This is actually more likely a non-political procurement decision that looks like a political one.
This is the 'right size' for Canada and other nations - the US doesn't offer a true comparable, and, looks like the US balked at buying the 'kind of comparable' Boeing E7 putting it in jeopardy.
With European military renaissance and the SAAB gear proving itself in Ukraine ... well, you see the shift.
This is the shift writ large.
This is going to happen across all industries.
I don't think it's going to 'fundamentally' alter the landscape, but it will be a shift we don't come back from.
In the past countries would buy American equipment even if it wasn’t the best fit because that would make you essentially an American ally. Being part of the U.S. ecosystem was valuable.
Unfortunately, over the last 1.5 years, the political value proposition has turned by 180 degrees.
- Being a U.S. ally no longer guarantees that you will be protected by the U.S. as Ukraine is seeing. But the U.S. has been tearing agreements left and right and the President has openly said he may not respond to a valid Article 5 invocation.
- Being a U.S. ally seems to bring even more threats from the U.S. as Canada and Europe are seeing
- Being a U.S. ally is no guarantee of protection even if you literally host American bases like the gulf countries are seeing. In fact, it’s only made them a target and the U.S. prioritized protecting Israel entirely over protecting any of the Gulf states.
The value proposition for buying U.S. weapons has become really bad at this point.
> Being a U.S. ally is no guarantee of protection even if you literally host American bases like the gulf countries are seeing. In fact, it’s only made them a target and the U.S. prioritized protecting Israel entirely over protecting any of the Gulf states.
I think that is a little oversimplified. America did spend resources on defense of gulf states. They might feel it wasn't enough but it definitely wasn't nothing. I imagine defending Israel was probably a fair bit easier given the distance from Iran, and their domestic military being a lot more prepared and practised for missile defense, which may have translated to more effective results. Ultimately though i think there is a limit to how much America can reasonable do on defense once something like that starts.
Probably the thing gulf states could most reasonably be pissed about was starting the whole adventure in the first place without much regard for the fairly predictable consequences.
No, I think you missed it by a country mile. “Probably” was meant in the sense of “out of all the things the gulf states have reason to be mad at the US about, starting the conflict is ‘probably’ (obviously, lol) the thing they’re most unhappy with”. They weren’t saying the US “probably” started the conflict.
This is 100% true and I agree with all of it, but I would just add that for fighter jets specifically the calculus is a bit different.
Unless you want to buy Chinese jets your choices are either F35s or a big step down to 4th generation fighters that are materially worse in terms of capability.
Modern 4th gen fighters are still very capable, cheaper, simpler and more reliable, but if you ever do end up facing an adversary who has 5th gen fighters you'll be in trouble, so the trade off of choosing not to buy F35s is very real
But if you can have more 4th gen aircrafts and have easier support and maintenance so that you can keep them flying, then that might more than outweigh the 5th gen aircrafts possible superiority.
A 5th gen aircraft on the ground is not very useful.
It's easier to bomb out 100 aircraft than 400 aircraft.
A 5th gen aircraft, disabled remotely via software is not very useful.
For most nations, if they find themselves in need of a 5th generation aircraft for defence then they've already lost, or are better served to prepare for a grossly asymmetric battle.
If potus can turn them into paperweight on his morning ego whim while not even being in indirect conflict with US but rather directly fighting US mortal sworn enemy, they are worse than useless and no sane country would want them even for free, a trojan horse of sort.
4th (4.5th) generation that reliably works is something dependable, even if not top notch. Something tells me that if you took F-35 to russian-held Ukraine airspace, it may not survive that long anyway, its not like its unhittable as Iran showed. What decides that war is anyway drones in numbers and their skilled use, not anymore artillery, tanks or endless armies of poor illiterate fuckers.
Given the state of missile tech, is that as relevant anymore? If you strap a missile on to a Cessna that can take down a 5th gen fighter before it knows you're there. Doesn't really matter what fancy doodads the latest and greatest jet has.
Further if your 5th gen jets are relying on tech from your adversary....
The fancy doodads 5th generation has is reduced radar signature, improved sensors and data-link. The 5th generation can see and fire against a 4th gen fighter and evade before being detected and it can do that without EWACS (which are big, slow and easy to kill). That's why the US has a gap on replacing the current EWACS because it doesn't really need them.
Stealth is somewhat overrated, especially 5th gen. Sure you get a lower radar cross-section which means you are less visible to X-band radar but near-peer adversaries or even non-peer technologically advanced adversaries don't rely only on X-band radar, to say nothing of distributed array radar where the transmitter and receiver are not in the same location. More than one networked war plane in the air are essentially distributed array radar. There are other bands which admittedly as not as good as X-band in terms of how much energy you need and how accurately you can locate things. But you can send a missile in the general direction using say S-band and have the missile turn on it's seeker once it's closer. Once the missile is close enough, a stealth plan can no longer hide. This is what the Russian S-400 and S-500 do for example.
Even when Serbia was bombed during the Clinton years, American stealth bombers escaped not due to stealth but because they used decoys towed by fiber optics which transmitted what the missile seeker expected to receive from the plane while also aggressively jamming the missile seeker so the missile hit the decoy not the plane. One stealth bomber was hit anyway.
Safran and other European manufacturers arguably produce decoys that are as good as anything US planes have, arguably better because they decided not to go all in on stealth and focus on other measures instead. Stealth is certainly better to have than not but stealth also means somewhat worse aerodynamics and much less serviceability. You need to apply stealth paint and cure it any time you work on the plane. The plane needs more work and is harder to work on because of the tradeoffs made to achieve stealth. So instead of 75%+ of the planes being available at any one time, you only have about 50% of the planes available at any one time and total operational costs are much higher.
Given these disadvantages, it's not completely clear how much of a benefit 5th gen stealth is in a near-peer conflict. If the US is fighting Iraq fine. Now, if you can actually achieve what defense manufacturers say they will achieve with 6th gen stealth, where you have much lower RCS to all bands of radar from all directions, that could be a game changer but we don't actually know yet. The F-35 still doesn't do everything it was supposed to be able to do when the program started, so I would take these claims with a large grain of salt. And stealth countermeasures will continue to evolve.
At altitude most AA is radar based, thus a lower RCS will help directly in not being seen. So you can get closer to the enemy you still can see because of the higher RCS. For BVR fights this is essential.
Those machines shouldn't be low level though. IR missles don't care about RCS. It is not their natural territory either.
Third that Cessna is not hidden either. From above (i.e. an AWACS) it can be seen very good. From the ground it can hide low and slow. But so can dedicated planes too, which is practised regularly.
I'm just thinking about something like the meteor missile, if you're up against a 5th gen jet with shorter range missiles, the 5th gen jet doesn't necessarily have the advantage.
Then there's things like drones. A cheap drone with a good missile is arguably the better option than an expensive jet with poor weapons.
Yes, the best option is the good jet with the good missile, but most militaries have limited budgets, so it isn't a question of having all the the things, but one of where that money is best spent. I suppose you could argue that the military knows best, but then the US military insisted on keeping cannon around on jets just in case, so it seems to me, at least plausible that the current view is more about inertia than bang for buck.
I am getting the feeling that Americans don't understand that words have meaning. Trump insulting, threatening and bullying everones is supposed to be one big joke.
But we are talking about sovereign states here that have been around for centuries- they are neither amused nor cowed.
They don’t seem to get that Trump while a huge problem for us is a symptom of the actual problem, which is “all the conditions that put Trump in the White House will still exist when Trump is no longer in the White House”.
Simply put, they did it twice, who’s to say Trump 2.0 won’t be worse.
This whole “Democrats will take the house and it’s back to normal” attitude they have when it applies to foreign politics is naïve, oh we’ll continue to trade and we may still buy some military stuff and so on but that’s simply because the US is so large and integrated that decoupling isn’t quick or entirely necessary/possible immediately.
The paths pretty clear at this point, it’s just early enough that it hasn’t become widely obvious that the existing world order since post WWII is gone.
I have heard at least one interview with Steve Bannon where he says that Trump isn't delivering what many political operatives and financiers want but they see him as laying the ground for the next administration, who will restructure the government & US more efficiently.
>Being a U.S. ally no longer guarantees that you will be protected by the U.S. as Ukraine is seeing.
The US never promised to protect Ukraine. It's often claimed that the Budapest Memorandum was a promise from the US to protect Ukraine, but this is misinformation. Read the memorandum for yourself if you don't believe me, it's not very long:
I don't think that is really relavent. Ukraine was essentially invaded because they became too friendly with NATO (and hence america). Even without a formal promise, other countries are going to notice america hanging ukraine out to dry and add that to their calculations when deciding who to be buddy-buddy with.
> Ukraine was essentially invaded because they became too friendly with NATO (and hence america).
Also because it was considering joining the EU.
The Russians threatened at least as early as 2008 that they would invade Ukraine if they did either. They actually invaded Ukraine in 2014 and captured a lot of territory.
Why did the US and their European allies not plan for the Russians doing what they had threatened to do and had actually done in the past? It seems incompetent.
>Ukraine was essentially invaded because they became too friendly with NATO (and hence america).
Wouldn't this theory predict that if NATO/USA becomes hostile to Ukraine, the invasion will cease? According to bawolff's worldview, Trump's foreign policy will address the root cause, no? They should be supporting Trump.
In my world view, yes, Ukraine firmly returning to the russian sphere of influence, perhaps even agreeing to become a puppet state of russia, would stop the invasion.
Of course Ukraine does not want that, hence war. Surrendering is always a way to gain peace, but most countries do not view such a peace as worth the cost.
Ultimately the war continues because USA is not the only western country in existence and the rest of the west is still willing to provide support sufficient for Ukraine to keep fighting.
This is an utterly naive take. Russia would in that case forcibly conscript from Ukraine's population for further westward invasions, which serves the purpose of exterminating the local male population to suppress resistance and make room for Russian settlers. We already saw this during the initial invasion in 2014 and the forcible conscription early in the full-scale invasion in 2022.
Russia's ambitions are laid out in the ultimatum presented in 2021.
Point 1: "The Russian Federation., the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and the United States of America reaffirm their commitment to Ukraine, in accordance with the principles of the CSCE Final Act, to respect the independence and sovereignty and the existing borders of Ukraine"
Point 4 of the Memorandum: "The Russian Federation, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and the United States of America reaffirm their commitment to seek immediate United Nations Security Council action to provide assistance to Ukraine, as a non-nuclear-weapon state party to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, if Ukraine should become a victim of an act of aggression or an object of a threat of aggression in which nuclear weapons are used."
US actions in the UN: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c7435pnle0go "The US has twice sided with Russia in votes at the United Nations to mark the third anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, highlighting the Trump administration's change of stance on the war.
First, the US opposed a European-drafted resolution condemning Moscow's actions and supporting Ukraine's territorial integrity - voting the same way as Russia and countries including North Korea and Belarus at the UN General Assembly (UNGA) in New York.
Then the US drafted and voted for a resolution at the UN Security Council which called for an end to the conflict, but contained no criticism of Russia."
The US has almost nothing to do (vote in the UN against Russia aggression), and yet did less than that. They can hide behind technicalities, but the truth is that Trump is acting like a Putin asset. For decades there has been a political fight in eastern Europe where the US projected power supporting governments that sympathized with western countries (enter NATO, enter UE, enter western markets, welcome western industries). US was winning the fight without shooting a bullet until Trump.
US has no official treaty with Israel (except the 10 year rolling aid), yet we would be shocked if suddenly an US government turn to support Israel neighbors and vote against them in the UN.
Are you a sophist? This thread is about how the US has lost all their political leverage, built for almost a century, since Trump got in power (no longer a trustable ally, losing contracts, etc).
You keep mixing up pre- and post-Trump events as if nothing happened, technicalities, "but you said X", and nobody that was trying to debate in good faith does that, only one interested in "winning" the argument but with zero interest in getting somewhere productive.
If something seems factually incorrect to me, I say so. If I notice a contradiction in someone's worldview, I point it out.
As I stated elsewhere in this thread, I'm an isolationist, and I don't care if the US loses leverage or whatever. If all US troops are booted from Europe so we can no longer "intervene" in the Middle East, that sounds fantastic. I favor a Swiss-style foreign policy for the USA.
From my perspective, it would actually be very good if Europe cut off the supply of AI chips to prevent AI companies from building an omnicidal doomsday machine:
So I don't think 'buying US gear made you an ally' - it was just part of the package, and in some cases, the US would 'require allies' to buy.
The US Ambassador to Canada is openly threatening Carney right now with some procurement things - the 'Big One' is the F35.
This is Can PM Carney playing a decent card, and biding for time until the midterms, and then waiting out the 'lame duck' period.
'Border State Republicans' are badly upset with the anti-Canada situation, and will buck Trump if given the chance without massive repercussions.
Trump may not force the issue if he knows he's going to lose.
If we see Trump with conciliatory language towards Canada after the elections, it's because he knows he's been beat. Or if he just shuts up about it and let's the negotiations roll.
I give it 50/50.
But - to be very clear - the world is 'doing 1 nudge' away from the US - not 'breaking away'.
I think this is complacent. The rest of the world is actively seeking opportunities to decouple. The US is so embedded in defence ecosystems at the moment that is a delicate balance because we are all still dependent on US space and logistics capabilities. But Ukraine and Eastern Europe and building the foundation for conventional forces to be supplied without the US, and although it will take longer, Sweden France and Uk have the aerospace chops to reduce dependency on the US too.
We are unlikely to reach parity any time soon, if at all. But that isn’t needed for the goal to be worthwhile.
> Mind you, it's one man, and not the nation or state, but he does have a lot of backers.
My 2ct:
He is the duly elected leader in a representative democracy. He speaks on behalf of all U.S. Americans, he acts on behalf of all U.S. Americans, and all U.S. Americans share the same responsibility for the actions of his government.
He isn't the only problem, though. It has now been proven that the U.S. Constitution is not worth the paper it is written on. In my opinion, that's the real concern. Trump will not be around for long. The U.S. Constitution, the U.S. Supreme Court, the people that allowed that to happen and the Republican Party will.
Edit:
At least the U.S. Constitution needs some amendments, and I don’t see that happening, but there may be some plans to amend it I’m not aware of.
Edit-2:
Of course, there will still be cooperation with the U.S. after Trump, but fundamentally, something is broken. We will not return to the pre-Trump state.
People outside the US understand that Trump is a temporary phenomenon. And there's no evidence that Trump has any interest in post-Trump politics, except insofar as it insulates him from repercussions.
I don't see how anyone can think Trump is a temporary phenomenon, it's been a decade since he got into politics and things have only gotten nastier. On the scale of a person's life, this is definitely not a temporary thing.
I see no evidence that Trumpism will survive Trump. To the extend that Trumpism exceeds the bounds of normal partisan politics, it's driven by a cult of personality. Once the personality is gone, the unique aspects of the movement dissipate.
It is not. The unlimited authority, the supreme court that goes along with it, the party that supports it all, and the citizenship that enables it in the first place will be there long after Trump is gone. It's not Trump pulling the trigger.
It's not Trump alone. There was the Tea-party before him and there will be fascists after him. We are not talking about the USA doing some shady things. We are talking about a country that gave up on shared values and norms, that kills people left and right without due process and that assaults countries without reason, all while threatening the next assault(s) and being openly racist.
Trump could be elected for a third term and it could still be a temporary phenomenon, because the movement fails to transfer beyond one individual's personality.
Sorry, but I also think you are complacent. This is generational destruction of reputation.
