There was a second ‘something’ that changed to cause Canadian liberals to rise: the resignation of a historically unpopular prime minister.
I hate to contradict this largely true narrative, but the polling leap occurred directly after Trudeau resigned on Jan 6th. Trump’s first tariff wave only launched on feb 1st, nearly a month after the liberal party began recovering in the polls.
Trump is still the central figure in this election and he absolutely contributed to the recovery, but it’s all set against the backdrop of the leader’s resignation and, critically, the election of an outsider to replace him.
I think you can draw the second conclusion from this election that choosing party outsiders (I.e. Mark Carney, not Chrystia Freeland and not Kamala Harris) seems like an optimal strategy for replacing failed leadership.
I went to the CBC poll tracker expecting to find you were wrong because in my memory the polls only went up a little bit from Trudeau resigning and then skyrocketed after tariffs were announced, but now that I'm actually looking at the graph it's kind of hard to argue that.
Thanks! I realized it after mapping an exponentially-decaying weighted average of Canadian polls and a loess regression against major political events. I don't want to post a link in the SB comments but the plots are in my last article if you'd like to check them out.
That's definitely a factor, but the resignation should've caused a short-term bump, whereas Liberals' popularity just kept rising and rising, and the anti-Trump sentiment is very much not just about tariffs. Trump's recurring comments about annexing Canada (by "economic coersion") and his frequent comments about how the USA buying stuff from Canada supposedly counts as Canada ripping off the USA, started even before Trudeau resigned. So by the time he had cut about $50,000 CAD from my stock portfolio two months later, I was well and truly pissed.[1]
So as a Canadian, I have been having very serious discussions lately about Canada's interdependence with the US, especially in relation to oil since we failed to build enough refining capacity (or even pipelines) within Canada and rely heavily on the U.S. for that, and also about Canada mismanaging its military since the 1980s[2].
I didn't have much time to study candidates this cycle, but on one hand I've encountered a few conservatives in my region who sounded remarkably like American MAGAs, and on the other hand, as a central banker, Mark Carney seemed like a pretty boring candidate who should know something about macroeconomics, which seemed like a good counterpoint to Donald "let's randomly add and remove tariffs on everything constantly while deporting almost anybody including U.S. citizens with no due process and rationalize it later" Trump as I headed to the polls today.
Note how many of the votes shifted from NDP to Liberal, which seems to indicate that many left-leaning folks do understand how first-past-the-post works.
[1] Also I'm big on halting the Russian advance in Ukraine, so the sudden cuts to aid and intelligence sharing, calling Zelenskyy but not Putin a dictator because "I don't use those words lightly", the refusal to let Ukraine buy Patriot missiles, putting so many anti-Ukraine people in his administration, telling 200,000 Ukrainians they'd be deported immediately, talk of lifting all sanctions on Russia, the list goes on, and all that pissed me off too. I am right now trying to work out to which charity I should send a $3000 donation to Ukraine; Slava Ukraini and Tuck Frump.
I was thinking to myself this morning that I'd like to read an analysis as Carney as an outsider candidate and how it affects the race. There's definitely something to be said for Mark Carney being a successful candidate for a left leaning party vs Michael Bloomberg for example.
Chrystia Freeland absolutely sucks. I still remember a speech she gave pretending that increasing defense spending to 1.2% of gdp would make Canada a force for stability and humanitarian values.
Even after Russia invaded Ukraine and the Ukrainians stopped and even reversed the Russian advance with, er, military equipment, you don't see how increasing defense spending could be a force for stability? (Also, the NATO spending target is 2%, so 1.2% is really very low. Reminder: the main purpose of NATO is to deter Russia. Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania are much easier military targets than Ukraine, but they are in NATO. Since Ukraine wasn't allowed into NATO, deterrence didn't work there. With Russia now relying more on donkeys and less on tanks, just about the only thing that can keep the Russian military advance going is Trump cutting aid. Also, Xi is deciding whether to invade Taiwan and Trump's retreat from protecting allies raises that risk.)
I find it fascinating that people think that I care whether the United States is liked, or even that I should care.
Everyone loves the friend with lots of money who spends it on everyone around him like there's no tomorrow. Then one day he wakes up, realizes that he's screwed up his life, and stops throwing away his money and suddenly he's a d*ck.
The rest of the world loves it when the U.S. bows to other leaders, gives away money with no expectations of anything in return, and props up their flailing economies with our American dollars.
They hate us when we suddenly wake up and say, "Hey, you know what...you want these things from us, you're going to have to do your part too. The status quo is completely unfair for Americans and America." Just like that rich friend, suddenly we're the d*ck.
Historically, at least in times of relative peace, the world has loved a weaker U.S. and hated a stronger one.
Chris, you forget that for 80 years the US has done all of these things to gain a global advantage through influence that has benefited Americans. Nobody makes perfect decisions, but largely America has benefited from global stability and foreign leaders who bend to US will.
Throwing that out the window is giving China the keys to the global economy. Losing defense partners means allowing China and Russia to gain influence until one day the US has an enemy at its border.
And it's laughable that Americans will save any money. The US economy is more likely than not headed for a recession which will cost more than any foreign aid saved. And there will be a more hostile world on the other side of it.
The Vietnamese hate the Chinese, the Chinese hate the Japanese, the Japanese hate the Koreans and the Koreans hate everyone.
Also: the enemy of my enemy is my friend.
Everyone seems to be forgetting that the United States does not exist in a vacuum. China, for example, has a long history filled with wars, brutality and atrocities with its neighbors. Those neighbors view the US as a natural ally against Chinese domination of the continent. The great motivator in geopolitical relations isn't how "friendly" nations are towards one another--it's cold blooded self interest.
If we are trying to isolate China, we are approaching that stupidly by antagonizing Canada, Europe, etc. The Trump administration’s approach to these allies is likely to increase trade between China and our allies, not reduce them. That is already starting to happen.
China is surrounded by adversaries due to a long history of warfare and atrocity with its neighbors. That is thousands of years of history. To expect that four years of any administration can reverse that historical record is illiterate.
