Trump’s talk on annexing Canada ‘real,’ Trudeau says in hot mic moment
The federal government is hosting a summit in Toronto Friday aimed at bolstering the economy in the face of Canada's rapidly changing relationship with its largest trading partner.
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Idk I feel Trump doesn't understand that America already pretty much owns Canada. Given all the things he says, I don't think he understands how American imperialism works in general. Otherwise I can't comprehend why cutting USAID, defunding CIA, tariffing Taiwan etc. helps his class other than some short term gains that will be long term disasters (for the US)
I think Trump wants to go back to more direct imperialism where the US uses hard power to keep its vassals inline instead of using soft and subtle methods. He wants a clear master/slave relationship.
Pretty sure he thinks soft power is woke or something. He just needs to look tough, regardless of the actual outcome. It explains threatening to double existing tariffs on Columbia over a dozen or two deportees. Backing down would make him look weak, and that wouldn't animate his base, nevermind the economic consequences of doing that to a country that grows all our coffee.
It's funny how he wants essentially the same thing as all these other ghouls, but wants to take the most unsubtle and ineffective route to get there. Maybe he is the harm reduction candidate?
To your question, this was already really noticeable in his first term. By being brash and uncouth and calling things what they are, rather than using doublespeak or just doing things in the shadows, he made the contradictions of imperialism really uncomfortable for a lot of people. In being direct he created the beginnings of pushback from people who would otherwise be perfectly fine with kids in cages, seizing other countries' natural reources, etc.
I think that's probably exactly what it is. He just needs to feel manly.
Yea that's what I'm thinking. We shouldn't forget that he hasn't done anything to close military bases overseas (yet?), so he's not completely pulling out of these vassals.
But keeping these countries inline with threats only and no economic incentives will probably make them reconsider their relationship to the US especially if they can't placate their population while the US puts pressure on them with tariffs, annexation etc.
I very much agree.
I think he's preparing a soft coup. He knew enough to create a new governmental agency out of thin air, put musk in charge of it (the same guy that everyone laughed at when he called himself the "First buddy"), and now they're exploiting the legal limbo state as long as they can to basically gut out institutions and agencies, and put them under his direct control. This would not be possible for any other agency that has their charter laid out clearly, but since this one is still being processed, they can exploit the uncertainty.
I’m inclined to agree. This seems like the first time (at least in my memory) where no one with significant influence in US gov’t fundamentally understands what has been US foreign policy since Monroe. All the idiot business guys who think the US sends money to forcibly underdeveloped countries out of the kindness of their hearts—folks simply intellectually unequipped to continue the post-Soviet international order—are the only ones at the reigns. On top of that, they got some weirdo Canadian-South African billionaire with no understanding of US consumer culture (and the US citizens’ complete aversion to any inconvenience) to come impose harsh anarcho-capitalist austerity measures at home. “There are decades when nothing happens; and there are weeks when decades happen” seems especially apt right now.
Agreed. When I read about imperialism it seems to me like a lot of pressure is just constantly being put on these other countries through many forms (propaganda, finance capital, military presence, etc) - I wonder what will happen when this pressure is released even just a little bit by this chaos.
The propaganda network is currently being thrown into chaos, the world looks at the US very differently since the 2008 financially & it is stretched very thinly, the military was shown to be quite the paper tiger, such as when they went face to face with Yemen with nothing to show for it. The US is still very dangerous but it's in such decay over the past generation, I don't think anyone including the Dems have come to terms with it.
Though Trump and his ilk may not have the most comprehensive understanding of American imperialism, he and his ilk are allowed to do the things they do because their system of capital allows for it ie there appears to be competing interests of capital here.
For example, there may be here capital interests that feel programmes and networks like USAID have outweighed their usefulness versus capital that feels the services like USAID are vital in maintaining imperialism despite their cost.
Why and how the former has gotten an upper-hand over the latter would warrant an analysis on its own but likely the heightening of contradictions of capital such as the reduction of real productive capacity within the imperial cores, the reduction in leverage of superexploitation against the global south, the general reduction in rate of profit, along with cultural issues secondary to lack of sufficient education of how American imperialism works even among the "elites" that capital felt was not necessary to maintain the system may have all contributed to this.
Remember one does not necessarily need to know how an engine works to drive a car but that lack of knowledge becomes more signifcant when the car breaks down. The engine of the car could almost be considered reified in this analogy; capitalists could be considered priests at the altar of capital.
/Edits: clarity