As a Canadian, we regularly talk about "fuck American companies" in a way we never did. I still actively avoid buying anything from USA in grocery stores. City of Toronto is spinning up a nonprofit grocery store pilot, and they sure as hell are going to be trying not to stock USA goods -- the mayor herself passed an anti-USA procurement bylaw last year. Related: I just helped run a weekly community speaker series[1], where we had 60 ppl (many public servants) signed up to hear a presentation on a supply chain app to help people avoid American products.
And just 30 min ago, coming home at 1am, I was talking to the service guy for my city's bikeshare program. He mentioned new bike models were coming. He was like "fuck Lyft" and I said "I don't trust American companies anymore" and he agreed (Lyft acquired the Montreal bikeshare company we used to deal with). A friend who used to work for Deloitte is actively working to convince city officials to sever the bikeshare contract, and diversify the network for similar reasons.
PRAGMATIC anti-americanism is literally a new hobby for a sizable cohort of the citizenry. It's the only rational choice, and many perceive it as literally a matter of sovereign survival.
People I know will google that information when they care. Or are already aware for product categories they care about like buying a SkiDoo vs Polaris.
But also there’s an app for that:
https://www.oscanadaapp.ca/
While he always talks tough regardless, I think his actions depend on the nature of the loss, e.g. him being all over the place on Iran, disregarding his own ceasefire for strikes and yet also heading towards a deal that's significantly worse than if he'd done nothing; or similarly all the everything in response to his threats against Greenland.
I interpret the same events you describe as Trump being unable to let go when he should have. Which is why he's made things worse than if he'd done nothing.
There is a lot of misinformation floating around the internet about this memorandum.
Furthermore, even Wikipedia states: "The Budapest Memorandum is not a treaty, and it does not confer any new legal obligations for signatory states. It was written in a way to avoid an impression of legal obligation."
Where in the memorandum does it say the US is obligated to defend Ukraine? Please give me a direct quote.
Otherwise this is a nonsense objection. "You have to give me $1 million. You haven't proven otherwise in court!" What is the actual evidence for your position?
Great, more dead boys for nothing. As a Canadian, I think we've sacrificed enough generations for European brother wars. Given retrospect, wouldn't a land deal have been better than half a million dead? Wouldn't walking away from your house, maybe with a reparations package, be better than it being blown up by drones and your family killed?
I don't think we need to go to war. We need to find a way to deal with Russia with humanity instead of treating them like some boomer-era cold war bogeyman.
Russia has never asked for a land deal. They started the war and their goal has always been the total destruction of Ukraine and the enslavement of the people.
Where they’ve pulled back from occupied areas they’ve mass civilian graves and bodies with signs of torture.
- Ukrainians are the second largest ethnicity in Russia.
- The majority of people living on a currently contested territories of Ukraine used to be USSR citizens.
- Russia got the majority of Ukrainian refugees since the start of a war if we count per country.
- Pretty much all the former Ukraine citizens got Russian passports and a citizens of Russia now.
- And yes, if Ukraine is using cities as fortresses and do not evacuate civilians from there, high chances are that after weeks and months long battles those civilians end up in graves with nasty wounds on their bodies.
> And yes, if Ukraine is using cities as fortresses and do not evacuate civilians from there, high chances are that after weeks and months long battles those civilians end up in graves with nasty wounds on their bodies.
"Nasty wounds" like their hands tied behind their backs and a hole in the back of their skull? That kind of thing?
That sounds like the definition of a war crime to me.
> - The majority of people living on a currently contested territories of Ukraine used to be USSR citizens.
The majority of people living on contested territories of United States in 1775 used to be British citizens. So?
> - And yes, if Ukraine is using cities as fortresses and do not evacuate civilians from there, high chances are that after weeks and months long battles those civilians end up in graves with nasty wounds on their bodies.
I agree with what you say, but "Never was" is contradicted by your Wikipedia link, which shows Ukrainians in the second position at the 1926 census, being overtaken by Tatars in the more recent censuses.
However, it is not said which is the territory for the 1926 census data, it may have included a part of the present territory of Ukraine, because the borders of present Ukraine are very different from the borders of Ukraine after WWI.
Such census data about Russia and the Soviet Union are hard to interpret without precise knowledge of the corresponding territories, because the fluctuations in numbers may be unrelated to natural growth, but determined by administrative reorganizations or forced deportations.
> Ukrainians are the second largest ethnicity in Russia.
Ukrainian were second largest ethnicity in Russian Empire/Russian federation until massive massacre in 1932-1934 years, when an uknown number of Ukrainians between 7 million (confirmed by Russian Duma at 04.02.2008, adults only, childrens are not counted) and 25 millions (total number of USSR citizens died because of hunger, number from soviet archives captured by Germans in 1941) was murdered or starved to death.
> Wouldn't walking away from your house, maybe with a reparations package, be better than it being blown up by drones and your family killed?
Please explain your analogy. Everyone should give up their property whenever they are threatened? For free, or whatever the aggressor chooses to give them?
> I don't think we need to go to war. We need to find a way to deal with Russia with humanity instead of treating them like some boomer-era cold war bogeyman.
What does that mean? How would you deal with them with humanity? Just give up your country when they invade?
Read this treaty yourself first. USA broke it first when intervened in Ukraine politics and toppled their government twice.
Russia's war against Ukraine has never been about getting more territory, it was for returning to status quo, when Ukraine has to be a sovereign and neutral state, a separator between Russia and NATO countries. USA and EU turned Ukraine into a hostile state to Russia when they installed nationalists in 2014, and then they buffed them with money and weapons, and so we have a war going.
Seems like you're claiming Ukraine's 2014 "Revolution of Dignity" and subsequent democratic elections were something the USA did. That's a controversial claim, and one that ignores the recorded actions and sentiments of the Ukrainian people. It's also unrealistic and gives the US too much credit.
The US does have their hands in pies across the globe, but that was a large scale uprising of Ukrainian people. No outside force can make something like that happen if the people aren't already aligned.
The simpler explanation is the Ukrainian people wanted to be closer to the EU, and didn't like Yanukovych's authoritarian tendencies. I wouldn't be surprised if some propaganda blamed it on the US, but it doesn't make sense. If the US wanted to do regime change and the public wasn't behind it, it would look very different. There are unfortunately many examples.
> Russia's war against Ukraine has never been about getting more territory,
That's completely counter to everything we know about Putin's mindset, and completely counter to all his actions so far. How would a war for territory look any different to what is occurring now?
> when Ukraine has to be a sovereign and neutral state
That's an oxymoron. Why does a sovereign democratic have to be neutral? A democratic state has the right to pursue whatever alliances it chooses.
It looks like you never bothered to read what this memorandum states yourself.
No, USA didn't sign up to going to war against Russia if this memorandum is breached. More of it, USA breached it first, when staged two "revolutions" in Ukraine and turned a sovereign nation into a puppet state.
It did not, but the implicit U.S. policy is to help Ukraine just enough to maintain a stalemate and to keep Russia busy and unable to assist other countries like Cuba and Iran.
Oh, they were aware from the phrasing they ate implying that we’ve already spent enough and we should stop, which is exactly what Trump was saying and is totally stupid if you want the world not to be run by Vladimir Putin.
based on a video clip I saws recently of Hegseth testifying to the Senate there is an additional ~4B of US military aid to Ukraine which was congressionally authorized some time ago, but still has yet to be distributed.
How about $600 billion. Since when did the US say we are just going to let russia win because we don’t want to spend the money? What happened to
“These colors don’t run” republicans? Oh wait it was BS all along. Got it.
> How much more is the US supposed to do in Ukraine beyond the $60-70 billion in weapons and supplies?
sigh
800 Patriot missiles were used within the first 3 days in the Iran war. This is greater than the total number of Patriot missiles received by Ukraine during the entire war with Russia.
Your orange president is displaying some funny priorities.
They are not likely 'giving' , Sweden just got $90B in locked up Russian money and those 'freebies' are going to come along with a major purchase order.
That's right, but Ukraine got $90B from Europe knowing most of it would come back for equipment purchases. Also - I think that EU is going to try to figure out a way to get that Russian money.
If they can't, then the EU should not exist - literally. It's decisive evidence that the bureaucracy can't even face an existential threat on it's own existence because it can't organize it's own legal concerns.
"We remained lawfully committed to juducial integrity and processes ... as we were exterminated!"
This situation is similar to 'many other things' (capital markets, tech investment, border/migration concerns etc.)
> That's right, but Ukraine got $90B from Europe knowing most of it would come back for equipment purchases.
Thats standard for military aid to other countries. Almost all US military aid to Ukraine was spent in the US for equipment purchases. The benefit for Ukraine is getting the weapons to use in the war, although it's worth noting a decent portion of the military aid will be spent by ukraine on domestic manufacturers.
Also €30 billion is financial and humanitarian aid, almost all of which will be spent in ukraine proper.
> Also - I think that EU is going to try to figure out a way to get that Russian money.
It's already sending the interest on the money to Ukraine, that alone is worth billions a year.
Simply seizing the rest is more complicated and additionally probably not preferable. Keeping the rest immobilised gives europe and Ukraine a substantial bargaining chip in negotiations with Russia when the war eventually ends. Either Russia agrees to concessions to get the money back or it doesn't and it agrees the money can be sent to rebuild Ukraine.
It's much more preferable to take the money - and it would have been even much more preferable if Putin knew that from the get go.
In fact - if Ukraine were to have had that $90B 2 years ago, it may have accelerated the situation (though not guaranteed).
This is not 'EU strategy' it's EU crawling out from it's own disorganization.
This is Putin's only great advantage - to take advantage of complacency, bureaucracy, and inability for European nations to react with coherence.
If the EU was organized, Putin wouldn't have been able to make a move, not even in 2014.
The same thing in tech: no cloud, no mobile - and now no AI. These things have real ramifications.
For example, Ukraine's' decisive advantage right now is Starlink - as much as I don't like Musk, and that he has been allowing Russia to use it for years (turning a blind eye, though that is stopped now) - it's now being used by Ukraine to assault 100Km in the rear and could 'turn the tide' of the conflict.
Europe has no 'Starlink' because it's disorganized and complacent - and the Starlink competitor is years away, will be minimal, may never happen.
So even as the technology proves to be 'plainly decisive', the reaction is not strategic or organized.
> If they can't, then the EU should not exist - literally. It's decisive evidence that the bureaucracy can't even face an existential threat on it's own existence because it can't organize it's own legal concerns.
> "We remained lawfully committed to juducial integrity and processes ... as we were exterminated!"
If you're happy being governed without process or accountability, why not just surrender to Russia? If the EU can't maintain its principles when things get tough then what's the point in having it at all?
> "We remained lawfully committed to juducial integrity and processes ... as we were exterminated!"
The rule of law, including judicial integrity, is their great strength. Corrupt dictatorships never are as wealthy and as powerful. Russia has always been far behind, and is falling further.
If Russia is an existential threat to EU, wouldn't it make sense to confiscate that money and declare war on Moscow ? Either that or Russia is not a threat.
confiscating money is much bigger deal than you can imagine. Russia and the EU are not officially at war and just taking money because you can is a serious violation of fundamental rights.
the gp asked for confiscation and property rights are pretty fundamental. especially if you are acting as a trustee not only for russian money but for many others who are watching how you are doing your job.
Yeah rules apply only on one side it seems, russia confiscated western planes, factories etc. worth tens of billions. I'd say eye for an eye is the only strategy mafia state like russia understands. That and rule of stronger, bigger dog fucks weaker, as russia tends to frequently do.
As the OP says, Carney has a clear, explicit policy of reducing military (and also economic) dependence on the US, for obvious reasons. It's what Carney is best known for, his leading international affairs and economic policies.
Every time a similar story, of a country turning away from US trade, is posted HN, people post that it's not political. Not only is that claim thin and largely unsbustantiated, but why is it such a focus?
>As of March 31st, 2026, Airbus reported a commercial aircraft backlog of 9,031 aircraft. Based on the company’s 2026 delivery target of 870 aircraft, this represents approximately 10.4 years of production coverage.
>Boeing’s commercial backlog stood at approximately 6,719 aircraft at the end of March. Using Forecast International’s production estimates, Boeing’s backlog equates to roughly 10.1 years of production coverage.
>Airbus reported a commercial aircraft backlog of 9,031
> 10.4 years of production coverage
Kinda true, airlines and manufacturers like to do big order announcements/deals for their future needs of few years all upfront. If Airbus suddenly delivered all 9k aircraft most airlines simply cannot afford it, or take possession and use them even.
For example Indigo is Airbus only operator with a fleet of 450 today and has around 920 more Airbus aircraft (10% of the book) on order. Neither Indigo or Indian aviation sector( of which Indigo is 60%) can triple the capacity today . India need serious upgrades (Terminals, Runways, Gates, new airports) coming online and also demand maturing, i.e. more people can afford to fly for that kind of volume to make sense which even the best scenario will happen over the next decade.
For more mature/slow growing airlines it is function of existing fleet age and the optimal point each aircraft is retired/sold , doing it too early will make them unprofitable .
It is a less a backlog and more their next 10 years of committed sales.
P.S. There is whole other industry aspect around Buy-Sell-and-leaseback financial engineering that can drive order volumes a bit. The backlog/order book also have commodity futures aspects.
They do not mean that the people who ordered them today are wanting them today. If you need them in 10 years time, you need to order them today. It can easily change, if a flight company doesnt want to do business with Boeing or Airbus, they can cancel their pre-orders. Then the pre-order list might shrink really fast.
Indeed. Backlogs can evaporate. Can you imagine anyone taking delivery of a newly built 737 in 10 years? 7 years? Theoretically, that's part of the backlog.
> Can you imagine anyone taking delivery of a newly built 737 in 10 years?
..yes? Companies are still placing orders, despite knowing how long the backlog is. I also expect the 737s will still be sold in 20+ years time, much less 7-10.
Why not taking delivery of a current plane in 7 years? What do you think the development, testing, certification and production scaling timeline is of a brand new airframe?
As I recall they do - with many being delivered “green” to the integration upfittet but I think the 737’s for the p-8 is actually assembled separately just for the military
It's not just the final production line that matters, but the whole supply chain. Boeing frequently has new airframes sitting and waiting for parts from suppliers.
What does a commercial backlog have to do with an aircraft for military purposes? I'm sure there is a different lane for military aircraft. Anyone ordering an aircraft for military purposes is not going to sit on the same waiting list as a commercial airline.
Canada is aligning itself with it's European Allies. Several EU NATO members have chosen the same aircraft over Boeing.
You can see even with Biden as president, around half of Europe's population regarded the US unfavorably. This was at a time when the US was sending more aid per capita than almost all European countries:
There's no point in trying to please these people. They'll accuse the US of warmongering one year, then demand that the US help them fight a war the next year.
The very statistic you presented, shows that the USA was seen as neutral, slightly favorable. The fact that there is now an unprecedented animosity towards the emerging autocracy of the USA, does not mean there were no issues before. They just pale in comparison.
You didn't give me enough good grades for my actions, therefore I run amok now, doesn't sound like healthy behaviour.
>shows that the USA was seen as neutral, slightly favorable
Yep, we could've gotten the same level of favorability by doing nothing, just like Switzerland. All of that stuff about the "soft power" we supposedly get from defending Europe is nonsense.
>You didn't give me enough good grades for my actions, therefore I run amok now, doesn't sound like healthy behaviour.
I'm not defending Trump's foreign policy. I'm an isolationist. I'm simply saying there's no reason for the US to try to please European public opinion. You'll never get anywhere.
Europeans just don't like the US. That's been true for as long as I can remember. If they aren't criticizing our foreign policy, they will criticize our domestic policy, as though how we handle our internal affairs was their business. Europeans essentially view the US as a vassal state.
>Remember that Trump also had a term before Biden where he undermined cross-atlantic relations.