Not playing the sucker is one thing. But how is threatening to make Canada the 51st state, telling Greenland we will get them “one way or the other” and imposing on-again-off-again tariffs….’standing up for ourselves’?
Canadian here. It's nothing to do with spite, Canadians broadly view Pierre Pollievre (the conservative leader) as too Trump-friendly to stand up to him in these trade disputes. His initial response to liberation day was really weak, probably because he was worried about alienating parts of his base that are fans of Trump, and while he's tried to strike a firmer position since then his numbers have never recovered.
Mark Carney, conversely, has not only promised Canadians that he will stand up to Trump, but is politically incentivized to do so in a way that Pollievre is not.
Well, that's fine then. I firmly believe that all countries should do what they feel is best for them and their peoples. If they feel Carney is better, and not doing it out of spite, then I salute them. I hope they're right and they're making the right choices for themselves. I hope that for all people everywhere.
More to the point, if Trump is stupid enough to antagonize people who were going to vote for a simpatico border political ally, he deserves what he gets.
My honest opinion is that Trump is uninterested in power and is more concerned with paying off his base (blue collar workers) by reshoring manufacturing. I sincerely doubt that he is doing anything other than trolling with the 51st state stuff.
They already agreed to more border enforcement. I expect some measure of reciprocal tariffs, although I think there's going to be a very strong move on the part of the administration to move manufacturing back to the US no matter what.
lol imagine being this guy, thinking the only reason other countries don't like us anymore is because they're just a bunch of moochers, I'm sure it has nothing to do with:
1. Threatening to use military action against Greenland (a part of NATO)
2. Threatening to use military action against Panama
3. Threatening to make Canada the 51st state by any means necessary (also NATO member)
4. Starting crippling trade wars with the entire world under false pretenses (the "reciprocal" tariffs weren't actually reciprocal at all)
5. Violating international agreements under false pretenses (including ones Trump negotiated in his first term, like the USMCA)
6. Detaining and deporting legal visitors with proper documentation from allied nations
7. Detaining and deporting people illegally to an El Salvadorian dungeon and refusing to do anything to bring them back (and also flirting with the idea of sending US citizens, signaling that nobody would be safe within the borders of the US)
8. Attempting a public humiliation display of Zelensky, the leader of a European nation currently under attack by one of their key adversaries
9. Having top US officials send Signal messages to each other berating Europeans and regarding them with disdain.
If your analogy were true or even close to true, I would agree with you. However, Europe, Canada, and even Japan have not been benefiting from American largess. Rather, over the past 50 years, America has done better than any of these countries by free trade. This is because the American dollar has become the world’s reserve currency. Everyone trades in American dollars and when things go badly, worried investors flee to the American dollar. This keeps the value of the American dollar artificially inflated. This is the major source of the supposed trade imbalance, not tariffs. In Canada, where I live, we have a trade deficit with the US when Alberta tar sands oil is excluded. As this oil can only be refined at various American sites, principally Texas, we are forced to sell it at 70% of world value. So, if we were to stop selling this to the Americans, America would be hurt, yet somehow Trump would be happy since it is now Canada that has the trade deficit and not the USA. Canada does not feel protected by American’s spending on military. Over our history, we have only been attacked by one country, and that country has tried to invade us multiple times. It’s you. We feel kind of like the girlfriend who wishes her boyfriend would stop buying so many guns and storing them all over the house, as the only person who was ever hit her is her boyfriend himself.
Previous administrations have tried to get the European NATO countries to spend at least 2% of their GDP on their own national defenses. The response was a slight increase over inflation, generally average 3-4% spending increase.
Not surprisingly, after the Russian Federation invaded Ukraine, the countries with 2% plus spending increased from 4-7 (primarily East Europe) last year up to 23 and all of the countries most at risk from Russian aggression. One might argue that Biden foreign policy vis a vis Ukraine played an impact somewhat like Bush policy against Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in the Gulf War. NATO countries were certainly more aligned. Trump foreign policy first term or now had no meaningful effect - Putin's foreign policy did.
(which doesn't mean that the U.S. wouldn't have had a big military anyway or that NATO is not in the U.S.'s best interests ― it is. Worth noting that most European countries passed the 2% NATO spending target before Trump was re-elected. But alas, not Canada.)
why do you people keep talking about gratitude and being taken advantage of? Do you really think the sole hegemon and superpower in the world for the last 20 years has really been such a massive victim, weakling and sucker..? How does that even work logically in your head..?
Do you know how much influence the US has just because they have these bases located around the world? Do you know how much Russian or China would be willing to pay to have bases around the world as well - well you can check how much theyre paying to Djibouti for permission to maintain a base there, and that's only Djibouti. Korea serves literally as a physical, immovable aircraft carrier that is positioned parallel right against the eastern Chinese coast line.. Do you know how much leverage that gives the US in any conflict with China..? Has Europe or Korea or Japan asked the US a single time to say thank you?
Its been a mutually beneficial relationship but I guess Trump voters are too shortsighted to see it.
"Standing up for ourselves?" What a way to describe punching down on people who did you no harm. When you buy stuff from others, they are not stealing from you![1] It's always impressive how the instant a fringe idea exits Trump's mouth, it suddenly becomes fact for tens of millions of consumers of Trump-friendly media.
The article already discussed the losses to the U.S. tourism industry. It didn't mention the investor exodus away from U.S. defense stocks toward E.U. defense stocks[2], the harm being done to airlines and airplane manufacturers including U.S.-based Boeing[3][4], or ― well, as a Canadian, I suspect America's losses due to anti-US sentiment will be China's gain, because while China is more evil than the USA, at least they're not aiming their evil directly at us. On top of the boycott-USA effect, it's even more important that Chinese goods will get even cheaper relative to U.S. goods after retaliatory tariffs are factored in.
