Mark Carney taking on Trump

[RedHot2025]

Fighting talk from Mark Carney today. He will win the trade war with America. Blames Trump entirely for this trade war.

He will apply from today 25% surcharge on energy to the 3 US states they supply. Means around 100 dollars per month per family in those states.

Trump is a buffoon as well as a bully and people will not tolerate his actions.

Does Trump have dementia?

Or is he thick as shite?

YABU he's just thick

YANBU he has dementia

On what basis do you say he's deeply unpopular? Have you seen opinion polls showing that?
Below is info on a poll which found that more people would vote Liberal than Tory with Carney as leader, which suggests that he is actually quite popular. That's the only poll which touches on his popularity that I know of.

"If Mark Carney is chosen as the next Liberal leader, more Canadians would vote for his party than Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives, a new Léger Marketing poll is suggesting.

The poll says with Carney as leader, Liberal support would rise to 40 per cent while the Conservatives would be at 38 per cent."

https://montreal.citynews.ca/2025/02/25/carney-liberals-poilievre-conservatives-poll/

Why is a civil service background unbecoming?

Anecdotally, the three Conservative voters I know (same demographic, in that they are all lawyers) say they'll now be voting Liberal. Not Pierre fans.

People who vote as they do because they want to hurt certain people are deranged and should be shunned by all decent people.
We know who Trumpers want to hurt. It's people of colour and "the liberal coastal elites" aka Jews and mid to upper class gentiles who aren't slobbering racists.

Their slogan should be 'hold your nose and vote liberal'. People don't love the conservatives but Poilivere is a twat.

Thanks, Trump. 😁
The one good deed he ever did in his miserable life, albeit inadvertently.

I think we are heading for a transition in the world economic order.

For years it has been based on the US running significant trade deficits. To some degree this is necessary due to something called the Triffin dilemma.

But still the US debt has been increasing at a huge rate. You might ask what the sensible strategy is. To continue having the US increase debt at an ever increasing rate, leading to some sort of systematic failure in the future, or to try to do something about it now and head that devastating global collapse (it would be) off at the pass by forced re-adjustment.

I think it is in the nature of things that people want to keep things going the way they are and are resistant to change. Trump wants something different to that. I think his long term objectives are probably sensible, but the way he appears to go about them comes across as pretty crazy. Some people might argue that there is no way of changing the system without acting like this and the only way to get systematic change is through chaos.

The new economic order has to have the traditional exporters (EU core, Germany, China for example) increasing their consumption and reducing their trade surpluses while the US decreases its trade deficits. Not every country in the world can be an exporter, and the current system cannot continue to get more and more unbalanced.

I think some of the things that Trump is proposing has shades of similarity to major changes in the economic systems (such as Bretton Woods, end of the gold reserve) that have happened in the past. I do not know whether Trump will manage to implement the changes in 4 years in time to become successful and get the next "Trumpist" elected. But I have a gut feeling that the next US president will take the same approach as Trump, whether GOP or Democrats, even if it might be dressed up in a less unsavoury way. The US debt levels cannot be pushed to infinity.

Trump has well thought through long term objectives which will benefit millions @GasPanic ?
Wouldn't that be something wonderful !

That's an over-simplification. We know a number of Americans, they're all white from Christian families, and they all absolutely despise the man. It has to be mentioned though, that they are all college graduates. Trump won 49.9% of the popular vote, but gained about 2/3 of the votes from white-non-graduates.

I suppose there's a parallel here to Reform UK scoring 23% of the vote among people whose education level is GCSE or lower, but only 8% of the vote among people whose level is Degree-or-higher.
Basically if you believe that Trump or Reform can actually do everything they promise (even though a lot of it is contradictory) AND that it will be a good thing for you if they do, you're not a terribly sophisticated thinker.

It all seems rather silly. Former allies now waging a tariff war due to Trump.

Trump is managing to upset, insult, and fall out with many former allies yet pushes Putin as a reasonable man (for avoidance of doubt he isn't).

I don't know to be honest.

One of the problems with Trump is that it has become increasingly hard to get any sort of reasonable independent analysis of his actions. All the best analysis is of course impartial, but TDS seems to make many peoples heads melt in a way that stops any sort of balanced appraisal.