Sure, tell me about Trump's first term where he made statements about Europe's relationship with Russia that look incredibly prescient with the benefit of hindsight:
>Before Obama you had Bush Jr's wars, with especially the Iraq war being very controversial.
Yes, I'm an isolationist. I say the US should end all defense commitments and warmongering. Starting with Europe. US should withdraw from NATO, because Europe complains about US foreign policy the most. What's good for the goose is good for the gander.
I feel a deep sense of pride and hope, palpably in my chest, when I get a week of news about how we're developing much closer ties with our European allies and divesting ourselves of the abusive American relationship.
Carney's Davos speech was powerful, but those words needed to be followed by actions, which I think we are seeing. I'm used to being so disappointed by politicians.
Worth noting that the base plane for one of the US-based contenders, the Aeris X by L3Harris, would also be the same Bombardier Global 6500 business jet.
Or, consider that the smaller Saab better fits the mission profile for Canada, and may be cheaper to operate, all the while The Guardian is furiously beating off trying to turn this into a bigger story than it really is.
Unfortunately, there is nothing in the US system (as far as I can see) that prevents Trump-like behaviour being the new standard. There were three supposedly independent, contentious branches of Government. One is inert (legislature), one enabled Trump (SCOTUS) and the third, of course, is Trump. I am unaware of any mechanism that can change things.
Trump-like behavior isn't the inevitable result of the US System though. We could've had another 20 presidents in a row who didn't go and break the norm of maintaining global alliances and not threatening to invade our neighbors and closest allies constantly.
So it's relevant to ask if this would still be happening without Trumps antics, even isolationists like JD Vance wouldn't force our allies hands like this.
Sure, but look at the alternative. Oppose him and he will support your primary opponent, like it happened yesterday in Texas.
The problem is his pied piper like hold on the populace which happened because the parties did not actually try to solve the problems. Sure they did solve some, but then they closed their eyes to the evils their group demanded - sanctuary cities on one side, and "right to life" on the other side.
> We could've had another 20 presidents in a row who didn't go and break the norm of maintaining global alliances and not threatening to invade our neighbors and closest allies constantly.
US Presidents and other influential leaders, particularly Republicans, breaking any and all norms when it suited them has always been a thing. 'member Watergate? Moscow's Bitch McConnell? Bush Sr invading Iraq? Bush Jr invading Afghanistan (I'll give him a pass on that one though) and Iraq? Trump all but eliminating NATO, setting the stage for Biden to completely get bonked on the Afghanistan retreat, and now invading Iran? Republicans yapping about "financial stability" when a Democrat is in power and gorging themselves on debt and tax cuts for the uber rich when they get in power?
The US political system has been rotting from the inside for well over half a century. Trump was inevitable because when you got a rotting compost pile, eventually there will be fat maggots rising out of it.
If us Europeans are to trust the US again, y'all need, just like us Germans after WW2, prove you can be trusted again. Reform campaign financing, voter suppression, FPTP, the entire way how Congress works, break apart your mega corporations, and finally arrest everyone involved in Trump's presidency and, while we're at it, Sam Altman. Y'all need to go through a serious reckoning, acknowledge how hard y'all fried not just your own country but everyone else as well, make amends for it and prevent a repeat.
> He is brazenly corrupt and petulant in foreign policy in a way we haven’t seen before.
Oh, definitely (although I'd say Bush's WMD lies regarding Iraq come pretty damn close).
But my point was... when the entire foundation and basement are rotting, eventually there will be pests exploiting that. If it wasn't Trump, the Tea Party and rabid Evangelical crowd would most likely have found another puppet.
There is also the fourth - the press, which is either actively cheerleading him, or sanewashing every insane thing be does, or walks an eggshells around him.
Without the second election of Trump? It's likely. Canada's aircraft industry got majorly burned by the US in 2017 during his first administration and Biden didn't significantly reverse the impact in any way.
I don't disagree that Bombardier commercial aircraft was struggling before that tariff - but it absolutely was the nail in the coffin. They actually ended up selling off the C-Series to Airbus for 1 CAD as a symbolic f-you to Boeing over the whole affair. The WTO ended up finding in Bombardier's favor but it came in too late to save the company from the financial damage.
Whether the C-Series would have been profitable for Bombardier without the extreme heavy-handed US intervention is not particularly clear but the outlook already wasn't great - still, it's inarguable that Boeing leveraged lobbying to quicken Bombardier's demise.
Obviously not. Canada would gladly have kept paying 2x market prices just to stay in the good graces of the US, with a presumption of 'free' defense in exchange for paying so much.
This era is over. US defense companies now need to compete for real.
The world is slowly moving away from the US.
It's interesting because this administration main goal was to MAGA.. but it happened quite the opposite thing. It turns out, the world doesn't need much of the US products and services.
This was interesting but it seems that it requires me to access to properly see the data of all countries (which requires me to contact them basically and perhaps be a business, not sure)
I would find it interesting if you can share with me hopefully a less restrictive chart than this. The data does seem interesting to me.
The net perception of US among its top trading partners being all negative seems a clear indicator.
Sad that niradata has paywalled rest of the data because I was interested in the rabbit hole of comparing different countries. From the data:
Across the 84 countries that evaluated the United States, 22 had a net positive perception, while 62 had a net negative perception. The average net perception of the United States is negative (-16), ranking #128 out of 132 countries.
The key word is "again". This was a nostalgia play, America was a big deal fifty years ago, therefore just wind back to fifty years ago and we're "Great Again".
This play seems insane because Time's Arrow points only one way, but it succeeded (in the sense that people supported it) because it's predicated on Facts Aren't True. It doesn't matter that Time's Arrow points future-ward, that's just a Fact not a Truth so we can just disagree.
Facts Aren't True can actually work for stuff where all you're doing is messing with people. Your Courts are just people and they can reject observable reality and substitute your own Truth with the Kavanaugh Stop, a week in jail becomes "brief" and your skin colour becomes "reasonable suspicion" for example. Your executives can pay themselves huge bonuses for imaginary success while concretely the company fails and eventually collapses. Stock markets can soar as the real economy they're "reflecting" buckles and fails.
"Facts Aren't True" is a stupid choice because unlike the people, Mother Nature doesn't give a shit about your Truth. So America won't actually become Great Again, but it is able to delude itself about this at a cost to its standing in the world and to its own future.
Over the last few months we've seen announcements of shifts from US-based supply chains to non-US-supply chains. As an American, I think this is prudent, based on what has happened in the last year and change. The US is no longer a reliable partner and this is what you do when that happens.
100 years from now, the last 15 months will be written about in no uncertain terms: this administration has loaded many footguns and pulled the trigger, over ideologies which are just plain stupid. "America First" indeed. Soft power is power. "Forever" wars are wars we shouldn't be in. Retribution by POTUS acting like a 5 year old is disgusting no matter what party that person came from.
It will take decades to recover from what has and will happen during this administration's run. Let's hope the power they have ends in November 2026 and not Nov 2028.
How exactly is that related to their point about nations moving to alternative supply chains away from US based ones? They're saying the administrations actions are counterproductive, and driving away both money and influence from their allies.
And yes, most consumer goods from everywhere come from a Chinese supply chain ... but we're not talking about consumer goods here. We're talking in this case about military purchases. There aren't many western countries buying military hardware from China.
The supply chain of relevance is the critical software, infrastructure to run it, and ability to remotely kill it if an ally stops being an ally.
Nobody cares if their dollar store trinket was made overseas. And nobody would buy it if it was made in America because that same trinket would cost 5x.
People barely even care about their privacy these days, it seems.
But governments still seem to care about their military independence in the rare event they are at odds with an ally.
The Arrow would be a terrible, terrible aircraft for today's world.
It was built to shoot down Soviet bombers coming over the North Pole. It could not perform air superiority missions because it was too big to be agile. It could maybe be a strike fighter, but generally its reputation overstates just how good it would have actually been.
While $3.6 billion is a big order, Boeing stock price is up 2% so the market (which has global participation) doesn't seem to view this as very negative in the short term?
From a very practical PoV, the only military threat to Canada is from the U.S.
Even if the U.S. and Canada are enemies, if Canada is being attacked by a country that is not the U.S., then the U.S. will come to its defense because they don’t want another nation with the capability to attack Canada to have a North American presence.
So given that the U.S. is the only possible military threat to the U.S., and now that the U.S. has openly threatened Canada, it’s incredibly silly to buy weaponry from the only country that could militarily attack you and almost certainly won’t share repair material, parts, software source etc. and possibly has a kill switch.
The Gripen is also a very practical design and much simpler to support. Canada can host the data locally as opposed to in the USA. The F-35 is very sophisticated and but maybe to a fault. I'm reminded of how technically superior Germany's vehicles were in WW2. The simplicity and field serviceability the USA vehicles had made a difference in combat.
its currently doubtful that the US would come to canada's defense
maybe offer some targetting intelligence, but most likely the US government would look to sell out canada for peanuts, the same as trump has been looking for with ukraine, and now taiwan
If the US decided to attack Canada then having Swedish 4th generation fighters instead of US 5th generation fighters will make literally no difference in the outcome. This isn't a serious calculus.
The E-7 Wedgetail is a vastly more capable platform than the Erieye/GlobalEye in pretty much every way, but costs four times as much, and there are other issues with Canada and Boeing as have been pointed out by another commenter.
Delivery schedules are also likely a factor. Assuming the USAF actually orders the E-7, they'll probably get first priority on the Boeing production line. Any export orders would have to wait.
>The E-7 Wedgetail is a vastly more capable platform than the Erieye/GlobalEye in pretty much every way
The airframe itself, perhaps. As for the radar, that remains to be seen. The E-7 uses an L-band AESA radar, whereas the GlobalEye's radar operates in the higher-frequency S-band. In general, higher frequencies are better for engaging smaller/faster targets, but perform worse in adverse weather conditions.
It's been a long time since I took my electronic warfare courses, but in a situation where the radar is expected to spot small drones and other targets I would prefer a higher frequency radar.
It should be noted that the US military itself didn't want the Wedgetail in favor of a space-based solution, until Hegseth forced them for publicity reasons.
Was it just a publicity issue? There was a real risk of a capability gap in that all of the old E-3 airframes would have to be retired long before a space based solution could possibility come online. Plus in an era of anti-satellite weapons proliferation, a crewed aircraft might actually turn out to be more survivable.
The comparable aircraft is the more modern E-7 Wedgetail, which has many features that are superior for Canada's use case (notably including range and NORAD integration). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_E-7_Wedgetail
Canada has unfortunately been in conflict with Boeing since before either of Trump's terms, originally triggered by Boeing's trade complaints regarding Bombardier's government subsidies.
Canada has little used for airborne early warning outside of NORAD; the country has little independent air defense, and has not performed any foreign air superiority missions since the Cold Warz
I'd mention that whether a piece of tech can beat another one on one is a consideration but a larger concern is how maintainable your fleet is. Canada is specifically moving to grow ties with the EU (and has joined their defense industry network) which really incentivizes having a fleet that is a similar makeup to other European countries.
The tariffs and international unpredictability of the US is one motivator - but growing closer to EU markets is also a specific focus of the Carney government. The current Trump administration isn't even the only rationale for this - in 2017 the US imposed extremely heavy tariffs on Bombardier that bankrupted the majority of the corporation.
There are a ton of considerations, starting with 'Doctrine', then tactics, other equipment, integration, other kinds of dependencies. So many things.
Often there are acute, specific needs, aka Canada has to land these all the time in the arctic, you need bigger hangars for the bigger gear, maybe we need 'more units for wider coverage' over large land mass.
Some gear is better v Russians, some gear for China threat.
Vastly inferior and overpriced. From now till delivery the US will blackmail the buyer with delays and increase the agreed upon price at least 3 times. Standard practice.
Not defending the US here (not least because as a European I'm deeply pissed at the US government and the people backing it) but every country with a large military has similar plans, they are used as a training exercise/staff exercise rather than as realistic plans (as noted in the article you linked).
I like this analogy - sparring with each other like toddlers do, before realizing that they have a lot in common as they age, like the English language, industrialization, the systemic abuse of natives, Big Oil, the World Wars and racism.
Now that they're older, they're sparring once again, just like siblings do over the parents' estate.
I like your analogy, and want to add a sad addendum: parental illness and death is frequently the cause of sibling estrangement. Let’s hope this isn’t prolonged.
This is terrible analogy. We're more like neighbours, and US is a bully. We made a decision not to have much a fence before we were friendly neighbours. We regret that decision, and are planting a hedge and reaching out to our other "neighbours" for support.
The whole neighbourhood thinks you're assholes and bullies, we're all scared. But that is bring us closer together as result, so there's some upside.
Racism? Oh man, visit any other country that is more homogenous.... lol. Everything is relative.
Canadian and American racism is documented in specific events, unlike in other countries. I'd be hard pressed to find specific racism-driven events in Poland or Czechia, even though they top the racist charts.
I'm not American so your second point is completely moot.
Sir, Nawrocki is only the president because of racist pressures. I don't even hate him but you cannot argue that he would be elected if it weren't for fear of foreigners.
Why trust anyone? Really what stops a Trump from getting elected anywhere else? The citizens seem smarter or less bigoted? Are you sure that will always be the case given the agitprop in every form of media and internet communication in every language on earth?
There have been many elections in many political entities where a politician got elected because one group of citizens really liked that politician; and another group of citizens thought that politician was extremely, historically bad. This is inherent to mass democracy itself in any polity where there are real and deep-seated differences between different groups of the electorate. "A Trump" - in the sense of a politician whose opponents describe in apocalyptic terms and consider that politician's supporters to be stupid and bigoted - gets elected all the time in all sorts of places.
The seventy odd million people who looked at Trump and everything he is and then voted for him.
The entire congress and senate of the US who sit by while he does this and the supreme court who lets him, entire departments of the US government co-opted by sycophants put in place by Trump.
There is little to trust in the United States at the moment, you look a lot like the Weimar republic.
I guess I internally equate “Trump” and “Trumpism” - who’s to say what the chicken and the egg is with that whole situation.
> The entire congress and senate of the US who sit by while he does this and the supreme court who lets him, entire departments of the US government co-opted by sycophants put in place by Trump.
It is amazing how much people bend the knee to further their own ends. People like Stephen Miller who probably see Trump as a useful idiot, and hold great contempt for him, as long as he can enact his white supremacist agenda.
The leftist circles I run in like to joke that this could’ve just been properly avoided if we hadn’t fumbled reconstruction as a nation.
Remember the guy who promised he'd shut down Guantanamo? Or the guy who made up some weapons so he could invade Irak? Or the guy who ordered Northstream to be blown up?
> Genuinely, what makes the US untrustworthy if not Trump?
We invaded Korea, and then Vietnam, and a few hundred other interventions that don't seem to be sanctioned by the international community. All because of a hardon for ideology that doesn't seem to actually reflect the interests of the people who live here.
Not only is this true, there are about 50 million people in the south who are incredibly grateful for US involvement. And about 26 million people in the north who are, on average, several inches shorter than the southerners due to the end of US involvement.
We forcibly inserted our forces onto a peninsula to support a state that exterminated hundreds of thousands of people that nominally opposed it. If you want to call this something other than invasion that's your choice. We can all judge what character your faith takes
Oh I get downvoted all the time for telling people about the american vassal states on HN. People, especially those living in these vassal states, seem to take offense to hearing that reality.
Israel seems trustworthy in the sense that their priorities and aims are abundantly clear to everyone. People are pissed about Israel for Iran right now, but, I mean, there is a reason why they are attacking Iran right now and not Egypt or Turkey. You go about and poke the bear like Iran has done for decades with Israel, you get these outcomes. Egypt tried to poke the bear but that was decades ago and they've since learned there is nothing to gain there.