We have not been giving away money to Canada. I mean maybe Canada has been screwing our dairy farmers, but that’s like having a wife who puts the dishes away in a way you don’t like. It’s a small flaw given the scope of the relationship
Hate to burst your bubble but even steadfast allies like Australians (who run a trade deficit with the USA btw) also dislike Americans more every day. On balance if you blanket dislike Americans of a voting age as your starting position you’re going to be disliking a Trump voter around 50% of the time - so that’s a win
As a Canadian who invests in the US, holds property in the US and has children and grandchildren who are US citizens, all of this alienation is tragic especially in that in the short run will culminate in the election of another leftist government in Ottawa. Solely attributable to Trump and his unthinking assault on existing trade agreements and invoking the pretext of “fentanyl”.
And for what?
Trump is on a path to degrade prosperity and any morality in foreign policy.
For example, Marco Rubio used to be a staunch supporter of Ukraine, but as soon as he was appointed to the otherwise pro-Russia negotiation team with Jack "I ♥ 14-88" Posobiec and Trump's golfing buddy Steve Witkoff, not a hint of negativity toward Russia could be found coming from his lips―not coincidentally in the time frame that the U.S. voted with Russia, North Korea and Iran against two U.N. resolutions condemning Russian aggression, while aid from the 2024 bill was instantly halted after anti-Ukraine VP Vance helped get Zelenskyy kicked out of the White House.
Why do Republicans fall in line? Why is there no revolt? I think it's because anti-intellectual "southern" media[1], especially social media echo chambers, are too powerful. Their Alternative Facts are majority-aligned with Trump, and congressional Republicans know they can't diverge from Trump and still win a primary unless their base snaps out of their trance. Even personally being harmed by tariffs might not be enough because they could be sold on the idea that [edited] it's short-term pain for long-term gain (but it's not[2]).
You should control for the value of the American dollar in the stats. In New England during the '80s and '90s the dollar is what led to increases and decreases in Canadian tourism.
My clients are asking me to send people to their countries to close deals because, and I quote, "I'm not risking my people getting sent to a South American Gulag because of a Football [Soccer] tattoo."
With those types of requests, I guarantee that American tourism is almost certainly dead,
and we're waiting for the information and actualization lags to catch up.
we have a robust internal market, i’ll be ok if travel in the us becomes as cheap as in europe. as things stand, i plan on skiing in norway in february
That internal market is at risk of localized collapses due to logistical over reliance and, bluntly, ego. It's all to easy to miss the forest in the trees, and in this case that forest is named 'Stagflation'.
For example, Albertson's demands of it's suppliers that it won't pay for price increases and that it will force them to maintain contact terms is likely to backfire, as the penalty fees in the the contracts are simply no longer threatening enough to prevent a exit / renegotiation with other market chains.
This is not a guarantee, mind you. But I do not whistle past graveyards.
A dramatic decrease in lucrative cross border business flights will stress and already fragile economy of airlines, who are basically worthless without their credit card deals. There's almost no room for movement down on prices, with the only real drive being the cost in fuel. But much of that is already locked in with long term pricing.
I think Trump would be a confounding variable here. Last I checked the dollar was down 9% as a consequence of Trump's trade war & erratic behavior; if the same actions are what led to the resurgence of the Canadian Liberal Party controlling for the dollar will just tell us all three are correlated.
I might speculate that part of the difference between Trump 1.0 and Trump 2.0 is that in the first go round people outside the US could see there was broad resistance to the most wild parts of the agenda. In 2.0, it is not clear whether there is much resistance or whether a fair majority of Americans agree with the broad agenda even if they quibble with the implementation steps.
I can provide a anectdotal data point on actual action. Ater 3 years of work on an investment structure in which some USG $$ were to go, but where the anchor equity was DaneGov plus private nordic euros, the nordics led by DaneGov are pulling out. Initial Greenland stuff was taken as almost sourly amusing but after the VP stunt and ongoing comments, added to US agencies being unable to give anyone straight answers on if terms would hold, or really anything, no more amusement. Real anger. Money walked. Strategic loss for USA.
Plenty of other oveseas investment (infra) where interlocutors are literally saying "maybe we should talk to China, they don't change their minds every day."
Turns out Reality TV game playing does not actually play in Real World
"Throughout 2023 and 2024, polling suggested the country’s next federal election would be a rout for the Conservative Party." sounds like this sentence means the opposite of what is intended.
(A rout is a crushing disorderly defeat, and the 2023 - 2024 expected the Conservative to win and the Liberal party to lose, as the sentence after this one says).
Yeah it's a bit confusing because the verb form of "rout" (e.g. "we've routed the enemy") means "to defeat decisively or disastrously", but the noun of it refers to the defeat that happens to the people you rout, not the victory that you get when you rout them.
Just practicing my data-visualization editing here.
The chart with what looks like raw numbers of crossings (not seasonally corrected) could probably be adjusted to include the chart that you didn't include (which I'd have rather seen!) since it looks like you already went and brought the data in in your later bar graphs.
1) It doesn't have labels on the axes or a title, so it's a little under-explained relative to your others.
2) Your sentence above it, "This time around, though, visits from our northern neighbors have fallen off a cliff," isn't supported by the chart immediately below, because the main thing that jumps out at me in the chart is the seasonal variability, which isn't all that relevant to your main point (except to explain that you need to make comparisons month-on-month)
Maybe the thing to do instead is, if you think the chart with the raw numbers really is useful, run a double-axis chart:
- the raw numbers in like... gray... in the background. You mentioned the long-run decline, so maybe you also want a moving average line to make that point pop.
- On the left-hand side y axis, and on the right-hand y axis something like "percent change from same month in previous year."
Because what you want is the cliff that your text refers to. In that case what you would want that chart to show is exactly your conclusion: there was one cliff for covid, and then another (smaller, most likely) decline at Trump taking office.
And then to make that work, of course, you'd need your usual chart title and axis labels and footnotes, the absence of which always makes me a little leery of what's going on.
That also might remove one chart total from your article, but get the same information across, because then your "Canadian border traffic is plummeting" graph is then redundant. But the point you wanted to make there was not the raw numbers (what do I know if 2 million Canadians is a lot or a little, and that information exists in both the line graph and your bar chart, right? and if someone cares, they can go get the data) but the changes.
