Most behavior we believe is some kind of rational action when it is really blind actions based on fiction or just completely random with rationalizations for the behavior after the fact.
The figures I have seen in a trade war with Canada is Canada causes a -.2% hit to US GDP while Canada gets a -2% hit. That is not going to work for Canada.
These aren't abuses of power though. We just largely got use to the president not trying to do all that much.
Obama issued 275 executive orders and Franklin Roosevelt issued 3721. Calvin Coolidge issued 1203. I think all the presidents during my lifetime combined issued less than Woodrow Wilson at 1803.
That is not to say I think a trade war with Canada is a good idea. It really makes no sense to me at all.
Is it going to shut up shop and close down? What does "not going to work" mean? The US is the one who chose this path, not Canada, and Canada is going to do what needs to be done for the situation the US forced it into. And FWIW, many Americans are a little in denial about how fragile your entire economy and social order is, and how little it takes to topple it. The impact of a trade war is likely to be much more significant than the "well it's just a trillion dollars of exports" rhetoric claims.
Canada has to "retaliate", in that it will adjust economic levers that will force production that currently happens in the US, serving the Canadian market, to adjust to players in Canada. Canada foolishly treated the US as an ally and partner and integrated our economies, so of course there is going to be pain. But to let you in on a little secret, a lot of Canadians have wanted this for a long time: There will be pain for a while, but Canada has increasingly become a branch office of the US. Despite enormous geographical, educational and social benefits it keeps falling behind. Trump is really just looking to MCGA. Next we can punt all of the US corporations out of Canada -- again, the ability for US businesses to operate freely in Canada is courtesy of NAFTA/USMCA. That agreement is defacto shredded now. The Canadian government needs to do everything possible to prevent discretionary dollars from travelling South of the border.
>These aren't abuses of power though.
Claiming a "border security" emergency -- a complete BS lie that only the incredibly stupid take at face value -- to push through an economic plan is absolutely, by every measure, a grotesque abuse of power. Americans are so accustomed to it now that it's just normal. If you think it isn't an abuse for your president to lie to you to have powers that he doesn't have, you have lowered your standards to corrupt banana republic levels.
Again, Canada and the US were operating under the trade agreement Trump forced on us the last time around. I don't see any clean exit of this where things return to normal. Canada must not ever treat the US as a sane, rational, responsible player on the world stage, as it constantly 180s on everything as American voters treat government like some perverse reality show.
> If you think it isn't an abuse for your president to lie to you to have powers that he doesn't have, you have lowered your standards to corrupt banana republic levels.
By not prosecuting George W Bush and his lies about WMDs in Iraq as crimes, we set the stage for the lies today about Canada to be excused as business as usual. Which… yeah it kind of is, and that’s what makes USA dangerous.
In fact, many of the people who preached unity and bygones back then are cheer leading the lies against Canada today. So the pst is coming back to haunt us.
It's likely that Canada will target exports from Trump-supporting states, which is a strategy that seems to have worked before. It may not have a large impact on the whole US economy but it can concentrate the pain to optimize the political impact.
You would have a better point is Trump was only messing with Canada. But they are threatening so many countries at the same time that it's enivitable to start forming free trade agreements outside of America.
That would be seriously destabilising to America for the future.
I don't really understand what the end game is with Canada here.
For Mexico, it seems more like a prod for social policy on immigration and fentanyl.
I listened to Trudeau yesterday and he isn't even able to get a hold of Trump right now, something that seems just insane.
I am just not sure that is true though that this is a disaster for the US. How much can China afford to fight back here with the state of their economy? Canada retaliating is asymmetrically bad for Canada.
Dollar strength and an emerging market currency breaking is what worries me. Inside the US, I would expect much of the potential inflation will just be exported through dollar strength. I imagine that is the method to the madness.
US is losing big time to Chinese manufacturing and realpolitiks on the ground. They realize they can’t reverse it without taking very huge gambles, like tariffing everyone with the hopes of on-shoring.
I’m expecting for governments to cozy up with China again. Will be interesting, but unpredictable couple of years. I’m not sure what’s the best way to diversify one’s savings so you wouldn’t crash it out either.