Nobody is buying this narrative of Israel being provoked, because the reaction to the provocation, if there ever was one, is completely disproportional.
Israel had settlements in Palestine way before the conflict outbreak, and nothing explains the systematic targeting of civilian infrastructure on Lebanon but for Israel just going supernova, like Germany and Japan back then.
I'm sure there was provocation, but we are taking about nations with extremely long recorded memory, so this back and forth of who did what goes back countless generations. It's utterly disastrous to go through this line of thinking when there are millions of civilians either dead or displaced and vulnerable.
Hey that's up to you. I will never vote for a person who supports Israel. Our parents may have been retarded but we don't have to be. I just see a state devoted to slaughtering as many people as they can. Iran looks like a saint compared to them.
I'm not supportive of them either. I just don't consider them untrustworthy though. Everything they do is exactly what they've always done since that state was formed. Easily the most predictable nation on earth, Israel. Easy way to get Israel off your back though? Stop funding terrorists like Hamas and Hezbollah that inevitably do something stupid to provoke the Israelis into armed conflict. It is really that simple.
True. Israel begins, Israel assassinates and complains about being targeted by terrorism. Israel begins the loop again. What is more reliable than Israel?
Iran would be a better ally. China would be a better ally. Fucking Russia would be a better ally. Why did we decide to die on the hills of (loosely translated, I guess) mageddo?
But instead our state leans into exterminating people because our PR team was inspired by Goebbels and was trained to hate muslims
It is like a modern day state of Prussia. A beachhead and airstrip in the middle east. Weapons manufacturing. Rocket science. A cyber security firm. An intelligence agency. Some of the best in the world at these things. All wrapped up into one. This is why nations like to ally with Israel.
But again, if you don't want problems with Israel don't make problems with Israel. Their populace is militarized like few other and seemingly with a lot of political cohesion. Egypt has learned not to poke the bear. So has Jordan.
Trump can be voted in everywhere, but american constitution makes curruption effectively legal, president effectively lawless and provides no balance to unchecked presidential power. Money in politics are speech, so just unlimited, so any person even having change to be president have to do what Epstein class like.
And it is constitution itself. America had lawd trying to deal with above and supreme court gutted them.
Because Trump is a new, and (hopefully!) a one time phenomenon.
He is unique in that he seems to have absolute control over the Republican base which makes all internal party checks fail. The rest is provided by a hyper polarized media landscape and a conservative supreme court majority that seems to be open to radical upheavals. The combination of all three has rendered the constitutional safe guards ineffective. In other words, we seem to have run into an edge case in the US constitution.
The supreme court won't change materially in the near future and likely the polarization will continue, but it's hard to image someone in the future with such an absolute grip on either party. So, hopefully a soft restart of the system in 2028 will be the last of this edge case for a while. That's the hope, anyway!
The two countries have far more in common shared interests than differences, so odds are things will drift back to normal in the future.
Trump did not rise to power in isolation. He has not remained in isolation while in power. Voter support for Trump is still reasonably strong, and Trump and his supporters have ensured that the mechanisms of Government are packed with loyalists.
America chose this. America continues to tolerate this. America enabled this.
This isn't something that Trump can be scapegoated for. This is what many Americans wanted, or at the very least, it is what many Americans are willing to tolerate.
The trade deficit with Canada is because Americans are buying Canadian products.
Enough Canadians (seriously, the vast majority) live close enough to the border that they could make a weekly trip to the USA and purchase American dairy and other American goods. In fact, prior to the tariffs many Canadians did make regular shopping trips across the border.
So let's be clear: we were buying your products to the extent we wanted to, already.
As someone unfamiliar with the US-Canada trade relationship, it would be helpful if you developed this argument instead of stating it as a fact. I'm not well-placed to know whether your belief that Canada has bilked the US out of 46 billion dollars is well-founded or not.
It represents the trade deficit the USA has with Canada. To believe that this is a problem as a result of Canada's nefarious actions is to believe that Canada is preventing its citizens from purchasing American product.
Which is a common refrain with respect to our supply management system for dairy; but to believe this you have to ignore that the USA has _never once_ managed to export enough dairy products to Canada to meet or exceed the import quotas set by the supply management regime.
The truth is that Canadians simply don't seem all that interested in purchasing American dairy products.
> The truth is that Canadians simply don't seem all that interested in purchasing American dairy products
Yup, taking this a bit off topic: I've always bought dairy products with the blue cow on it (signifies Canadian dairy). The US dairy industry only wants to export into Canada when they have excess, and leave us dry when they don't, so i strongly support Canadian dairy production.
> Because Trump is a new, and (hopefully!) a one time phenomenon.
Trump is already, on his own, a two-time phenomenon. Leaving aside broader cultural issues and patterns, "one-time only" has been clearly incorrect for a while.
> He is unique in that he seems to have absolute control over the Republican base which makes all internal party checks fail. The rest is provided by a hyper polarized media landscape and a conservative supreme court majority that seems to be open to radical upheavals. The combination of all three has rendered the constitutional safe guards ineffective. In other words, we seem to have run into an edge case in the US constitution.
The US constitution has absolutely nothing at all to say about political parties or the particular state of the media landscape, or for that matter the partisan alignment of justices of the supreme court. It's incoherent to suggest that there are "constitutional safe guards" that should have prevented the election of a president (or the exercise of power by that president), who is supported by about one-half of a very polarized electorate and opposed by a separate one-half. Everything about the Trump presidency is as constitutional as every previous US presidency, including the phenomenon of opponents of the president trying to claim that specific things they do are or should be unconstitutional.
The problem is that it isn't just an "edge case" in the constitution - the whole thing is fundamentally flawed from the very beginning. The US isn't going to be trustworthy until it manages to reshape itself into a proper democracy with functional checks and balances.
Considering the right-wing politicians are trying to turn the country into a theocratic nationalistic dictatorship and the "left-wing" politicians are content with getting votes by nothing more than not being right-wing and collecting corporate bribes: good luck with that.
> Because Trump is a new, and (hopefully!) a one time phenomenon.
unless the US extinguishes all of its billionaires and somehow convinces 1/3 to 1/2 of their population to not vote against their own interests it'll happen again
this has been happening before anyone even thought trump would run: in 2015 trudeau ran on cancelling the f35 purchase. So what did obama do to canadians?
aside from political alignment, theres a lot of geographic, budget and climate and stategic alignments that would put swdeen designers in the same headspace.
You missed the absolutely huge one: that the plane it's based around is a Bombardier aircraft manufactured here in Canada.
And in general this is how Saab has tried to court us -- by making promises (how real is unclear) to bring manufacturing jobs to Canada to build things.
That is something the US has not done, will not do, and most importantly cannot do under Trump/Bissent/etc.
Canada is very unlikely to be invaded, so the actual military effectiveness / superiority is only one factor. Reducing unemployment and enhancing our manufacturing sector is as or more important.
> You seem to have a few of your own: "Canada only has to patrol its northern border"
the Canadians do not aggressively patrol the southern border because that is where all of the people are -- unlike the north -- and because the reality is that the entire Canadian military is basically a speedbump for if/when the US invaded in earnest.
Americans: X country is only a speed bump for our awesome military.
Also Americans: Have never managed to win a single war on their own while usually fighting underdeveloped tribes whose most advanced equipment is sandals, while at the same time both allies and enemies have a billion jokes on how bad they actually are.
You need a special kind of personality to be this confident while currently losing a war, one that is, well, associated with Americans.
Open a history book. They do a lot more than patrol the northern border. Canada was involved in WWI, WWII, Korea, Iraq 1 and 2, Fall of Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Libyan civil war, Iraq civil war, Syrian civil war and ISIS conflict, Yemeni civil war, and a smattering of other conflicts over the past century.
Canada would only have to patrol its southern Alberta border /s
No coincidence that Albertans are sparking up the seceding issue again. When 10% of the population produces nearly 20% of the country's GDP it's a breeding ground for contempt. And it also seems like Albertans are the butt of a lot of jokes from the other Canadians anyway.
I'm sure this US government would love to see an "independent" Alberta.
You're right but you should cite something other than the CBC, since it will just be immediately dismissed by the biased as biased.
Alberta is very important economically. I'm from there. Ontario (I live there) and Quebec and BC are also massively important. And fanning the flames of disinformation and playing grievance politics to make Albertans feel discriminated against has become an extremely serious problem.
Wab Kinew was very eloquent on this topic yesterday.
I would think Ontario is the centre of Canada as it has the most people and the financial centre. Google's AI says 38% of GDP. And the problem Alberta faces is who wants to separate, what do they want to do afterwards and what ground do they actually own (vs. treaties that predate Alberta).
When Alberta at least catches up to Quebec in practicing being independent (runs its own police, collects its own taxes, has its own pension system, maintains foreign services, ... They might decide the extra taxes to pay for such is less "fun". And they need a border to ship stuff through.
North America's biggest oil pipeline -- Enbridge Mainline, which has a capacity of 3.2M barrels per day -- runs east through Sask, Manitoba, ducks down through Michigan, and then splits before coming back into Canada in Ontario in two places (including Line9 ~1km from my house.)
Ontario is one of Alberta's biggest customers.
Then there's westbound ... TMX capacity of 890,000 barrels a day, to BC ports (and then on to China).
Did you watch this video? About half way through he confirms that Alberta has the highest GDP/capita in Canada and is the largest (per capita) tax contributor. Ontario is obviously larger in absolute terms, but it has at least 4x the population.
As with any time you deploy an average... (And I'd expect better on this forum of all places)
Show me the distribution. Show me the median not just the mean. Show me the standard deviation.
Otherwise ... abused.
Yes, we all know oil is an extremely profitable (and environmentally destructive) commodity. That doesn't make the typical Albertans somehow responsible for holding up all of confederation. Just means oil is making some people very rich. For now.
I'm from there and my family is in Alberta. I can tell you now that the oil industry ain't doing jack squat for them.
I think 70-80% of investors are down South, so not much stays here no. And jack shit goes into the heritage fund, just for aimco to throw away (sorry invest).
Texas has entertained the idea of seceding for 150 years. And they would be a G7 country if they did. But they would have to fight a war to do it. USA already went through this once.
The only thing really stopping Alberta from leaving is whether or not BC, Ontario, and Quebec are willing to fight a war to stop it.
And that gets a lot more complicated if the US also wants Alberta to go independent....
Texas would be a G7 nation for about a week if they seceded from the US. Being the logistics hub for a country only works if you’re part of that country.
The instant Alberta secedes from Canada, the Indigenous would secede all unceded Treaty land from the independent Alberta. Which includes all of the tar sands, the source of Alberta's wealth.
Canada might not be willing to fight, but the Indigenous probably are.
None of this matters in this context. The indiginous people literally do not matter. It's bad, but it's just how it is when white Europeans start fighting over land in North America. We have 3 centuries of evidence.
I'm gonna go out on a limb and say if Canada wasn't willing to let Quebec leave, and they've tried with significantly more effort than Alberta ever has, then they're not going to let Alberta go.
We already have a clause in our constitution to allow for orderly withdrawal from Canada. We'd have to resolve the first Nations angle which would probably be more of a hurdle.
>The only thing really stopping Alberta from leaving is whether or not BC, Ontario, and Quebec are willing to fight a war to stop it.
Unlike the individual US states, Alberta never joined Canada. It was not an entity that existed prior to Canada's confederation. Alberta was basically pencil-whipped into existence by carving out a chunk of an already existing territory (the Northwest Territory).
Despite American and Russian destabilization campaigns in Canada, there is no legal mechanism by which Canadian provinces can unilaterally secede.
>And that gets a lot more complicated if the US also wants Alberta to go independent....
Recent past polling overwhelmingly showed Albertans in favor of remaining in Canada. This latest frenzy is widely known to be a foreign influence operation.
The implication that this somehow weakens Alberta’s constitutional status is false. Alberta is a full province under the Constitution of Canada with the same constitutional standing as the other provinces.
The Supreme Court has already ruled that Canada and other provinces would be obligated to negotiate terms of separation should a province ever vote to leave in a clear referendum.
Yes, support for leaving is probably at 10-20%. Just having the referendum will build the infrastructure and political machinery for keeping it alive for a long time from the first try. I live here and I'm not a fan of Smith for encouraging it at all.
>The implication that this somehow weakens Alberta’s constitutional status is false.
I implied no such thing. In fact I was careful to use the term "unilaterally" when referring to secession. My understanding is doing it properly would require a full constitutional amendment.
>Albertans can just declare that they don't respect Ottawa's authority, right?
Sure, but just like nobody gives a shit about what Sovereign Citizens do or do not respect, such a declaration would only carry weight if there are enough people that want to mount an armed rebellion. And despite what American influence operations would have you believe, there simply aren't. Most Albertans want to remain in Canada.
Of course the US gov would love to see an "independent" Alberta... They'd see that as easy oil reserves to put their hands on and a weaker Canada. They're working with traitors in separatist organizations as well as PP and trying to import MAGA into Canada.. Albertan's, due solely to their location, stand on oil riches... They don't have to do much to be the country's highest earners, its literally handed to them on a sticky black oil platter. (Not saying they don't work hard... loads of people work just as hard in other fields that aren't covered in gold though). They have the highest median pay in Canada, pay the least taxes.. Yet still spend their time crying and saying they're keeping Canada afloat... They're not Canada's highest GDP province... And other provinces don't spend their time trying to sell out to the US, even after the US threatening to destroy Canada, economically or otherwise. That's treason my guy. There's not too many ways to say it. Also, Alberta's population isn't even close to having the votes to even considering separating, without getting into all the other issues they're trying to pretend don't matter. The whole thing is a joke.
That's not the injustice. The problem is that Alberta's political interests are very poorly (if at all) represented federally. This has come to a head a few times in the past with things like cancelled pipeline projects or the NEP[1]. So the issue is that Alberta has 11.52% of the population, contributes 15.25% of the GDP, yet must constantly fight against policies that put it at a disadvantage or run counter to its political leanings.
> Estimates have placed Alberta's losses between $50 billion and $100 billion because of the NEP.[32][33] Alberta still initially enjoyed an economic surplus due to high oil prices, but the surplus was heavily reduced by the NEP, which, in turn, stymied many of Lougheed's policies for economic diversification to reduce Alberta's dependence on the cyclical energy industry, such as the Alberta Heritage Savings Trust Fund, and also left the province with an infrastructure deficit. In particular, the Alberta Heritage Fund was meant to save as much of the earnings during high oil prices to act as a "rainy day" cushion if oil prices collapsed because of the cyclical nature of the oil and gas industry.
Cancelled pipeline projects? Ottawa doesn't cancel pipeline projects. All the problems with pipeline projects are caused by environmental reviews etc, which fall under legislation brought in by Stephen Harper, an Albertan.
It's much the opposite, Canada just spent $34B to ensure the Trans-Mountain pipeline got built. Alberta is the one that gets the resource revenue, but it's Ottawa that has to pay for your pipelines. That's hardly fair.
Alberta has one legitimate grievance, the NEP. Which is a plan that was cancelled by Mulroney over 40 years ago.
The AHSTF performed poorly because successive Albertan provincial governments slashed contributions to it, not because of the ghost of the NEP. It was established in 1976, then contributions were cut in half in 1983, and eliminated entirely in 1987. The NEP was gone by 1985.
What hurt Alberta was every cyclical crash in oil prices, and their steadfast refusal to implement additional revenue streams like a provincial sales tax while spending instead of saving their resource-boom surpluses.