I'm not married to this idea, but just thought I'd throw in another brain's thinking about it.
I admit up front that this isn't a very valuable comment but...
I spent almost two weeks in March on a boat with 10 Canadians and a handful from the USA. One American was the type to make loud phone calls with his phone on speaker in the main shared area of the boat. One day he shouted "there are 10 Canadians here and they all want to become the 51st state". They lived up to their reputation and didn't throw him overboard during the night. I was impressed.
This reads like a hit piece by an advocacy group rather than a dispassionate analysis of numbers.
The first chart showing Canadian visitors to the US describes the last two numbers, barely discernible on the chart but slightly below 2024 numbers for the same months, hyperbolically as "fallen off a cliff." How about numbers and standard errors?
The graph is useless anyway as it is dominated by seasonality and CoVID, and mixes lots of different travel reasons, but only one travel type (by car). The thesis should apply most strongly to leisure trips, much less so to business, shopping and family trips. And a better metric than total trips is fraction of US versus overseas trips. This has no seasonality and did not change during CoVID. It shows no trend since 2008, just more or less random ups and downs mainly between 50% and 75%--and is now at the high end.
The poll data is relevant, of course, and useful.
The chart showing overseas visits to the US from nine regions is cherry-picked. Yes, 15 of the 18 comparisons (9 regions by February and March) are down from 2024, but 16 of 18 are up since 2023. Only two of the declines since 2024 are significant at the 5% level, while four of the increases since 2023 are. Moreover the overall declines in February are only the 43rd biggest and 17th biggest; where are the articles on all those other, larger international rejections of the US?
Anecdotally, I find that international views on Trump correlate closely with populist views in general. People who supported Brexit, hated Trudeau, consider crime, immigration and social issues high priority tend to approve of Trump, at least compared to the people running their own countries. People who fear populism in their own countries dislike and fear Trump.
It looks like the first chart doesn't contain the new data at all―what is that, a 10% drop at most? Kind of a weird mistake for a hit piece. "US routes are currently down by 70% compared to the same period last year" (OAG)―now that's what you'd want to drive home six ways from Sunday in a hit piece.
But if you didn't know who was president, what would you expect to see in that first multi-year chart? Well, it looks like a Covid recovery: 2021 is higher than 2020, 2022 is higher than 2021, 2023 is higher than 2022, and 2024 is higher than 2023. However, 2024 is still lower than 2019, so one might expect the Covid recovery to continue with even stronger numbers in 2025.
I think the first chart does include February and March of 2025 and they're down slightly from the same months in 2024--but it's very hard to see and doesn't seem at all significant, certainly not "fallen off a cliff." The chart is certainly not drawn to illustrate the claim.
Moreover overwrought hand-wringing over the number of Canadians who drove across the border in cold weather is a pretty silly way to attack Donald Trump. It suggests someone looking for any number anywhere to batter Trump with rather than a serious policy analyst focusing on the most important data.
The basic point that polls show Trump is not popular globally, and that attitudes toward Trump are dragging down attitudes toward the US, is sound enough, but the rest of the post seems like the kind of silly embellishments and instant-crisis-about-something-no-one-cared-about-yesterday you expect from NPR or Tucker Carlson.
Well, outside of part of Alberta, the general consensus from both the Liberal and Conservative party is Canadians are demanding outright opposition to the U.S. from it's politicians.
Do not lie to yourselves and say that Canada has to work with the US/cut deals/play ball. They don't *have* to do a ducking things, and the polling and the results both indicate that Canadians are not going to reward anyone playing that game unless Canadians get a significant benefit.
Sorta off the subject but when Trump talks of 'absorbing' Canada into the US shouldn't he be welcoming 10 (or 13) new states (for their 10 Provenances and 3 Territories) rather than one state? Was Trump just going on the cheap as usual?
As a Canadian Silver Bulletin subscriber, what a thrill to see you talking about my local politics for a change. 😆
I'm also quite surprised by the degree to which tourism to the US has actually dropped. These tariffs and the insults to our country that have accompanied them has clearly shook a lot of people here in a way that the steel tariffs in his first term didn't.
Myself and multiple family members are applying for Canadian citizenship by descent (2nd and 3rd gen eligible under Bjorkquist/the interim measure) not only for the opportunity to move to Canada/connect to our Canadian relatives, but also to pass as Canadian in certain interactions when traveling in Europe. We don't anticipate needing consular services or anything, but there's many small interactions where you need to show a passport when traveling, and a Canadian one leads to much less friction than an American one these days.
There was a second ‘something’ that changed to cause Canadian liberals to rise: the resignation of a historically unpopular prime minister.
I hate to contradict this largely true narrative, but the polling leap occurred directly after Trudeau resigned on Jan 6th. Trump’s first tariff wave only launched on feb 1st, nearly a month after the liberal party began recovering in the polls.
Trump is still the central figure in this election and he absolutely contributed to the recovery, but it’s all set against the backdrop of the leader’s resignation and, critically, the election of an outsider to replace him.
I think you can draw the second conclusion from this election that choosing party outsiders (I.e. Mark Carney, not Chrystia Freeland and not Kamala Harris) seems like an optimal strategy for replacing failed leadership.
I went to the CBC poll tracker expecting to find you were wrong because in my memory the polls only went up a little bit from Trudeau resigning and then skyrocketed after tariffs were announced, but now that I'm actually looking at the graph it's kind of hard to argue that.
Thanks! I realized it after mapping an exponentially-decaying weighted average of Canadian polls and a loess regression against major political events. I don't want to post a link in the SB comments but the plots are in my last article if you'd like to check them out.
