RoperAB said:
Econ wasnt your country founded because of trade<Columbus>.
Wasnt America built on trade<cotton, tobbacco, furs>?
You never would have won your independence from England if it wasnt for Trade with France. Yeh I dont like France either but if it wasnt for them you would never have won the Revolutionary war.
What was one of the first things your founding fathers did? They eliminated trade barriers.
I dont mean to sound disrespectful so dont take this the wrong way but you remind me of Pat Buchanon. I just dont understand how your economy would ever work?
There is no way that you could ever meet your requirements of natural resources without trade with other Nations.
When you guys go to war with somebody whats the first thing you do? You cut them off so they cant trade with other nations. Why do you want to do this to yourself?
BTW Im not anti American. If anything im just the opposite. Whats good for you guys is good for us to. If your economy tanks its going to hurt us as well.
Like I agree with you about some things. But Canada is not your enemy.
Roper, as I said, Canada has much more in common with the USA than any other place. I am not anti-trade. I just think there should be trade negotiators that keep our country's producers and the country's values (not just walmart values either) in mind and not just the corporations.
If we had unlimited and free trade with anyone, it should be Canada.
Trade with other countries should have with it a lot of things in mind. Most of those things we have nothing to worry about with Canada.
I even think we should trade with countries like China, even though they are totalitarian, but we should not get too dependant on countries like that for our trade and they should come with strings attached to encourage better behavior.
As I said, the problem with our trade agreements is that they have not been well thought out and have not accomplished some of the goals that trade should encourage. A better social wealth policy for Mexico, for example. Mexicans are going to keep coming north to work in our powerhouse economy as long as theirs is poor comparatively. Mexican govt. should have more of a share the wealth policy with its populace but instead they are oligarchical. When wealth is captured by a small minority at the top, opportunities are reduced by the general population. Trade with Mexico should help address some of these problems so that the Mexican economy is better. Just like a good economy reduces crime in the U.S., a good economy in Mexico would reduce the illegal aliens coming to the USA.
I am not looking for a lot of new trade barriers. I think we have dropped the ball when it comes to just thinking about the cheapest producer, however. Sometimes the cheapest producer is not too good to the people producing the goods and our trade policy should help change those situations.
I don't like oligarchs in the U.S., Canada, or Mexico. They all interfere in politics too much and decrease the production in the economy to a sub optimum level.
These trade issues are large and complex. It would be hard for you to be able to pick up the nuances I talk about because they can be blown way out of proportion with such a limited media as this forum.
One thing I can say is that Canada should have an enforcable PSA, but we don't seem to have that in the United States at this time. If we have open borders to Canada via trade, we should have laws that protect producers from companies that break the rules of fairness just because they have market power and are just over the border. We will all be driven down by those with market power if we do not realize the tricks and address them appropriately.
Our welfare system just has to end (corporate welfare) for our economies to thrive at their optimum level. We can't keep mortgaging our children's future tax liability just to allow corporations to get off the hook from paying their fair share and for our govt. to continue to operate as inefficiently as it is. It is sucking up the benefits of our economy.
I think you mistook some of what I said as anti-Canadian or anti-trade. It wasn't meant that way.