What is stopping the Swedes from electing a jackass? They seem smart for now? It happens in Europe too. All these weaknesses are liable for any country in a democratic model where executive is controlled via popular vote. Population is trivial to manipulate. This is the new world. Running to Sweden doesn't change the underlying issue of the ease of manipulating an electorate using technological affordances to capture a nation from the inside without a single shot fired.
It can happen in Sweden too but it is less likely to. We don't have a president, we have a prime minister with limited power. We have a stronger democracy run by coalitions instead of a single party. One jackass is not enough in Sweden.
I do think first past the post is a big part of the problem. Combined with primaries dominated by the most radical parts of the population you have the recipe for very unhinged results.
Nothing, but when your spouse turns into an abusive piece of shit, breaking up with them and looking for a new one is the right call.
Sure, the new one might turn into one too, but that's no reason to stay with one who is definitely one.
Trust arrives on foot and leaves on horseback. That's the obvious result of Trumpism - when you seek to turn every interaction into a short-term win for you, people simply stop doing business with you whenever they can avoid it.
Tens of millions of Americans voted for this guy three times, overwhelmingly twice - this is how the country wants to act.
If he and his cronies are removed from power and prosecuted and everyone pinkie swears to never go down this road again, maybe we can look into rebuilding some of that trust. In the meantime, you reap what you sow.
Run from the US. Create a new seat of power all you want. Putin will put in his manchurian candidate wherever the power lies. The fact this happened to the US is really a byproduct of its global position. So create a new global leader, and that will be the new target for capture via propagandizing the electorate and electing a sympathizer. Running never solves anything. The problem is still the problem, and is not getting addressed.
Democracy in the US is sick at the best of times. It's a fundamental flaw in strong executive presidential republics, doubled down on by the legislatures ability to constantly redistrict in a way that advantages the incumbents, tripled down on by the lack of a plausible mechanism to have a non-confidence motion.
Canada can't solve this problem inside US politics. Only Americans can, at any one of the three boxes. It can only work to disentangle it's critical dependencies, and to protect its own interests.
And democracy isn't sick in the UK that elected conservatives to leave from the EU? It isn't sick in Hungary that elected Orban? It isn't sick in Germany where 1/4 of the bundestag is comprised of AfD? Far right is rising in Canada too in recent years (1).
Citing one bad election or referendum, and another country that just had a complete political upheaval that has blown up in our good friend Orban's face, and a third that's up in the air isn't as strong an argument as you would hope it to be.
Any country can elect chucklefucks or vote for something stupid. Some of them have systems that are more resistant to the long-term damage they cause. Some of them are less. The US is definitely in the 'less' category as all of the checks and balances and systemic inertia completely collapsed.
Also, the other big difference is that when Hungary or the UK sneezes, Canada doesn't catch a cold.
Alright, if you think that the world is someone inoculated against this, I'm not sure what else to say. I just don't believe that at all. Humans are fungible and Americans aren't uniquely stupid.
Saab makes excellent AWACS systems, this strikes me as a good choice. It'll be interesting to see if Canada also invests in the Gripen long-term, as a replacement for the aging CF-18 fleet.
> Saab is also in the running to sell Canada some of its Gripen fighters.
The Iran war has uncovered a vulnerability of the USAF's approach to basing. The USAF likes to build large, elaborate air bases. Many of the bases used to attack Iran have been hit by Iran.[1][2]
Large air bases are tough to defend from drones and missiles in quantity. There are anti-drone weapons, but now that drones are used by the thousands and tens of thousands, some of the attacks will get through. A major air base is a big, fat, soft target. Both the US and Russia have recently found this out the hard way. Air forces now need to disperse and hide.
Saab, which stresses operating from minimal airfields and roads, has aircraft better suited to that.[3]
Stealth may not help as much, especially for fighters. Geometric stealth, which is designed to reflect radar beams to anywhere except straight back, doesn't help for bistatic and multi-static radar. All the players in the current wars have some of those systems now.
So, as in WWII, air operations anywhere near the enemy require dispersal.
The F-35 always seemed like a funny choice for a mainline fighter for Canada. Even the US has invested in many more F-15EXs. Having a Hi/Lo mix makes sense for a larger force, but equipping a smaller force with only exquisite birds doesn't seem to make much sense.
Then again, this is Canada - sensible decision making in military procurement just isn't something that happens here.
But the economies of scale are such that at least the $$ isn't completely out of whack (for purchase at least, maintenance I'm not so sure of). I would wager that the cost of maintaining those ancient CF-18s is pretty high now too though.
The F-15EX is designed to be a stand-off missile truck that works in tandem with a network of forward-deployed stealth jets. This compensates for the relatively low ordnance load-out of stealth jets. A stealth jet can designate and cue a target from the front using an F-15EX as a missile launcher safely in the back since it is non-stealthy.
The F-15EX isn't a particularly survivable aircraft on its own. It is a plane you'd only use if you have stealth jets and you plan to do air combat at scale. It augments the capabilities of something like an F-35 but isn't something you'd add to your fleet unless you had a lot of stealth aircraft.
That's how the USA uses it, and for that use case it makes a tremendous amount of sense.
I just think it's a bit too rich for Canada's blood. Perhaps the whole-system costs do balance out in the end: surprisingly reasonable capex, capable at many roles, excellent at NATO combined roles, etc. There's a lot to like on the balance sheet. But the maintenance costs are killer, and we're talking about an exceedingly underfunded military (thanks to the politicians, our military do wonders with what they have).
I mean, in any real engagement our fleet is going to be blown away by a real adversary in short order. This is about presence and deterrence, I'm just not sure how essential stealth is to accomplish those goals. It sure is a nice pay day for Lockheed and friends though.
The F-15A/C is designed to act as a missile truck, but the F-15EX was specifically designed to be a multirole strike fighter. You can operate it without putting 20 AMRAAMs on the pylon, or without an F-35 datalinked to it, and many countries do. The flexibility and heavy ordinance are the selling point at home and abroad.
Canada could very well operate the F-15EX without a fleet of stealth fighters. The F-35 is not an interceptor platform in any sense of the word, in an "all out" scenario like you're suggesting it's doubtful they would be any better than the CF-18 they have today.
I think the F-16 would have been a good bird for Canada's needs. The F-18 had the advantage of two engines, which strikes me as a good thing in the Arctic. If these two are off the table, things like the Saab are reasonable. There's only 2-3 countries one needs stealth fighters for, and 30-40-ish won't matter in such cases.
We've long pushed for 2 engines - which has made sense in the past. Even a successful ejection over the vast arctic would basically be a death sentence. Though some of our allies don't seem to have the same reservations, and it seems modern engines are a lot more reliable - certainly the F-35 only has one, so it looks like we're ok with it now.
The modern F-18's and the new F-15's would have also made sense, but agreed that modern F-16s would seem to be a nearly perfect fit if a single engine is now deemed acceptable. Given we like to keep equipment for as long as physically possible (and then some), the F-35 might have more runway (rimshot) in that regard though.
If the F-15 line is still in production, it's a damn fine bird and has broad mission capability. And the remaining B-52's are probably older that most of the HN community. At least those not retired or cashed out.
The F-16 lacks the range to operate effectively in Canada. They would need to load it up with multiple conformal or external fuel tanks, which wrecks performance, and would still need extensive tanker support.
Now the interesting question to me is why is that a country with a tenth of population can have car, truck and military plane manufacturing yet Canada can’t, even with virtually all resources for inputs, including energy can’t.
Canada has many issues. First and foremost, their entire economy is basically 3 mineral extraction industries stacked on top of each other in a trench coat.
They are also (unfortunate?) to share a border with USA and be party to NAFTA. This makes it trivial for educated, professional Canadians to work in the US on a TN visa indefinitely. We know that the doctor and nurse brain-drain from Canada to the US has been ongoing for decades. But it's actually every industry since US firms pay 2-3x more than equivalent Canadian firms.
The reality is that Canadians get very good, tax-payer subsidized educations and then immediately go to the US to work for 10+ years and only return later when they need to start drawing on the Canadian social services for things like healthcare and family care. And Canada itself got none of the benefits of that workforce in between.
I saw a figure recently that the US issued an all-time-high 800,000 TN admissions to Canadians in 2016. And then in 2023 it surged to nearly 1.3 million.
>We know that the doctor and nurse brain-drain from Canada to the US has been ongoing for decades.
Its actually the opposite: it had been going on for some time, but has reversed for decades, and in recent years Canada has had _increasing gains_ of medical professionals from the US.
>The Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI) reports annually on the number of physicians moving abroad and returning to active practice in Canada (CIHI 1996–2005). In the early to mid-1990s, net losses averaged 400 per year. More recently, the number of physicians leaving Canada has decreased significantly, resulting in net gains of between 30 to 60 per year.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2645159/#:~:text=Th...
> The reality is that Canadians get very good, tax-payer subsidized educations and then immediately go to the US to work for 10+ years and only return later when they need to start drawing on the Canadian social services for things like healthcare and family care.
You write this declaratively as if it describes a typical or representative case. In the 11 years I’ve lived in Canada, this isn’t representative of what I see.
The direction of migration of medical doctors likewise shows signs of reversal. I’m a physician and my wife is a surgeon. We left the U.S. over a decade ago and are constantly receiving inquiries from US physicians about immigration.
> I saw a figure recently that the US issued an all-time-high 800,000 TN visas to Canadians in 2016. And then in 2023 it surged to nearly 1.3 million.
This citation is an order of magnitude off. The US doesn't really track/release visa numbers well, what you're citing might be the number of individual entries using a TN visa - visaholders go back and forth, it's not the total number of visa holders.
Canada has 22m workers, so 130k working in the States is nothing like what you're claiming.
>their entire economy
Resource extraction is about ~10% of GDP, compared to 3-5% in the US and 1-2% in mainland Europe. Scandanvian countries have comparable resource extraction % of GDP. It's hardly the entire economy. It's also diversified resource extraction, it's not dependent on oil, etc. Your claim is overblown.
These are extremely expensive programs that the Swedes have historically been willing to pay to maintain as much neutrality as possible in their defence procurement system. A Saab Gripen has almost the same flyway cost as an F-35 because of manufacturing scale differences (maintenance is far cheaper, though) and the Gripen is far less capable (it is one of the best western fighters if a full blown war happens and your bases are all destroyed, though). Sweden had unique defence requirements due to this that wasn't being met by others.
Sweden was forced to take their defence seriously due to their geography and political will. Canada has had an easy ride and when the going got expensive, we cancelled our domestic programs (most famously the arrow, but also a lot of other stuff).
There were plenty of good reasons to cancel the Arrow: it was very difficult to fly, it burned fuel like crazy, it had poor maneuverability, etc. A friend of mine is considered an expert on its history and is convinced it was the right call, despite going into his research as a huge fan of the plane.
Yeah, I agree it was the right decision - if for maybe the wrong reasons. The point I was trying to convey was that it was cancelled with no alternative because it would have been expensive.
Sweden does not have a car industry. The fighter jets are a different matter, very strong technical moat and need to prove the system in combat. You can't just start a fighter jet business.
What do you mean Sweden does not have a car industry?
Volvo and Polestar have their HQ in Sweden and huge manufacturing plants. They also develop platforms for some other Gealy brands including Link&co and IIRC also Zeeker.
Volvo is complicated. Basically a lot of these smaller companies and countries realized there was no way they could make the economics work with the cost of electronics and software-related R&D being what they are. So they sold to larger players. But design and final assembly still happens in Gothenburg for high-end models that are typically destined for the EU market. The US now manufactures the SUVs.
Volvo was bought by Ford in 1999 and then sold by Ford to Geely in 2010. It had nothing to do with software related r&d, it was mostly down to Ford needing money after the financial crisis.
Volvo have factories in Sweden, Belgium, USA, and China. The new EX60 is manufactured in Sweden. The US factory makes the EX90, XC60, Polestar 3, and until recently the S60 sedan.
Volvo Cars is still headquartered in Sweden, and employ 22.4k people in Sweden out of 40k globally[1].
Given that the market for Volvo is global, it seems to me that Volvo Cars is still overwhelmingly Swedish, while at the same time being overwhelmingly controlled by Geely.
The Top Gear enthusiast in me loves that you included Koenigsegg in this conversation.
But including a company that hand-builds a handful of hypercars annually in a conversation about the auto industry in Sweden is not the flex you think it is.
Sweden had a native car industry they decommissioned themselves, in short, they basically gave up, but they’re not alone Australia, New Zealand did the same and so did Canada, but they’re starting to realize that they were a little bit hasty in giving up….
Then last, but not least the UK basically threw the towel in too on a wide assortment of industries, but they’re now discovering that that was a big mistake.
Canada has historically relied on a relatively stable trading relationship with the U.S. That relationship is a shambles. It remains to be seen how Canada retools itself; I imagine that we will see a blend of on-shoring and new trading sources. So it’s less of an issue of “can’t” and more “hasn’t (yet)”.
Frankly to me the fact Canada is "retooling itself" knowing well that this nightmare should be over in less than 3 years, and most likely next President will be a Democrat, but yet they keep retooling, means their strong (reliable?) assumption is that Trump Administration won't leave the office at all, similar to how Putin stayed in power in what arguingly is a Democratic Country.
A lot of people are still in denial about Jan 6th. They really tried to overthrow the election like actually in physical effect. Not hypothetically. They were trying to not certify the election and it came down to a hairs width. They're going to try to again.
This is Trump's second term and MAGA views won't disappear 3 years from now. Even if they assume that there will be a peaceful and lawful transition of power, I can see why they may be planning on the assumption that the "instability" (from their point of view) will continue into the future.
I disagree. You literally have one single human being in charge of 3 main branches of government, and multiple smaller agencies. Noone will manage US like Trump does.
There's a "people won't get tired of our good cop/bad cop bullshit because there's money to be made" attitude in the US that doesn't even reflect our own point of view.
They're retooling because it doesn't matter who the next president is.
You're missing some of the history here. Canada's initial free trade integration with the US in the late 80s was controversial at the time, with opponents specifically predicting a slow erosion of sovereignty until one day Canada is forced to subordinate itself to the US. What Trump showed is that that concern was correct, although the erosion was fortunately not yet complete enough to force Canada's hand. The Canadian people don't want to be continually dependent on the goodwill of future US Presidents; they want "Canada should the US" to sound like "Taiwan should join the US" or "France should join the US", an obviously impossible idea that even the most vehement partisans would have to explain away rather than trying to make it happen.
It's not just trump anymore. The entire cabinet is project 2025 people, most GOP has turned or was replaced with MAGA. Project 2025 wasn't just about RAGE, it was a sycophant hiring system as people could send in their resumes and get into unelected positions.
The only chance is if the cult spell breaks with trump, as cults rarely survive that. But it at some point it will be too late, their takeover and ability to fuck with elections means you can't vote them out anymore.
It's actually that I think most expect the Democrats to either be to weak to fix it, or not much better even if they can win big. That's part of it, anyways.
That and there's been a clearly protectionist bias also among Democrats as well. We had to lobby the crap out of the Biden admin to get "Buy American" provisions to not exclude some standard Canadian things, etc. etc.
At the same time, flipping things around... it's clear that Carney and Co are holding out for November mid-terms on the trade front. Conservatives here keep lambasting them for not sitting down to bargain with the US to hammer out a deal, which is just the stupidest losingest idea you can think of. Trump is going to get hammered in November -- why would we sign a deal with a loser like that? To our disadvantage?
We have a larger partner speaking the same language and with a largely synonymous culture and a heavily integrated economy as our neighbour. The moment a Canadian company sees success -- in optics, autos, science, medicine, weaponry, etc. -- it is absorbed by a larger US company and suddenly is no longer Canadian, and in many cases any Canadian operations will usually get choked out.