Sounds a lot more sophisticated than my "look at graph where line go up" but I do agree with you 😆
That's definitely a factor, but the resignation should've caused a short-term bump, whereas Liberals' popularity just kept rising and rising, and the anti-Trump sentiment is very much not just about tariffs. Trump's recurring comments about annexing Canada (by "economic coersion") and his frequent comments about how the USA buying stuff from Canada supposedly counts as Canada ripping off the USA, started even before Trudeau resigned. So by the time he had cut about $50,000 CAD from my stock portfolio two months later, I was well and truly pissed.[1]
So as a Canadian, I have been having very serious discussions lately about Canada's interdependence with the US, especially in relation to oil since we failed to build enough refining capacity (or even pipelines) within Canada and rely heavily on the U.S. for that, and also about Canada mismanaging its military since the 1980s[2].
I didn't have much time to study candidates this cycle, but on one hand I've encountered a few conservatives in my region who sounded remarkably like American MAGAs, and on the other hand, as a central banker, Mark Carney seemed like a pretty boring candidate who should know something about macroeconomics, which seemed like a good counterpoint to Donald "let's randomly add and remove tariffs on everything constantly while deporting almost anybody including U.S. citizens with no due process and rationalize it later" Trump as I headed to the polls today.
Note how many of the votes shifted from NDP to Liberal, which seems to indicate that many left-leaning folks do understand how first-past-the-post works.
[1] Also I'm big on halting the Russian advance in Ukraine, so the sudden cuts to aid and intelligence sharing, calling Zelenskyy but not Putin a dictator because "I don't use those words lightly", the refusal to let Ukraine buy Patriot missiles, putting so many anti-Ukraine people in his administration, telling 200,000 Ukrainians they'd be deported immediately, talk of lifting all sanctions on Russia, the list goes on, and all that pissed me off too. I am right now trying to work out to which charity I should send a $3000 donation to Ukraine; Slava Ukraini and Tuck Frump.
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=27wWRszlZWU
I was thinking to myself this morning that I'd like to read an analysis as Carney as an outsider candidate and how it affects the race. There's definitely something to be said for Mark Carney being a successful candidate for a left leaning party vs Michael Bloomberg for example.
Chrystia Freeland absolutely sucks. I still remember a speech she gave pretending that increasing defense spending to 1.2% of gdp would make Canada a force for stability and humanitarian values.
Even after Russia invaded Ukraine and the Ukrainians stopped and even reversed the Russian advance with, er, military equipment, you don't see how increasing defense spending could be a force for stability? (Also, the NATO spending target is 2%, so 1.2% is really very low. Reminder: the main purpose of NATO is to deter Russia. Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania are much easier military targets than Ukraine, but they are in NATO. Since Ukraine wasn't allowed into NATO, deterrence didn't work there. With Russia now relying more on donkeys and less on tanks, just about the only thing that can keep the Russian military advance going is Trump cutting aid. Also, Xi is deciding whether to invade Taiwan and Trump's retreat from protecting allies raises that risk.)
I find it fascinating that people think that I care whether the United States is liked, or even that I should care.
Everyone loves the friend with lots of money who spends it on everyone around him like there's no tomorrow. Then one day he wakes up, realizes that he's screwed up his life, and stops throwing away his money and suddenly he's a d*ck.
The rest of the world loves it when the U.S. bows to other leaders, gives away money with no expectations of anything in return, and props up their flailing economies with our American dollars.
They hate us when we suddenly wake up and say, "Hey, you know what...you want these things from us, you're going to have to do your part too. The status quo is completely unfair for Americans and America." Just like that rich friend, suddenly we're the d*ck.
Historically, at least in times of relative peace, the world has loved a weaker U.S. and hated a stronger one.
Happy to be hated for standing up for ourselves.
Chris, you forget that for 80 years the US has done all of these things to gain a global advantage through influence that has benefited Americans. Nobody makes perfect decisions, but largely America has benefited from global stability and foreign leaders who bend to US will.
Throwing that out the window is giving China the keys to the global economy. Losing defense partners means allowing China and Russia to gain influence until one day the US has an enemy at its border.
And it's laughable that Americans will save any money. The US economy is more likely than not headed for a recession which will cost more than any foreign aid saved. And there will be a more hostile world on the other side of it.
Spot on.
The Vietnamese hate the Chinese, the Chinese hate the Japanese, the Japanese hate the Koreans and the Koreans hate everyone.
Also: the enemy of my enemy is my friend.
Everyone seems to be forgetting that the United States does not exist in a vacuum. China, for example, has a long history filled with wars, brutality and atrocities with its neighbors. Those neighbors view the US as a natural ally against Chinese domination of the continent. The great motivator in geopolitical relations isn't how "friendly" nations are towards one another--it's cold blooded self interest.
If we are trying to isolate China, we are approaching that stupidly by antagonizing Canada, Europe, etc. The Trump administration’s approach to these allies is likely to increase trade between China and our allies, not reduce them. That is already starting to happen.
I suggest you go look up what Kaja Kallas said about China a few weeks ago.
Sounds like she agrees with my view that the beneficiary of a trade war between the US and Europe is China … is sort of obvious/common sense.
I was thinking more of the comment that after Russia the EU would need to defeat China.
Relationships change, generations change.
All that matters right now is the self-inflicted wounds driving the decline of the US as a global free trade leader.
"it's cold blooded self interest".
Exactly, and China is going to be the cheapest and easiest place to trade with. Good luck America.
China is surrounded by adversaries due to a long history of warfare and atrocity with its neighbors. That is thousands of years of history. To expect that four years of any administration can reverse that historical record is illiterate.
Not playing the sucker is one thing. But how is threatening to make Canada the 51st state, telling Greenland we will get them “one way or the other” and imposing on-again-off-again tariffs….’standing up for ourselves’?
It’s not. It’s being a douchey bully … and it isn’t working.
If Carney wins, he needs to thank Trump for being such an asshole - Trump is the only reason the Conservative Party might lose.
If Canadians are stupid enough to screw up their own country out of spite for the United States, they deserve what they get.
Canadian here. It's nothing to do with spite, Canadians broadly view Pierre Pollievre (the conservative leader) as too Trump-friendly to stand up to him in these trade disputes. His initial response to liberation day was really weak, probably because he was worried about alienating parts of his base that are fans of Trump, and while he's tried to strike a firmer position since then his numbers have never recovered.
