, tariffs, etc. Like, what is even the point of negotiating with such a farce? A lawless cabal led by just the absolute worst human trash.
Don't worry, America still has the cartoonishly pathetic "Board of Peace" (though the Arab despots might not be as eager now that the US got completely humiliated by some isolated rogue theocracy), and your close allies Argentina and El Salvador.
I agree that Trump is a p.o.s with bad intentions, but pretending that there is some beautiful and perfect alternative on the other side of the planet is just hilarious.
If you have to construct a strawman to declare "hilarious", maybe just delete it in your drafts?
There are zero "beautiful and perfect alternatives" on this planet. But right now China reveres science, medicine, training and education. The US has descended to being a fucking idiocracy where foolish clowns like Rogan and Charlie Kirk are the heroes of the people. Oh look, Sydney Sweeney showed her tits!
Where a barking clown pedophile conman bag of shit gets elected to highest office -- his addled, simpleton brain stuck in the 1980s, so it's like listening to some sort of bizarre, incredibly stupid version of a time capsule. It is quite literally an idiocracy. Where your secretary of "war" is a drunken foolish idiot who only ever made captain, and thinks germs are fake and brags about never washing his hands. I mean, the entire administration, from Epstein Grifter Greaseball Lutnick to crybaby "we're the house" Bessent...just garbage from top to bottom. The absolute worst people.
I'm Canadian, and I will say with 100%, utter certainty that Trump has asked your military for plans to takeover Canada. Because it is a lawless risk to humanity. China isn't a member of the International Criminal Court, but they have never impeded its work or attacked its existence, whereas the US -- as a warcriming menace -- is actively threatening it at this moment, largely to support their genocide/war crime master Israel.
There is one country that has bombed 10 nations over the past 12 months. That has a deranged lunatic constantly tweeting threats of nuclear armageddon or "wiping out civilizations". A foolish cretin that is putting his name on everything and demolishing everything that won't let him. Even putting his disgusting face on currency, matching only a couple of despotic crapholes in putting a living leader on currency. There is one country that is committing wanton terrorism around the globe. I mean, we know China does some destabilizing things in Western countries, but it is nothing compared to what the US is doing, trying to export its garbage culture and idiocracy traits abroad.
What a farce. And Americans are...fine with this. With becoming a worldwide joke. A dangerous menace joke, for sure, and I guarantee a lot of nuclear stockpiles, including among allies, have newly added targeting for US targets, rightly. And many more countries are going to emerge as nuclear powers. The US under this criminal garbage has taught a solid lesson that nuclear proliferation is where it's at, and everyone should get in on it.
China, in contrast, does a lot of shitty things, but they are absolute rational saints compared to the farce that the US is now. Predictable, reasonable, rational.
It's clear the paths these two countries are on. And the US is heading to Russia v2, where a pathetic has been endlessly tries to reclaim that glory while it circles the toilet.
And before you seethe some more repeatedly saying "your military! your secretary of war! your your your!", I'm Canadian.
Both sides demonstrate that the United States can be consistently relied upon to break every deal they make, be it relating to international relations and borders, economics and debt, trade, military protection, and supply of arms.
Bush Sr and Clinton both broke the assurances made to Gorbachev that made the relatively peaceful dismantling of the Soviet Union possible by marching NATO eastward and carving up fresh borders in the Balkans.
Clinton, Bush Jr, and even Biden were still talking about free trade agreements, less than a decade before we see an international tariff regime spring up, and the United States reserves subsidy carve-outs in every deal they make with other countries who they expect to open their markets.
US spending has been out of control for decades no matter who controls the White House or Congress, and is only getting worse. They're relying on the inertia of its massive economy to bear the inflationary burden by printing money. The biggest export of the US economy, Treasury Bonds - that is, debt - is now seen as unreliable, and other countries are dumping them like burning garbage. Indeed, the United States has already started defaulting on such loans to a growing number of nations, only they get to call it "sanctions" when they don't repay their loans. The rest of the world looks on in horror as they realise how much of their wealth is tied up in this make-believe that the United States can renege on or bully creditors into not divesting on a whim. This explains the skyrocketing price of gold.
Speaking of those creditors, a lot of them are gulf states. As in, Persian Gulf. They used to sell oil and buy Treasuries as investments. But since nearly every US base in the Persian Gulf has been effectively destroyed, every gulf state that participated in the war crimes against Iran has been punished into submission for that involvement. Resumption of hostilities like we saw in the opening month would see the infrastructure that those nations rely on to continue to function as countries destroyed within hours. Absent desalination and oil export facilities, those countries would just cease to exist as significant polities. The de facto government in Yemen (referred to perversely as the "rebels", while the legitimate government sits in Riyadh, capital of the country that has been bombing Yemen for 15 years or so) just delivered Saudi Arabia a major military defeat, while the President refused to help. Saudi Arabia, land of black gold, unable to export from either the Strait or the Red Sea, with one of the biggest oil pipelines in the world now burning, is being forced to borrow money! The United States, so called most powerful military the world has known, dares not send a large naval vessel within about 1000 km of the Strait of Hormuz, and two aircraft carriers have been forced to limp away. Meanwhile, trade through the Red Sea has also been strangled off. All of the US allies under the protection of Pax Americana have been humbled by a country that has been getting "strangled" in some form or another for the past 70 years by a superpower.
And after all that the US military is out of interceptor missiles. They can't spare any for West Asia or Ukraine, right when everyone wants them. They wasted thousands of million dollar missiles on thousand dollar drones, and cannot make more at a rate that matters.
If you think it's just tariffs and some hurt feelings, you haven't been paying attention.