There are few examples where this isn't the outcome.
This has happened across Canada for well over a century, across every sphere. And in the process the Canadian input is retconned out of existence and Americans ponder why Canada "doesn't make anything". They post ignorant nonsense about how Canada is resource extraction in a trench coat or similar nonsense.
Sweden had nothing like this, and they punch way above their weight class because of this. Though that has been changing, for instance with a Chinese company buying Volvo, etc.
The only protection against this is...protectionism, whether explicit controls or implicitly by ownership or funding structures. Canada became a leader in nuclear tech by the nuclear industry basically being government owned. It became a transportation powerhouse by a government owned railway. And so on.
Change is afoot. Carney has made significant efforts to stop just sending hundreds of billions to the US and most military procurement will focus on Canadian products and innovation. Which leads to lots of gnashing and screaming by propaganda rags like the US-owned PostMedia (yup, even a lot of our media gets absorbed by the US, at least where it isn't explicitly barred from doing so).
Not entirely true. AstraZeneca and ABB are examples that remain partly Swedish but many companies were merged into big multinationals and eventually marginalised.
Countries always use the threat of buying Swedish war planes as a bargaining chip to get a better deal from the US, or whoever they're really going to buy from. So these news are best believed when everything is signed, sealed, and delivered. This has been going on for at least 20 years with SAAB fighters.
From the article: "Saab is also in the running to sell Canada some of its Gripen fighters. Canada has a deal to buy 88 F-35 jets from Lockheed-Martin, but last year, after the US slapped tariffs on key Canadian imports, Carney asked the military to investigate whether it could cut back the order and buy some planes from another manufacturer."
Ask yourself: Why would a nation spill military secrets like this to the media? They're trying to put pressure on the US. Those Gripen fighters are in all likelihood staying in Sweden after all is said and done.
As an American with mostly headline-level knowledge of Canadian politics, this Mark Carney seems unusually competent and effective, as far as heads-of-state go.
Swimming downstream is easier than swimming upstream. Admitting basic reality we all talk about—eg that canada is a vassal state of the us—is only difficult until the cash river stops.
Mark is a technocrat. He started his political career after a long, successful stint as an economist and central bank governor. Nobody is perfect but he is about the best leader Canada can hope for to lead it out of the current funk it is in. Pivoting away from a long-term trading partner is not an easy process.
Frankly, the issues that Canada faces now stem from a long history of questionable policies, starting from when Diefenbaker shuttered the Arrow and stripped the talent and parts to be scooped up by Boeing, Lockheed et al all the way to when Mulroney & Reagan signed the FTA dooming Canada's private sector. None of this has been good for Canada's sovereignty and long term independence/success. A non-trivial amount of the SV luminaries that have started companies which showcase American inventiveness have a Canadian passport even though they don't advertise it.
The strained relationship with the US right now is actually providing ample opportunity for Canada to make some strategic long term bets without the "US foreign policy alignment" overhang. I'm optimistic.
Will Ferguson wrote a book named _Bastards and Boneheads_ [0] that told the history of Canada's prime ministers as one or the other. The bastards made history, the boneheads are remembered for their folly.
Mulroney and Pierre Trudeau were bastards, and supremely consequential in Canadian history. Joe Clark and Paul Martin were boneheads.
Which ones Harper and Justin Trudeau are may be too soon to tell, but Carney is clearly a bastard.
The US wedgetail order was canceled and Canada can't afford to fund the program on its own. But slop journalists will spin a geopolitical angle because it gets clicks.
The Saab GlobalEye is based on the Bombardier Global 6500 airframe. Bombardier Aviation is a Canadian company.
For those who aren't aware, the Boeing E7 is yet-another-delayed-Boeing project.
The UK has bought it but it has been continually delayed: https://breakingdefense.com/2026/03/uk-defense-official-boei...
Australia flies it (an earlier version) but today announced they are also buying three Bombardier Global 6500: https://www.australiandefence.com.au/news/news/bombardier-de...
GlobalEye still ~20% US components, probably fall into US ITAR/EAR shenanigans territory if US wants to US.
>Bombardier Aviation is a Canadian company.
Was. They are now part of Airbus, much like Bombardier Transport is now part of Alstom.
that is not true. Business jets are not part of divestiture to Airbus. Cseries was sold to Airbus.
Only C-Series program was sold to Airbus, Bombardier still makes private jet.
This is actually more likely a non-political procurement decision that looks like a political one.
This is the 'right size' for Canada and other nations - the US doesn't offer a true comparable, and, looks like the US balked at buying the 'kind of comparable' Boeing E7 putting it in jeopardy.
With European military renaissance and the SAAB gear proving itself in Ukraine ... well, you see the shift.
This is the shift writ large.
This is going to happen across all industries.
I don't think it's going to 'fundamentally' alter the landscape, but it will be a shift we don't come back from.
In the past countries would buy American equipment even if it wasn’t the best fit because that would make you essentially an American ally. Being part of the U.S. ecosystem was valuable.
Unfortunately, over the last 1.5 years, the political value proposition has turned by 180 degrees. - Being a U.S. ally no longer guarantees that you will be protected by the U.S. as Ukraine is seeing. But the U.S. has been tearing agreements left and right and the President has openly said he may not respond to a valid Article 5 invocation.
- Being a U.S. ally seems to bring even more threats from the U.S. as Canada and Europe are seeing
- Being a U.S. ally is no guarantee of protection even if you literally host American bases like the gulf countries are seeing. In fact, it’s only made them a target and the U.S. prioritized protecting Israel entirely over protecting any of the Gulf states.
The value proposition for buying U.S. weapons has become really bad at this point.
> Being a U.S. ally is no guarantee of protection even if you literally host American bases like the gulf countries are seeing. In fact, it’s only made them a target and the U.S. prioritized protecting Israel entirely over protecting any of the Gulf states.
I think that is a little oversimplified. America did spend resources on defense of gulf states. They might feel it wasn't enough but it definitely wasn't nothing. I imagine defending Israel was probably a fair bit easier given the distance from Iran, and their domestic military being a lot more prepared and practised for missile defense, which may have translated to more effective results. Ultimately though i think there is a limit to how much America can reasonable do on defense once something like that starts.
Probably the thing gulf states could most reasonably be pissed about was starting the whole adventure in the first place without much regard for the fairly predictable consequences.
> America did spend resources on defense of gulf states.
No offence mate, but did you miss the bit about the USA starting the war?
Considering the last sentence in the comment you are replying to, i doubt they missed it...
Their use of the word "probably" rather suggests they did miss it. By a country mile.
No, I think you missed it by a country mile. “Probably” was meant in the sense of “out of all the things the gulf states have reason to be mad at the US about, starting the conflict is ‘probably’ (obviously, lol) the thing they’re most unhappy with”. They weren’t saying the US “probably” started the conflict.
>‘probably’ (obviously, lol)
My point precisely.
This is 100% true and I agree with all of it, but I would just add that for fighter jets specifically the calculus is a bit different.
Unless you want to buy Chinese jets your choices are either F35s or a big step down to 4th generation fighters that are materially worse in terms of capability.
Modern 4th gen fighters are still very capable, cheaper, simpler and more reliable, but if you ever do end up facing an adversary who has 5th gen fighters you'll be in trouble, so the trade off of choosing not to buy F35s is very real
But if you can have more 4th gen aircrafts and have easier support and maintenance so that you can keep them flying, then that might more than outweigh the 5th gen aircrafts possible superiority.
A 5th gen aircraft on the ground is not very useful. It's easier to bomb out 100 aircraft than 400 aircraft. A 5th gen aircraft, disabled remotely via software is not very useful.
Yep I don't disagree, especially with your last point
"Unless you want to buy Chinese " ???
Also - the landscape is changing.
Stealth is a standoff mechanism, but weapon systems are starting to change the value of stealth.
There are some who think that stealth mechanisms are being defeated with better sensors.
China do have a fifth generation fighter, as do Russia in theory, nobody else is close right now.
However if you're Canada there may be one or two issues with building your air force around Russian or Chinese hardware, even if they were available
> so the trade off of choosing not to buy F35s is very real
Amazing planes and all, but given that America is struggling to win the wars it starts, how useful are they?
You can't win a war with air superiority alone, but it's tough to win one after ceding the sky.
Necessary but not sufficient.
They seem to have no problem winning battles though which is the part aircrafts help with.
Winning the war is more about strategy and political savyness.
For most nations, if they find themselves in need of a 5th generation aircraft for defence then they've already lost, or are better served to prepare for a grossly asymmetric battle.
If potus can turn them into paperweight on his morning ego whim while not even being in indirect conflict with US but rather directly fighting US mortal sworn enemy, they are worse than useless and no sane country would want them even for free, a trojan horse of sort.
4th (4.5th) generation that reliably works is something dependable, even if not top notch. Something tells me that if you took F-35 to russian-held Ukraine airspace, it may not survive that long anyway, its not like its unhittable as Iran showed. What decides that war is anyway drones in numbers and their skilled use, not anymore artillery, tanks or endless armies of poor illiterate fuckers.
Given the state of missile tech, is that as relevant anymore? If you strap a missile on to a Cessna that can take down a 5th gen fighter before it knows you're there. Doesn't really matter what fancy doodads the latest and greatest jet has.
Further if your 5th gen jets are relying on tech from your adversary....
The fancy doodads 5th generation has is reduced radar signature, improved sensors and data-link. The 5th generation can see and fire against a 4th gen fighter and evade before being detected and it can do that without EWACS (which are big, slow and easy to kill). That's why the US has a gap on replacing the current EWACS because it doesn't really need them.
Stealth is somewhat overrated, especially 5th gen. Sure you get a lower radar cross-section which means you are less visible to X-band radar but near-peer adversaries or even non-peer technologically advanced adversaries don't rely only on X-band radar, to say nothing of distributed array radar where the transmitter and receiver are not in the same location. More than one networked war plane in the air are essentially distributed array radar. There are other bands which admittedly as not as good as X-band in terms of how much energy you need and how accurately you can locate things. But you can send a missile in the general direction using say S-band and have the missile turn on it's seeker once it's closer. Once the missile is close enough, a stealth plan can no longer hide. This is what the Russian S-400 and S-500 do for example.
Even when Serbia was bombed during the Clinton years, American stealth bombers escaped not due to stealth but because they used decoys towed by fiber optics which transmitted what the missile seeker expected to receive from the plane while also aggressively jamming the missile seeker so the missile hit the decoy not the plane. One stealth bomber was hit anyway.
Safran and other European manufacturers arguably produce decoys that are as good as anything US planes have, arguably better because they decided not to go all in on stealth and focus on other measures instead. Stealth is certainly better to have than not but stealth also means somewhat worse aerodynamics and much less serviceability. You need to apply stealth paint and cure it any time you work on the plane. The plane needs more work and is harder to work on because of the tradeoffs made to achieve stealth. So instead of 75%+ of the planes being available at any one time, you only have about 50% of the planes available at any one time and total operational costs are much higher.
Given these disadvantages, it's not completely clear how much of a benefit 5th gen stealth is in a near-peer conflict. If the US is fighting Iraq fine. Now, if you can actually achieve what defense manufacturers say they will achieve with 6th gen stealth, where you have much lower RCS to all bands of radar from all directions, that could be a game changer but we don't actually know yet. The F-35 still doesn't do everything it was supposed to be able to do when the program started, so I would take these claims with a large grain of salt. And stealth countermeasures will continue to evolve.
Yes and no, there is no easy binary answer here.
At altitude most AA is radar based, thus a lower RCS will help directly in not being seen. So you can get closer to the enemy you still can see because of the higher RCS. For BVR fights this is essential.
Those machines shouldn't be low level though. IR missles don't care about RCS. It is not their natural territory either.
Third that Cessna is not hidden either. From above (i.e. an AWACS) it can be seen very good. From the ground it can hide low and slow. But so can dedicated planes too, which is practised regularly.
Well yes, I'm taking an extreme example.
I'm just thinking about something like the meteor missile, if you're up against a 5th gen jet with shorter range missiles, the 5th gen jet doesn't necessarily have the advantage.
Then there's things like drones. A cheap drone with a good missile is arguably the better option than an expensive jet with poor weapons.
Yes, the best option is the good jet with the good missile, but most militaries have limited budgets, so it isn't a question of having all the the things, but one of where that money is best spent. I suppose you could argue that the military knows best, but then the US military insisted on keeping cannon around on jets just in case, so it seems to me, at least plausible that the current view is more about inertia than bang for buck.
I'm not an expert by any means but my understanding is improved missiles mean this is more relevant than ever.
Non-stealthy 4th gen fighters are sitting ducks in 2026 against a peer opponent as we've seen in ukraine
I am getting the feeling that Americans don't understand that words have meaning. Trump insulting, threatening and bullying everones is supposed to be one big joke.
But we are talking about sovereign states here that have been around for centuries- they are neither amused nor cowed.
They don’t seem to get that Trump while a huge problem for us is a symptom of the actual problem, which is “all the conditions that put Trump in the White House will still exist when Trump is no longer in the White House”.
Simply put, they did it twice, who’s to say Trump 2.0 won’t be worse.
This whole “Democrats will take the house and it’s back to normal” attitude they have when it applies to foreign politics is naïve, oh we’ll continue to trade and we may still buy some military stuff and so on but that’s simply because the US is so large and integrated that decoupling isn’t quick or entirely necessary/possible immediately.
The paths pretty clear at this point, it’s just early enough that it hasn’t become widely obvious that the existing world order since post WWII is gone.
I have heard at least one interview with Steve Bannon where he says that Trump isn't delivering what many political operatives and financiers want but they see him as laying the ground for the next administration, who will restructure the government & US more efficiently.
As in behaving so badly changes will even be allowed? I wouldn't hold my breath for those in power to willingly give it back
The idea is more "Trump wasn't the real deal, but trump 2.0 is...so vote for them."
You're already seeing this as some MAGA people split and even go so far as admitting they were duped, MTG in particular.
>Being a U.S. ally no longer guarantees that you will be protected by the U.S. as Ukraine is seeing.
The US never promised to protect Ukraine. It's often claimed that the Budapest Memorandum was a promise from the US to protect Ukraine, but this is misinformation. Read the memorandum for yourself if you don't believe me, it's not very long:
https://treaties.un.org/doc/Publication/UNTS/Volume%203007/P...
I don't think that is really relavent. Ukraine was essentially invaded because they became too friendly with NATO (and hence america). Even without a formal promise, other countries are going to notice america hanging ukraine out to dry and add that to their calculations when deciding who to be buddy-buddy with.
> Ukraine was essentially invaded because they became too friendly with NATO (and hence america).
Also because it was considering joining the EU.
The Russians threatened at least as early as 2008 that they would invade Ukraine if they did either. They actually invaded Ukraine in 2014 and captured a lot of territory.
Why did the US and their European allies not plan for the Russians doing what they had threatened to do and had actually done in the past? It seems incompetent.
Because since then Russia has threatened nuclear war a dozen times. Russias threats are worth almost nothing.
On the other hand Russia has threatened to invade places and has done so. Georgia, Ukraine in 2014, etc.
>Ukraine was essentially invaded because they became too friendly with NATO (and hence america).
Well then maybe the US stopped sending them weapons in order to address the underlying problem?
Where does Trump sucking up to Putin fit into this?
What problem is that solving?
bawolff stated:
>Ukraine was essentially invaded because they became too friendly with NATO (and hence america).
Wouldn't this theory predict that if NATO/USA becomes hostile to Ukraine, the invasion will cease? According to bawolff's worldview, Trump's foreign policy will address the root cause, no? They should be supporting Trump.