Mark Carney, conversely, has not only promised Canadians that he will stand up to Trump, but is politically incentivized to do so in a way that Pollievre is not.
Well, that's fine then. I firmly believe that all countries should do what they feel is best for them and their peoples. If they feel Carney is better, and not doing it out of spite, then I salute them. I hope they're right and they're making the right choices for themselves. I hope that for all people everywhere.
More to the point, if Trump is stupid enough to antagonize people who were going to vote for a simpatico border political ally, he deserves what he gets.
The US is the world's 800 pound gorilla. It doesn't matter who's in charge in Canada, they will cut a deal.
Trump is incompetent and not an effective deal-maker. Better for Canada/worse for Trump to have to negotiate with Carney vs. Poilievre.
And Trump really does want Canada to be a US state, which isn’t going to happen.
We aren’t out of the woods by any stretch, but the incompetence of the Trump team is hindering their autocracy goals.
My honest opinion is that Trump is uninterested in power and is more concerned with paying off his base (blue collar workers) by reshoring manufacturing. I sincerely doubt that he is doing anything other than trolling with the 51st state stuff.
What deal?
They already agreed to more border enforcement. I expect some measure of reciprocal tariffs, although I think there's going to be a very strong move on the part of the administration to move manufacturing back to the US no matter what.
The ability to learn from the mistakes of others to avoid a similar catastrophic outcome is not an act of spite.
lol imagine being this guy, thinking the only reason other countries don't like us anymore is because they're just a bunch of moochers, I'm sure it has nothing to do with:
1. Threatening to use military action against Greenland (a part of NATO)
2. Threatening to use military action against Panama
3. Threatening to make Canada the 51st state by any means necessary (also NATO member)
4. Starting crippling trade wars with the entire world under false pretenses (the "reciprocal" tariffs weren't actually reciprocal at all)
5. Violating international agreements under false pretenses (including ones Trump negotiated in his first term, like the USMCA)
6. Detaining and deporting legal visitors with proper documentation from allied nations
7. Detaining and deporting people illegally to an El Salvadorian dungeon and refusing to do anything to bring them back (and also flirting with the idea of sending US citizens, signaling that nobody would be safe within the borders of the US)
8. Attempting a public humiliation display of Zelensky, the leader of a European nation currently under attack by one of their key adversaries
9. Having top US officials send Signal messages to each other berating Europeans and regarding them with disdain.
And on and on....
If your analogy were true or even close to true, I would agree with you. However, Europe, Canada, and even Japan have not been benefiting from American largess. Rather, over the past 50 years, America has done better than any of these countries by free trade. This is because the American dollar has become the world’s reserve currency. Everyone trades in American dollars and when things go badly, worried investors flee to the American dollar. This keeps the value of the American dollar artificially inflated. This is the major source of the supposed trade imbalance, not tariffs. In Canada, where I live, we have a trade deficit with the US when Alberta tar sands oil is excluded. As this oil can only be refined at various American sites, principally Texas, we are forced to sell it at 70% of world value. So, if we were to stop selling this to the Americans, America would be hurt, yet somehow Trump would be happy since it is now Canada that has the trade deficit and not the USA. Canada does not feel protected by American’s spending on military. Over our history, we have only been attacked by one country, and that country has tried to invade us multiple times. It’s you. We feel kind of like the girlfriend who wishes her boyfriend would stop buying so many guns and storing them all over the house, as the only person who was ever hit her is her boyfriend himself.
Europe has gotten us to subsidize a huge share of its security vis a vis Russia. Trumps best policy is stopping that stupidity
Previous administrations have tried to get the European NATO countries to spend at least 2% of their GDP on their own national defenses. The response was a slight increase over inflation, generally average 3-4% spending increase.
Not surprisingly, after the Russian Federation invaded Ukraine, the countries with 2% plus spending increased from 4-7 (primarily East Europe) last year up to 23 and all of the countries most at risk from Russian aggression. One might argue that Biden foreign policy vis a vis Ukraine played an impact somewhat like Bush policy against Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in the Gulf War. NATO countries were certainly more aligned. Trump foreign policy first term or now had no meaningful effect - Putin's foreign policy did.
Source:
https://www.nato.int/nato_static_fl2014/assets/pdf/2024/6/pdf/240617-def-exp-2024-en.pdf
If think we didn't benefit heavily from that relationship, you have an incredibly poor understanding of global trade.
lol
To be fair, Canada has historically acted very much like it feels protected by America's military spending: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=27wWRszlZWU
(which doesn't mean that the U.S. wouldn't have had a big military anyway or that NATO is not in the U.S.'s best interests ― it is. Worth noting that most European countries passed the 2% NATO spending target before Trump was re-elected. But alas, not Canada.)
why do you people keep talking about gratitude and being taken advantage of? Do you really think the sole hegemon and superpower in the world for the last 20 years has really been such a massive victim, weakling and sucker..? How does that even work logically in your head..?
Do you know how much influence the US has just because they have these bases located around the world? Do you know how much Russian or China would be willing to pay to have bases around the world as well - well you can check how much theyre paying to Djibouti for permission to maintain a base there, and that's only Djibouti. Korea serves literally as a physical, immovable aircraft carrier that is positioned parallel right against the eastern Chinese coast line.. Do you know how much leverage that gives the US in any conflict with China..? Has Europe or Korea or Japan asked the US a single time to say thank you?
Its been a mutually beneficial relationship but I guess Trump voters are too shortsighted to see it.
"Standing up for ourselves?" What a way to describe punching down on people who did you no harm. When you buy stuff from others, they are not stealing from you![1] It's always impressive how the instant a fringe idea exits Trump's mouth, it suddenly becomes fact for tens of millions of consumers of Trump-friendly media.