The official statement from the White House calls out increased fentanyl production in Canada as the reason - but doesn't say that it's the majority of imports, you're right. The twitter summary says "There is growing production of fentanyl in Canada, and enough fentanyl was seized at the northern border last fiscal year to kill 9.8 million Americans.", though, and that seems like a lot.
This is an excuse, as an "emergency" is (effectively) the only way that such tariffs can be applied without input from Congress at all.
It's also likely a lie, given the number of lies told by Trump and his supporters. The two groups which should not be believed on this are the DEA (whose entire raison d’être is predicated on making things far scarier than they are so they can increase their power — I believe they are behind the proven lie that "touching fentanyl can kill you", which it can't) and the Trump administration (because the volume of lies spewed daily would overwhelm the New York City sewer system).
A "super lab" that used "cartel" processes was discovered in Canada a few months ago with almost 100 million[0] lethal doses of Fentanyl. It was only 11 miles from the border. The group was linked to a Khalistani transnational crime network; the same group of people (Punjabis) have also taken over our trucking industry[1]. Our border is the longest undefended border in the world and Canada is now taking in more than 1.5 million people per year[2], not including the 5 million on 'temporary permits'[3], mostly from India and China[4] and mostly un-vetted[5]. They get H2B visas with their Canadian passports and can travel across the border with ease. 1 billion doses worth of precursor chemicals were found in the port of Vancouver over a period of just 3 months last year[6], all coming from China. Halting immigration and shutting off the precursor chemical supply from China via the port Vancouver is all my clown show of government had to do to avoid this trade war. Stopping the flow of these brutal new drugs will do more to save both our economies than any amount of 'USA owned' tar sand ever could.
That is just insanely hyperbolic. I think this why the left lost. There is a 0% chance that Trump will invade Canada. I really think the left needs to just back away from fighting for their positions for a little while and get some perspective or they will continue losing.
While Trump may not invade Canada, he has already said that he wants to annex it and make it the 51st state. He "Truth'ed" it yesterday. His words, not mine.
What is censorship to a puritan? It is a moral good.
As an American, I have put a lot of time into trying to understand Chinese culture.
I can't connect more with the Confucian ideals of learning as a moral good.
There are fundamental differences though from everything I know that are not compatible with Chinese culture.
We can find common ground though on these Confucian ideals that DeepSeek can represent.
I welcome China kicking our ass in technology. It is exactly what is needed in America. America needs a discriminator in an adversarial relationship to progress.
In my state, many of the new roads being built do in fact pay for themselves via tolls. I expect that model of financing to get much more common now that computers are able to automatically read your license plate and issue the toll.
It is still curious though as far as what is actually being automated?
I find huge value in these models as an augmentation of my intelligence and as a kind of cybernetic partner.
I can't think of anything that can actually be automated though in terms of white collar jobs.
The white collar model test case I have in mind is a bank analyst under a bank operations manger. I have done both in the past but there is something really lacking with the idea of the operations manager replacing the analyst with a reasoning model even though DeepSeek annihilates every bank analyst reasoning I ever worked with right now.
If you can't even arbitrage the average bank analyst there might be these really non-intuitive no AI arbitrage conditions with white color work.
I don’t want to pretend I know how bank analysts work, but at the very least I would assume that 4 bank analysts with reasoning models would outperform 5 bank analysts without.
Yes you use the models for the same things, and one is better than the other for said thing. The reasoning process is an implementation detail that does not concern anybody when evaluating the models, esp since "open"ai does not expose it. I just want llms to to task X which is usually "write a function in Y language that does W, taking these Z stuff into account", and for that i have found no reason to switch away from sonnet yet.
I had resubscribed to use o1 2 weeks ago and haven't even logged in this week because of R1.
One thing I notice that is huge is being able to see the chain of thought lets me see when my prompt was lacking and the model is a bit confused on what I want.
If I was anymore impressed with R1 I would probably start getting accused of being a CCP shill or wumao lol.
With that said, I think it is very hard to compare models for your own use case. I do suspect there is a shiny new toy bias with all this too.
Poor Sonnet 3.5. I have neglected it so much lately I actually don't know if I have a subscription or not right now.
I do expect an Anthropic reasoning model though to blow everything else away.
Me too actually. I wish I could pay to get priority. I know there are 3rd party providers but I want a chat interface and not fiddle with setting my own.
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