In my world view, yes, Ukraine firmly returning to the russian sphere of influence, perhaps even agreeing to become a puppet state of russia, would stop the invasion.
Of course Ukraine does not want that, hence war. Surrendering is always a way to gain peace, but most countries do not view such a peace as worth the cost.
Ultimately the war continues because USA is not the only western country in existence and the rest of the west is still willing to provide support sufficient for Ukraine to keep fighting.
This is an utterly naive take. Russia would in that case forcibly conscript from Ukraine's population for further westward invasions, which serves the purpose of exterminating the local male population to suppress resistance and make room for Russian settlers. We already saw this during the initial invasion in 2014 and the forcible conscription early in the full-scale invasion in 2022.
Russia's ambitions are laid out in the ultimatum presented in 2021.
I think that possibility agrees with my take.
Point 1: "The Russian Federation., the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and the United States of America reaffirm their commitment to Ukraine, in accordance with the principles of the CSCE Final Act, to respect the independence and sovereignty and the existing borders of Ukraine"
Point 4 of the Memorandum: "The Russian Federation, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and the United States of America reaffirm their commitment to seek immediate United Nations Security Council action to provide assistance to Ukraine, as a non-nuclear-weapon state party to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, if Ukraine should become a victim of an act of aggression or an object of a threat of aggression in which nuclear weapons are used."
US actions in the UN: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c7435pnle0go "The US has twice sided with Russia in votes at the United Nations to mark the third anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, highlighting the Trump administration's change of stance on the war.
First, the US opposed a European-drafted resolution condemning Moscow's actions and supporting Ukraine's territorial integrity - voting the same way as Russia and countries including North Korea and Belarus at the UN General Assembly (UNGA) in New York.
Then the US drafted and voted for a resolution at the UN Security Council which called for an end to the conflict, but contained no criticism of Russia."
The US has almost nothing to do (vote in the UN against Russia aggression), and yet did less than that. They can hide behind technicalities, but the truth is that Trump is acting like a Putin asset. For decades there has been a political fight in eastern Europe where the US projected power supporting governments that sympathized with western countries (enter NATO, enter UE, enter western markets, welcome western industries). US was winning the fight without shooting a bullet until Trump.
US has no official treaty with Israel (except the 10 year rolling aid), yet we would be shocked if suddenly an US government turn to support Israel neighbors and vote against them in the UN.
Note, the US did seek UN security council action when Ukraine was invaded, back when Biden was president. Russia vetoed of course.
Are you a sophist? This thread is about how the US has lost all their political leverage, built for almost a century, since Trump got in power (no longer a trustable ally, losing contracts, etc).
You keep mixing up pre- and post-Trump events as if nothing happened, technicalities, "but you said X", and nobody that was trying to debate in good faith does that, only one interested in "winning" the argument but with zero interest in getting somewhere productive.
If something seems factually incorrect to me, I say so. If I notice a contradiction in someone's worldview, I point it out.
As I stated elsewhere in this thread, I'm an isolationist, and I don't care if the US loses leverage or whatever. If all US troops are booted from Europe so we can no longer "intervene" in the Middle East, that sounds fantastic. I favor a Swiss-style foreign policy for the USA.
From my perspective, it would actually be very good if Europe cut off the supply of AI chips to prevent AI companies from building an omnicidal doomsday machine:
https://pauseai.info/amsterdam-protest-2025-december
garanties de sécurité
So I don't think 'buying US gear made you an ally' - it was just part of the package, and in some cases, the US would 'require allies' to buy.
The US Ambassador to Canada is openly threatening Carney right now with some procurement things - the 'Big One' is the F35.
This is Can PM Carney playing a decent card, and biding for time until the midterms, and then waiting out the 'lame duck' period.
'Border State Republicans' are badly upset with the anti-Canada situation, and will buck Trump if given the chance without massive repercussions.
Trump may not force the issue if he knows he's going to lose.
If we see Trump with conciliatory language towards Canada after the elections, it's because he knows he's been beat. Or if he just shuts up about it and let's the negotiations roll.
I give it 50/50.
But - to be very clear - the world is 'doing 1 nudge' away from the US - not 'breaking away'.
I think this is complacent. The rest of the world is actively seeking opportunities to decouple. The US is so embedded in defence ecosystems at the moment that is a delicate balance because we are all still dependent on US space and logistics capabilities. But Ukraine and Eastern Europe and building the foundation for conventional forces to be supplied without the US, and although it will take longer, Sweden France and Uk have the aerospace chops to reduce dependency on the US too.
We are unlikely to reach parity any time soon, if at all. But that isn’t needed for the goal to be worthwhile.
"Reddit tier America bad geopolitics takes"
The US president threatened to take Greenland by force, that's a very real thing.
Mind you, it's one man, and not the nation or state, but he does have a lot of backers.
That's a very real concern.
> Mind you, it's one man, and not the nation or state, but he does have a lot of backers.
My 2ct:
He is the duly elected leader in a representative democracy. He speaks on behalf of all U.S. Americans, he acts on behalf of all U.S. Americans, and all U.S. Americans share the same responsibility for the actions of his government.
He isn't the only problem, though. It has now been proven that the U.S. Constitution is not worth the paper it is written on. In my opinion, that's the real concern. Trump will not be around for long. The U.S. Constitution, the U.S. Supreme Court, the people that allowed that to happen and the Republican Party will.
Edit:
At least the U.S. Constitution needs some amendments, and I don’t see that happening, but there may be some plans to amend it I’m not aware of.
Edit-2:
Of course, there will still be cooperation with the U.S. after Trump, but fundamentally, something is broken. We will not return to the pre-Trump state.
People outside the US understand that Trump is a temporary phenomenon. And there's no evidence that Trump has any interest in post-Trump politics, except insofar as it insulates him from repercussions.
I don't see how anyone can think Trump is a temporary phenomenon, it's been a decade since he got into politics and things have only gotten nastier. On the scale of a person's life, this is definitely not a temporary thing.
I see no evidence that Trumpism will survive Trump. To the extend that Trumpism exceeds the bounds of normal partisan politics, it's driven by a cult of personality. Once the personality is gone, the unique aspects of the movement dissipate.
> People outside the US understand that Trump is a temporary phenomenon
Oh god no. How wrong can you be.
The world is now well aware what the American people have voted for (twice!) and may well vote for again. We don't want that risk thanks.
> People outside the US understand
I am outside the U.S.
> that Trump is a temporary phenomenon
It is not. The unlimited authority, the supreme court that goes along with it, the party that supports it all, and the citizenship that enables it in the first place will be there long after Trump is gone. It's not Trump pulling the trigger.
It's not Trump alone. There was the Tea-party before him and there will be fascists after him. We are not talking about the USA doing some shady things. We are talking about a country that gave up on shared values and norms, that kills people left and right without due process and that assaults countries without reason, all while threatening the next assault(s) and being openly racist.
Trump being a temporary phenomenon would be a more plausible claim if his presidency had been a single term.
Trump could be elected for a third term and it could still be a temporary phenomenon, because the movement fails to transfer beyond one individual's personality.
What is complacent?
Sorry, but I also think you are complacent. This is generational destruction of reputation.
As a Canadian, we regularly talk about "fuck American companies" in a way we never did. I still actively avoid buying anything from USA in grocery stores. City of Toronto is spinning up a nonprofit grocery store pilot, and they sure as hell are going to be trying not to stock USA goods -- the mayor herself passed an anti-USA procurement bylaw last year. Related: I just helped run a weekly community speaker series[1], where we had 60 ppl (many public servants) signed up to hear a presentation on a supply chain app to help people avoid American products.
And just 30 min ago, coming home at 1am, I was talking to the service guy for my city's bikeshare program. He mentioned new bike models were coming. He was like "fuck Lyft" and I said "I don't trust American companies anymore" and he agreed (Lyft acquired the Montreal bikeshare company we used to deal with). A friend who used to work for Deloitte is actively working to convince city officials to sever the bikeshare contract, and diversify the network for similar reasons.
PRAGMATIC anti-americanism is literally a new hobby for a sizable cohort of the citizenry. It's the only rational choice, and many perceive it as literally a matter of sovereign survival.
[1]: https://guild.host/events/from-tariffs-to-transparency-x69sg...
How do you know which companies are not american?
People I know will google that information when they care. Or are already aware for product categories they care about like buying a SkiDoo vs Polaris. But also there’s an app for that: https://www.oscanadaapp.ca/
> Trump may not force the issue if he knows he's going to lose.
That didn't play out at the end of his last term. I don't think Trump is a "I've had a good run, lets call it a day." kinda guy...
While he always talks tough regardless, I think his actions depend on the nature of the loss, e.g. him being all over the place on Iran, disregarding his own ceasefire for strikes and yet also heading towards a deal that's significantly worse than if he'd done nothing; or similarly all the everything in response to his threats against Greenland.
I interpret the same events you describe as Trump being unable to let go when he should have. Which is why he's made things worse than if he'd done nothing.
No disagreement there; the point is not to excuse his foolishness, but that despite his words always being pugilistic, he can be made to back off.
> Being a U.S. ally no longer guarantees that you will be protected by the U.S. as Ukraine is seeing.
How much more is the US supposed to do in Ukraine beyond the $60-70 billion in weapons and supplies? Do we need to actually go to war with Russia?
> Do we need to actually go to war with Russia?
Yes. That's what everyone signed up to [0] when Ukraine gave up its Soviet-era nukes.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budapest_Memorandum
If you read the memorandum text, at most the US promised to go to the UN security council if Ukraine's territorial integrity was threatened.
https://treaties.un.org/doc/Publication/UNTS/Volume%203007/P...
There is a lot of misinformation floating around the internet about this memorandum.
Furthermore, even Wikipedia states: "The Budapest Memorandum is not a treaty, and it does not confer any new legal obligations for signatory states. It was written in a way to avoid an impression of legal obligation."
Your words are not proven in court.
What court would care to hear it?
Where in the memorandum does it say the US is obligated to defend Ukraine? Please give me a direct quote.
Otherwise this is a nonsense objection. "You have to give me $1 million. You haven't proven otherwise in court!" What is the actual evidence for your position?
Great, more dead boys for nothing. As a Canadian, I think we've sacrificed enough generations for European brother wars. Given retrospect, wouldn't a land deal have been better than half a million dead? Wouldn't walking away from your house, maybe with a reparations package, be better than it being blown up by drones and your family killed?
I don't think we need to go to war. We need to find a way to deal with Russia with humanity instead of treating them like some boomer-era cold war bogeyman.
Land deal?
Russia has never asked for a land deal. They started the war and their goal has always been the total destruction of Ukraine and the enslavement of the people.
Where they’ve pulled back from occupied areas they’ve mass civilian graves and bodies with signs of torture.
Stop spreading propaganda.
- Ukrainians are the second largest ethnicity in Russia.
- The majority of people living on a currently contested territories of Ukraine used to be USSR citizens.
- Russia got the majority of Ukrainian refugees since the start of a war if we count per country.
- Pretty much all the former Ukraine citizens got Russian passports and a citizens of Russia now.
- And yes, if Ukraine is using cities as fortresses and do not evacuate civilians from there, high chances are that after weeks and months long battles those civilians end up in graves with nasty wounds on their bodies.
> And yes, if Ukraine is using cities as fortresses and do not evacuate civilians from there, high chances are that after weeks and months long battles those civilians end up in graves with nasty wounds on their bodies.
"Nasty wounds" like their hands tied behind their backs and a hole in the back of their skull? That kind of thing?
That sounds like the definition of a war crime to me.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bucha_massacre
> - Ukrainians are the second largest ethnicity in Russia.
No. Never was. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnic_groups_in_Russia
> - Russia got the majority of Ukrainian refugees since the start of a war if we count per country.
No. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1312584/ukrainian-refuge...
You might be confusing abductees with refugees.
> - The majority of people living on a currently contested territories of Ukraine used to be USSR citizens.
The majority of people living on contested territories of United States in 1775 used to be British citizens. So?
> - And yes, if Ukraine is using cities as fortresses and do not evacuate civilians from there, high chances are that after weeks and months long battles those civilians end up in graves with nasty wounds on their bodies.
Absolutely vile propaganda.
I agree with what you say, but "Never was" is contradicted by your Wikipedia link, which shows Ukrainians in the second position at the 1926 census, being overtaken by Tatars in the more recent censuses.
However, it is not said which is the territory for the 1926 census data, it may have included a part of the present territory of Ukraine, because the borders of present Ukraine are very different from the borders of Ukraine after WWI.
Such census data about Russia and the Soviet Union are hard to interpret without precise knowledge of the corresponding territories, because the fluctuations in numbers may be unrelated to natural growth, but determined by administrative reorganizations or forced deportations.
> Ukrainians are the second largest ethnicity in Russia.
Ukrainian were second largest ethnicity in Russian Empire/Russian federation until massive massacre in 1932-1934 years, when an uknown number of Ukrainians between 7 million (confirmed by Russian Duma at 04.02.2008, adults only, childrens are not counted) and 25 millions (total number of USSR citizens died because of hunger, number from soviet archives captured by Germans in 1941) was murdered or starved to death.
And literally none of this matters and it's a laundry list of loser russian propaganda
Funny how those reasons don't matter in the least when it's time for russian losers to bomb civilians in Kyiv
Go read the article on the Bucha massacre and then the see also.
Sometimes the only way to deal with the boogeyman is to accept they are the boogeyman because of their pattern of behaviour.
> "We need to find a way to deal with Russia with humanity instead of treating them like some boomer-era cold war bogeyman."
Are you even aware of what has been going on in Ukraine for the last 4 years, and in Crimea for the last 12?
Sure! You’re more than welcome to give up Canada to Russia to protect the people in Ukraine.
No? Don’t want to trade land suddenly?
> We need to find a way to deal with Russia with humanity instead of treating them like some boomer-era cold war bogeyman.
We tried that in the 90s. Didn't work. Made things worse, really.
Appeasement does not work. It emboldens fascist dictators.
> Wouldn't walking away from your house, maybe with a reparations package, be better than it being blown up by drones and your family killed?
Please explain your analogy. Everyone should give up their property whenever they are threatened? For free, or whatever the aggressor chooses to give them?
> I don't think we need to go to war. We need to find a way to deal with Russia with humanity instead of treating them like some boomer-era cold war bogeyman.
What does that mean? How would you deal with them with humanity? Just give up your country when they invade?
Agree completely.
But part of that would be getting Russia to stop attempting to become a cold-war boogeyman, and stop behaving like a cold-war boogeyman.
Russia also signed that treaty, and is also blatantly breaking it.
Read this treaty yourself first. USA broke it first when intervened in Ukraine politics and toppled their government twice.
Russia's war against Ukraine has never been about getting more territory, it was for returning to status quo, when Ukraine has to be a sovereign and neutral state, a separator between Russia and NATO countries. USA and EU turned Ukraine into a hostile state to Russia when they installed nationalists in 2014, and then they buffed them with money and weapons, and so we have a war going.
Seems like you're claiming Ukraine's 2014 "Revolution of Dignity" and subsequent democratic elections were something the USA did. That's a controversial claim, and one that ignores the recorded actions and sentiments of the Ukrainian people. It's also unrealistic and gives the US too much credit.
The US does have their hands in pies across the globe, but that was a large scale uprising of Ukrainian people. No outside force can make something like that happen if the people aren't already aligned.
The simpler explanation is the Ukrainian people wanted to be closer to the EU, and didn't like Yanukovych's authoritarian tendencies. I wouldn't be surprised if some propaganda blamed it on the US, but it doesn't make sense. If the US wanted to do regime change and the public wasn't behind it, it would look very different. There are unfortunately many examples.