The article already discussed the losses to the U.S. tourism industry. It didn't mention the investor exodus away from U.S. defense stocks toward E.U. defense stocks[2], the harm being done to airlines and airplane manufacturers including U.S.-based Boeing[3][4], or ― well, as a Canadian, I suspect America's losses due to anti-US sentiment will be China's gain, because while China is more evil than the USA, at least they're not aiming their evil directly at us. On top of the boycott-USA effect, it's even more important that Chinese goods will get even cheaper relative to U.S. goods after retaliatory tariffs are factored in.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nVZ1lcw2bVU
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I0AOusajGsU
[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kMC--S-KfiA
[4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gDGeXL05PI
Why exactly did you think the U.S. had to stand up to Canada? What were they doing that was so terrible?
We have not been giving away money to Canada. I mean maybe Canada has been screwing our dairy farmers, but that’s like having a wife who puts the dishes away in a way you don’t like. It’s a small flaw given the scope of the relationship
Hate to burst your bubble but even steadfast allies like Australians (who run a trade deficit with the USA btw) also dislike Americans more every day. On balance if you blanket dislike Americans of a voting age as your starting position you’re going to be disliking a Trump voter around 50% of the time - so that’s a win
You apparently don’t understand sarcasm- I can’t help you. Sorry.
Conclusion about what?
Trump appears to be basing these policies on supporters of Millwall Football Club in south London: “No one likes us, we don’t care.”
I wonder whether Philadelphia Eagles fans or Millwall fans came up with that first?
As a Canadian who invests in the US, holds property in the US and has children and grandchildren who are US citizens, all of this alienation is tragic especially in that in the short run will culminate in the election of another leftist government in Ottawa. Solely attributable to Trump and his unthinking assault on existing trade agreements and invoking the pretext of “fentanyl”.
And for what?
Trump is on a path to degrade prosperity and any morality in foreign policy.
Surely Republicans are the point of revolt.
Doesn't look like a revolt is forthcoming.
For example, Marco Rubio used to be a staunch supporter of Ukraine, but as soon as he was appointed to the otherwise pro-Russia negotiation team with Jack "I ♥ 14-88" Posobiec and Trump's golfing buddy Steve Witkoff, not a hint of negativity toward Russia could be found coming from his lips―not coincidentally in the time frame that the U.S. voted with Russia, North Korea and Iran against two U.N. resolutions condemning Russian aggression, while aid from the 2024 bill was instantly halted after anti-Ukraine VP Vance helped get Zelenskyy kicked out of the White House.
Why do Republicans fall in line? Why is there no revolt? I think it's because anti-intellectual "southern" media[1], especially social media echo chambers, are too powerful. Their Alternative Facts are majority-aligned with Trump, and congressional Republicans know they can't diverge from Trump and still win a primary unless their base snaps out of their trance. Even personally being harmed by tariffs might not be enough because they could be sold on the idea that [edited] it's short-term pain for long-term gain (but it's not[2]).
[1] https://x.com/DPiepgrass/status/1808746065132130494
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HFuBNkFCuAw
You should control for the value of the American dollar in the stats. In New England during the '80s and '90s the dollar is what led to increases and decreases in Canadian tourism.
The U.S. dollar is down, so we’ve become cheaper to visit and still international trips to the US are cratering
My clients are asking me to send people to their countries to close deals because, and I quote, "I'm not risking my people getting sent to a South American Gulag because of a Football [Soccer] tattoo."
With those types of requests, I guarantee that American tourism is almost certainly dead,
and we're waiting for the information and actualization lags to catch up.
we have a robust internal market, i’ll be ok if travel in the us becomes as cheap as in europe. as things stand, i plan on skiing in norway in february
That internal market is at risk of localized collapses due to logistical over reliance and, bluntly, ego. It's all to easy to miss the forest in the trees, and in this case that forest is named 'Stagflation'.
For example, Albertson's demands of it's suppliers that it won't pay for price increases and that it will force them to maintain contact terms is likely to backfire, as the penalty fees in the the contracts are simply no longer threatening enough to prevent a exit / renegotiation with other market chains.
This is not a guarantee, mind you. But I do not whistle past graveyards.
A dramatic decrease in lucrative cross border business flights will stress and already fragile economy of airlines, who are basically worthless without their credit card deals. There's almost no room for movement down on prices, with the only real drive being the cost in fuel. But much of that is already locked in with long term pricing.
I think Trump would be a confounding variable here. Last I checked the dollar was down 9% as a consequence of Trump's trade war & erratic behavior; if the same actions are what led to the resurgence of the Canadian Liberal Party controlling for the dollar will just tell us all three are correlated.
I might speculate that part of the difference between Trump 1.0 and Trump 2.0 is that in the first go round people outside the US could see there was broad resistance to the most wild parts of the agenda. In 2.0, it is not clear whether there is much resistance or whether a fair majority of Americans agree with the broad agenda even if they quibble with the implementation steps.
the polling has converged. the biggest difference is people understand the futility of pussy hats and sneering
I can provide a anectdotal data point on actual action. Ater 3 years of work on an investment structure in which some USG $$ were to go, but where the anchor equity was DaneGov plus private nordic euros, the nordics led by DaneGov are pulling out. Initial Greenland stuff was taken as almost sourly amusing but after the VP stunt and ongoing comments, added to US agencies being unable to give anyone straight answers on if terms would hold, or really anything, no more amusement. Real anger. Money walked. Strategic loss for USA.
Plenty of other oveseas investment (infra) where interlocutors are literally saying "maybe we should talk to China, they don't change their minds every day."
Turns out Reality TV game playing does not actually play in Real World
So the rest of the world dislikes the administration that's saying "no" to the free ride we've given them for 40+ years. Shocking!
That's not remotely what's happening.
Other countries can protect themselves too. If it works out the USA loses more in tariffs than without them then maybe it was a win-win.
"Throughout 2023 and 2024, polling suggested the country’s next federal election would be a rout for the Conservative Party." sounds like this sentence means the opposite of what is intended.
(A rout is a crushing disorderly defeat, and the 2023 - 2024 expected the Conservative to win and the Liberal party to lose, as the sentence after this one says).
Yeah it's a bit confusing because the verb form of "rout" (e.g. "we've routed the enemy") means "to defeat decisively or disastrously", but the noun of it refers to the defeat that happens to the people you rout, not the victory that you get when you rout them.