Even if Trump himself has no strategy or long term plan, or is indeed as stupid as some people claim he is, he undoubtably has people working for him who are not stupid and have some sort of plan or vision. So although I might be willing to buy into the idea Trump is stupid, I find it much harder to buy into the idea that his administration collectively is.

Are his plans motivated by a change he wants to instill in the world economic order for Americas benefit, or is he just trying to give himself the opportunity to make out like a bandit ? Again I don't know. I know what a lot of people say. But I don't know what the actual truth is and I don't see much evidence to discern either way.

As they said when Jaws went under the boat, either he's really stupid, or he's really smart. I am yet to figure out which.

Is the rest of your stand-up act available online?

I don't think many in his orbit actually agree with his trade wars, or foreign policy generally. I think they're putting up with it for the sake of their domestic aims and attraction to power.

Tariffs are a longstanding personal fetishist of his.

As they said when Jaws went under the boat, either he's really stupid, or he's really smart. I am yet to figure out which.

He's sneaky and conniving. I bet him and all his friends are short selling and making a fortune from the stock market crash. And I bet Elon has it worked out that Tesla shares fall, which have loans secured against them not him, saving him a shit ton of money because he's overextended.

They will all come out of this richer. The rest of us much poorer. As per...

Yes, and beware someone who uses doom and gloom scare tactics to win votes (Like Trump). Yet, it works.

@HangryLilacGoose ? Not sure what you are attempting to say ?
Did you think my post was come

@HangryLilacGoose Should say "Did you think my post was comedic?"

Maybe.

I don't see people like Tory Blair writhing around in poverty either. Just maybe a more subtle and less abrasive way of going about it.

I think Trump and Musk must ultimately be idealogues. I think involving themselves in politics has been deterimental to their wealth so far ?

I think it would be really interesting to ask Trump (and force an honest answer) whether he ever regretted getting involved in politics.

He HAD to win that second election. And when you corner someone and put their back against the wall that is absolutely when they are at their most dangerous.

Shame his well thought out policy has lost Ukraine lives the pas few days

I think (and have thought for a long time) that he is an insane megalomaniac. I now think he probably has a mental impairment as well.

But still the US debt has been increasing at a huge rate. You might ask what the sensible strategy is. To continue having the US increase debt at an ever increasing rate, leading to some sort of systematic failure in the future, or to try to do something about it now and head that devastating global collapse (it would be) off at the pass by forced re-adjustment.

It is very difficult to change systems. I'm not sure how this Canada issue will resolve but your posts bring insight.

@GasPanic The solution to their debt problem is to stop giving tax cuts to the wealthy. It would take time to reverse the trend, just as it has taken them a long time under bad tax policy to get in this much debt. Remember the Bush tax cuts? The fiscal stupidity goes back a long way. Trump has only made an existing situation worse. The Democrats failed to reverse the Bush tax cuts as well with Obama extending them when they expired. Then came further cuts under Trump in 2017. This is the primary cause of their debt and the Democrats should share some of the blame.

Ford has backed down with his power tariffs to hopefully avoid 50% tariffs on steel and aluminium.

I think it is part of the problem.

Unfortunately people like voting for tax cuts.

A crisis of democracy ?

I agree it is hard to change systems or even propose what a new system should be.

I think the Canada issue is noise amongst the real issues at stake.

I remember that the US has 10 nuclear powered aircraft carriers. But what is easy to forget is the US's ability to shape world economic policy in its own interests. If the US ever loses this capability it is really done as the world superpower.

If it sees a situation is developing not to it's own advantage, it can either choose to try to reshape the system, or potentially lose that ability and its dominance forever.

the sensible strategy would be to go about some of his ideas with less drama.
request to renegotiate cusma early, have your diplomats organize this. allow people to retire, reduce numbers through attrition (yes with some incentive), cut back on foreign aid, review the contracts and pull back at set times.
he might not have 10 years but that's how long it takes to modernize a smelter, and the number of employees is not what smelters employed 40 years ago. new industrial jobs involves an educated workforce instrumentation automation electronics.