Just practicing my data-visualization editing here.
The chart with what looks like raw numbers of crossings (not seasonally corrected) could probably be adjusted to include the chart that you didn't include (which I'd have rather seen!) since it looks like you already went and brought the data in in your later bar graphs.
1) It doesn't have labels on the axes or a title, so it's a little under-explained relative to your others.
2) Your sentence above it, "This time around, though, visits from our northern neighbors have fallen off a cliff," isn't supported by the chart immediately below, because the main thing that jumps out at me in the chart is the seasonal variability, which isn't all that relevant to your main point (except to explain that you need to make comparisons month-on-month)
Maybe the thing to do instead is, if you think the chart with the raw numbers really is useful, run a double-axis chart:
- the raw numbers in like... gray... in the background. You mentioned the long-run decline, so maybe you also want a moving average line to make that point pop.
- On the left-hand side y axis, and on the right-hand y axis something like "percent change from same month in previous year."
Because what you want is the cliff that your text refers to. In that case what you would want that chart to show is exactly your conclusion: there was one cliff for covid, and then another (smaller, most likely) decline at Trump taking office.
And then to make that work, of course, you'd need your usual chart title and axis labels and footnotes, the absence of which always makes me a little leery of what's going on.
That also might remove one chart total from your article, but get the same information across, because then your "Canadian border traffic is plummeting" graph is then redundant. But the point you wanted to make there was not the raw numbers (what do I know if 2 million Canadians is a lot or a little, and that information exists in both the line graph and your bar chart, right? and if someone cares, they can go get the data) but the changes.
I'm not married to this idea, but just thought I'd throw in another brain's thinking about it.
I admit up front that this isn't a very valuable comment but...
I spent almost two weeks in March on a boat with 10 Canadians and a handful from the USA. One American was the type to make loud phone calls with his phone on speaker in the main shared area of the boat. One day he shouted "there are 10 Canadians here and they all want to become the 51st state". They lived up to their reputation and didn't throw him overboard during the night. I was impressed.
This reads like a hit piece by an advocacy group rather than a dispassionate analysis of numbers.
The first chart showing Canadian visitors to the US describes the last two numbers, barely discernible on the chart but slightly below 2024 numbers for the same months, hyperbolically as "fallen off a cliff." How about numbers and standard errors?
The graph is useless anyway as it is dominated by seasonality and CoVID, and mixes lots of different travel reasons, but only one travel type (by car). The thesis should apply most strongly to leisure trips, much less so to business, shopping and family trips. And a better metric than total trips is fraction of US versus overseas trips. This has no seasonality and did not change during CoVID. It shows no trend since 2008, just more or less random ups and downs mainly between 50% and 75%--and is now at the high end.
The poll data is relevant, of course, and useful.
The chart showing overseas visits to the US from nine regions is cherry-picked. Yes, 15 of the 18 comparisons (9 regions by February and March) are down from 2024, but 16 of 18 are up since 2023. Only two of the declines since 2024 are significant at the 5% level, while four of the increases since 2023 are. Moreover the overall declines in February are only the 43rd biggest and 17th biggest; where are the articles on all those other, larger international rejections of the US?
Anecdotally, I find that international views on Trump correlate closely with populist views in general. People who supported Brexit, hated Trudeau, consider crime, immigration and social issues high priority tend to approve of Trump, at least compared to the people running their own countries. People who fear populism in their own countries dislike and fear Trump.
It looks like the first chart doesn't contain the new data at all―what is that, a 10% drop at most? Kind of a weird mistake for a hit piece. "US routes are currently down by 70% compared to the same period last year" (OAG)―now that's what you'd want to drive home six ways from Sunday in a hit piece.
But if you didn't know who was president, what would you expect to see in that first multi-year chart? Well, it looks like a Covid recovery: 2021 is higher than 2020, 2022 is higher than 2021, 2023 is higher than 2022, and 2024 is higher than 2023. However, 2024 is still lower than 2019, so one might expect the Covid recovery to continue with even stronger numbers in 2025.
I think the first chart does include February and March of 2025 and they're down slightly from the same months in 2024--but it's very hard to see and doesn't seem at all significant, certainly not "fallen off a cliff." The chart is certainly not drawn to illustrate the claim.
Moreover overwrought hand-wringing over the number of Canadians who drove across the border in cold weather is a pretty silly way to attack Donald Trump. It suggests someone looking for any number anywhere to batter Trump with rather than a serious policy analyst focusing on the most important data.
The basic point that polls show Trump is not popular globally, and that attitudes toward Trump are dragging down attitudes toward the US, is sound enough, but the rest of the post seems like the kind of silly embellishments and instant-crisis-about-something-no-one-cared-about-yesterday you expect from NPR or Tucker Carlson.
Well, outside of part of Alberta, the general consensus from both the Liberal and Conservative party is Canadians are demanding outright opposition to the U.S. from it's politicians.
Do not lie to yourselves and say that Canada has to work with the US/cut deals/play ball. They don't *have* to do a ducking things, and the polling and the results both indicate that Canadians are not going to reward anyone playing that game unless Canadians get a significant benefit.
Sorta off the subject but when Trump talks of 'absorbing' Canada into the US shouldn't he be welcoming 10 (or 13) new states (for their 10 Provenances and 3 Territories) rather than one state? Was Trump just going on the cheap as usual?
As a Canadian Silver Bulletin subscriber, what a thrill to see you talking about my local politics for a change. 😆
I'm also quite surprised by the degree to which tourism to the US has actually dropped. These tariffs and the insults to our country that have accompanied them has clearly shook a lot of people here in a way that the steel tariffs in his first term didn't.
Myself and multiple family members are applying for Canadian citizenship by descent (2nd and 3rd gen eligible under Bjorkquist/the interim measure) not only for the opportunity to move to Canada/connect to our Canadian relatives, but also to pass as Canadian in certain interactions when traveling in Europe. We don't anticipate needing consular services or anything, but there's many small interactions where you need to show a passport when traveling, and a Canadian one leads to much less friction than an American one these days.