> a separator between Russia and NATO countries
Why does Russia need a separator between itself and NATO countries? What do you think is going to happen without it?
If the US did interfere, that’s poor. What do you think of Russian involvement in Ukrainian elections?
> Russia's war against Ukraine has never been about getting more territory,
That's completely counter to everything we know about Putin's mindset, and completely counter to all his actions so far. How would a war for territory look any different to what is occurring now?
> when Ukraine has to be a sovereign and neutral state
That's an oxymoron. Why does a sovereign democratic have to be neutral? A democratic state has the right to pursue whatever alliances it chooses.
It looks like you never bothered to read what this memorandum states yourself.
No, USA didn't sign up to going to war against Russia if this memorandum is breached. More of it, USA breached it first, when staged two "revolutions" in Ukraine and turned a sovereign nation into a puppet state.
New Ukraine aid effectively ended with the current administration, if you were unaware
It did not, but the implicit U.S. policy is to help Ukraine just enough to maintain a stalemate and to keep Russia busy and unable to assist other countries like Cuba and Iran.
How is the US aiding now, besides selling weapons?
Intel probaly, but we don't know the exact arrangements there. And nothing like before.
Oh, they were aware from the phrasing they ate implying that we’ve already spent enough and we should stop, which is exactly what Trump was saying and is totally stupid if you want the world not to be run by Vladimir Putin.
That's not true. USA still spends money on Ukraine weapon supplies. It's just with the current administration most of expenses has to be paid by EU.
What? The EU buys them but that’s a US expense?
I think they are saying that the US is required to pay less than the EU?
But that's not true based on what I can find anyway, https://app.23degrees.io/view/j4luMuv8fnpO2frL-bar-grouped-v...
based on a video clip I saws recently of Hegseth testifying to the Senate there is an additional ~4B of US military aid to Ukraine which was congressionally authorized some time ago, but still has yet to be distributed.
What’s the word of the us on a treaty worth?
Given the US threatened to annex territory of two NATO members in the last couple of years.
A lot less to it’s allies than it was I’d suggest.
It is supposed to deliver arms European countries literally paid for.
Second, USA should not negotiate for Russia nor help them. They are doing both.
How about $600 billion. Since when did the US say we are just going to let russia win because we don’t want to spend the money? What happened to “These colors don’t run” republicans? Oh wait it was BS all along. Got it.
Ukraine is still fighting. We don't need to send troops. We just need to keep sending weapons (Trump stopped this)
> How much more is the US supposed to do in Ukraine beyond the $60-70 billion in weapons and supplies?
sigh
800 Patriot missiles were used within the first 3 days in the Iran war. This is greater than the total number of Patriot missiles received by Ukraine during the entire war with Russia.
Your orange president is displaying some funny priorities.
> With European military renaissance and the SAAB gear proving itself in Ukraine
Btw, we just got this news report here in Sweden:
Sweden is giving Gripen jets to Ukraine
https://www.aftonbladet.se/nyheter/a/vr3znL/uppgift-sverige-...
Aftonbladet is Sweden's largest daily newspaper. They have a fairly strong track record on government and defense scoops.
The supposed announcement is tomorrow morning, local/CEST.
They are not likely 'giving' , Sweden just got $90B in locked up Russian money and those 'freebies' are going to come along with a major purchase order.
Unfortunately the EU still hasn't gotten the balls to confiscate that frozen oligarchy money, so no. Just wait, though. Soon you will cry. ;)
That's right, but Ukraine got $90B from Europe knowing most of it would come back for equipment purchases. Also - I think that EU is going to try to figure out a way to get that Russian money.
If they can't, then the EU should not exist - literally. It's decisive evidence that the bureaucracy can't even face an existential threat on it's own existence because it can't organize it's own legal concerns.
"We remained lawfully committed to juducial integrity and processes ... as we were exterminated!"
This situation is similar to 'many other things' (capital markets, tech investment, border/migration concerns etc.)
> That's right, but Ukraine got $90B from Europe knowing most of it would come back for equipment purchases.
Thats standard for military aid to other countries. Almost all US military aid to Ukraine was spent in the US for equipment purchases. The benefit for Ukraine is getting the weapons to use in the war, although it's worth noting a decent portion of the military aid will be spent by ukraine on domestic manufacturers.
Also €30 billion is financial and humanitarian aid, almost all of which will be spent in ukraine proper.
> Also - I think that EU is going to try to figure out a way to get that Russian money.
It's already sending the interest on the money to Ukraine, that alone is worth billions a year.
Simply seizing the rest is more complicated and additionally probably not preferable. Keeping the rest immobilised gives europe and Ukraine a substantial bargaining chip in negotiations with Russia when the war eventually ends. Either Russia agrees to concessions to get the money back or it doesn't and it agrees the money can be sent to rebuild Ukraine.
It's much more preferable to take the money - and it would have been even much more preferable if Putin knew that from the get go.
In fact - if Ukraine were to have had that $90B 2 years ago, it may have accelerated the situation (though not guaranteed).
This is not 'EU strategy' it's EU crawling out from it's own disorganization.
This is Putin's only great advantage - to take advantage of complacency, bureaucracy, and inability for European nations to react with coherence.
If the EU was organized, Putin wouldn't have been able to make a move, not even in 2014.
The same thing in tech: no cloud, no mobile - and now no AI. These things have real ramifications.
For example, Ukraine's' decisive advantage right now is Starlink - as much as I don't like Musk, and that he has been allowing Russia to use it for years (turning a blind eye, though that is stopped now) - it's now being used by Ukraine to assault 100Km in the rear and could 'turn the tide' of the conflict.
Europe has no 'Starlink' because it's disorganized and complacent - and the Starlink competitor is years away, will be minimal, may never happen.
So even as the technology proves to be 'plainly decisive', the reaction is not strategic or organized.
Russia and Iran figured out how to jam Starlink.
And then attacked US bases. While the US eased sanctions on Russia and talked up Putin.
It’s a wild time.
> If they can't, then the EU should not exist - literally. It's decisive evidence that the bureaucracy can't even face an existential threat on it's own existence because it can't organize it's own legal concerns.
> "We remained lawfully committed to juducial integrity and processes ... as we were exterminated!"
If you're happy being governed without process or accountability, why not just surrender to Russia? If the EU can't maintain its principles when things get tough then what's the point in having it at all?
> "We remained lawfully committed to juducial integrity and processes ... as we were exterminated!"
The rule of law, including judicial integrity, is their great strength. Corrupt dictatorships never are as wealthy and as powerful. Russia has always been far behind, and is falling further.
If Russia is an existential threat to EU, wouldn't it make sense to confiscate that money and declare war on Moscow ? Either that or Russia is not a threat.
> If Russia is an existential threat to EU, wouldn't it make sense to ... declare war on Moscow
No, I don't think that would make sense.
confiscating money is much bigger deal than you can imagine. Russia and the EU are not officially at war and just taking money because you can is a serious violation of fundamental rights.
Afaik principal was not confiscated.
What is violation of what rights?
the gp asked for confiscation and property rights are pretty fundamental. especially if you are acting as a trustee not only for russian money but for many others who are watching how you are doing your job.
Yeah rules apply only on one side it seems, russia confiscated western planes, factories etc. worth tens of billions. I'd say eye for an eye is the only strategy mafia state like russia understands. That and rule of stronger, bigger dog fucks weaker, as russia tends to frequently do.
yes. that's why people don't trust russian banks and institutions, but trust european ones.
> I don't think it's going to 'fundamentally' alter the landscape, but it will be a shift we don't come back from.
That sounds like a fundamental change.
As the OP says, Carney has a clear, explicit policy of reducing military (and also economic) dependence on the US, for obvious reasons. It's what Carney is best known for, his leading international affairs and economic policies.
Every time a similar story, of a country turning away from US trade, is posted HN, people post that it's not political. Not only is that claim thin and largely unsbustantiated, but why is it such a focus?
> likely a non-political procurement
How can this be true - the only reason humans still need military equipment of any sort is politics.
We are not fighting aliens, just stupid politicians that suddenly choose to throw people at a problem instead of using words.
Boeing and Airbus have tremendous backlogs...
>As of March 31st, 2026, Airbus reported a commercial aircraft backlog of 9,031 aircraft. Based on the company’s 2026 delivery target of 870 aircraft, this represents approximately 10.4 years of production coverage.
>Boeing’s commercial backlog stood at approximately 6,719 aircraft at the end of March. Using Forecast International’s production estimates, Boeing’s backlog equates to roughly 10.1 years of production coverage.
https://flightplan.forecastinternational.com/2026/04/14/airb...
>Airbus reported a commercial aircraft backlog of 9,031
> 10.4 years of production coverage
Kinda true, airlines and manufacturers like to do big order announcements/deals for their future needs of few years all upfront. If Airbus suddenly delivered all 9k aircraft most airlines simply cannot afford it, or take possession and use them even.
For example Indigo is Airbus only operator with a fleet of 450 today and has around 920 more Airbus aircraft (10% of the book) on order. Neither Indigo or Indian aviation sector( of which Indigo is 60%) can triple the capacity today . India need serious upgrades (Terminals, Runways, Gates, new airports) coming online and also demand maturing, i.e. more people can afford to fly for that kind of volume to make sense which even the best scenario will happen over the next decade.
For more mature/slow growing airlines it is function of existing fleet age and the optimal point each aircraft is retired/sold , doing it too early will make them unprofitable .
It is a less a backlog and more their next 10 years of committed sales.
P.S. There is whole other industry aspect around Buy-Sell-and-leaseback financial engineering that can drive order volumes a bit. The backlog/order book also have commodity futures aspects.
Those are facts.
They do not mean that the people who ordered them today are wanting them today. If you need them in 10 years time, you need to order them today. It can easily change, if a flight company doesnt want to do business with Boeing or Airbus, they can cancel their pre-orders. Then the pre-order list might shrink really fast.
Indeed. Backlogs can evaporate. Can you imagine anyone taking delivery of a newly built 737 in 10 years? 7 years? Theoretically, that's part of the backlog.
> Can you imagine anyone taking delivery of a newly built 737 in 10 years?
..yes? Companies are still placing orders, despite knowing how long the backlog is. I also expect the 737s will still be sold in 20+ years time, much less 7-10.
747s were in commercial production for 54 years (1970 to 2023).
For the last 15 years of 747 production the production rate was fewer than three per month and sometimes zero.
Why not taking delivery of a current plane in 7 years? What do you think the development, testing, certification and production scaling timeline is of a brand new airframe?
Do military versions of aircraft use the same production lines, and the same production queue, as commercial aircraft?
As I recall they do - with many being delivered “green” to the integration upfittet but I think the 737’s for the p-8 is actually assembled separately just for the military
It's not just the final production line that matters, but the whole supply chain. Boeing frequently has new airframes sitting and waiting for parts from suppliers.
What does a commercial backlog have to do with an aircraft for military purposes? I'm sure there is a different lane for military aircraft. Anyone ordering an aircraft for military purposes is not going to sit on the same waiting list as a commercial airline.
Canada is aligning itself with it's European Allies. Several EU NATO members have chosen the same aircraft over Boeing.
In related news:
https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2026/05/21/italy-moves-to...
I guess insulting and threatening your allies isn't great for arms sales.
If people want to grasp the view of US in Europe:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m8qSZO4jvTI
(You can watch just the first minute to get the gist)
And speech was from 1yr ago. The view has probably not improved since ?
Here's a video from this year from a French General that is more up to date on the current vibes https://www.youtube.com/shorts/XQJ5YEsNQws
And for some more data than anecdote, the current polling where the US is now 14 points behind China in net approval. https://news.gallup.com/poll/707945/china-edges-past-global-...
The video is kind of funny. Although in terms of military procurement you have to think past the present administration really.
Eh, the US was also hated in Europe as Biden was sending lots of money to Ukraine in the wake of Russia's invasion:
https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2024/06/11/views-of-the-u...
You can see even with Biden as president, around half of Europe's population regarded the US unfavorably. This was at a time when the US was sending more aid per capita than almost all European countries:
https://old.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/1hd7aud/military_ai...
There's no point in trying to please these people. They'll accuse the US of warmongering one year, then demand that the US help them fight a war the next year.
The very statistic you presented, shows that the USA was seen as neutral, slightly favorable. The fact that there is now an unprecedented animosity towards the emerging autocracy of the USA, does not mean there were no issues before. They just pale in comparison.
You didn't give me enough good grades for my actions, therefore I run amok now, doesn't sound like healthy behaviour.
>shows that the USA was seen as neutral, slightly favorable
Yep, we could've gotten the same level of favorability by doing nothing, just like Switzerland. All of that stuff about the "soft power" we supposedly get from defending Europe is nonsense.
>You didn't give me enough good grades for my actions, therefore I run amok now, doesn't sound like healthy behaviour.
I'm not defending Trump's foreign policy. I'm an isolationist. I'm simply saying there's no reason for the US to try to please European public opinion. You'll never get anywhere.
Europeans just don't like the US. That's been true for as long as I can remember. If they aren't criticizing our foreign policy, they will criticize our domestic policy, as though how we handle our internal affairs was their business. Europeans essentially view the US as a vassal state.
Remember that Trump also had a term before Biden where he undermined cross-atlantic relations.
Under Obama you had the reputational fallout from the Snowden leaks.
Before Obama you had Bush Jr's wars, with especially the Iraq war being very controversial.
>Remember that Trump also had a term before Biden where he undermined cross-atlantic relations.
Sure, tell me about Trump's first term where he made statements about Europe's relationship with Russia that look incredibly prescient with the benefit of hindsight:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vpwkdmwui3k
>Before Obama you had Bush Jr's wars, with especially the Iraq war being very controversial.
Yes, I'm an isolationist. I say the US should end all defense commitments and warmongering. Starting with Europe. US should withdraw from NATO, because Europe complains about US foreign policy the most. What's good for the goose is good for the gander.
Hadn't seen that before. Bloody marvellous.
I feel a deep sense of pride and hope, palpably in my chest, when I get a week of news about how we're developing much closer ties with our European allies and divesting ourselves of the abusive American relationship.
Carney's Davos speech was powerful, but those words needed to be followed by actions, which I think we are seeing. I'm used to being so disappointed by politicians.
It helps that the base plane is built in Canada, and that the PM made commitments to the Swedish king in November 2025.
Worth noting that the base plane for one of the US-based contenders, the Aeris X by L3Harris, would also be the same Bombardier Global 6500 business jet.
That one has the disadvantage of not yet existing, although South Korea has ordered
Or, consider that the smaller Saab better fits the mission profile for Canada, and may be cheaper to operate, all the while The Guardian is furiously beating off trying to turn this into a bigger story than it really is.
Cheaper to operate and mission-fit (debatable) is one thing, but the real question is: "Would this have happened without the US president's antics?"
yes. in 2015 trudeau ran a campaign on cancelling the F35 purchase
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_F-35_Lightning...
Unfortunately, there is nothing in the US system (as far as I can see) that prevents Trump-like behaviour being the new standard. There were three supposedly independent, contentious branches of Government. One is inert (legislature), one enabled Trump (SCOTUS) and the third, of course, is Trump. I am unaware of any mechanism that can change things.
Trump-like behavior isn't the inevitable result of the US System though. We could've had another 20 presidents in a row who didn't go and break the norm of maintaining global alliances and not threatening to invade our neighbors and closest allies constantly.
So it's relevant to ask if this would still be happening without Trumps antics, even isolationists like JD Vance wouldn't force our allies hands like this.
Trump would have done nothing if he wasn’t aided and enabled by the rest of the government. There’s no indication this was a one off.
Sure, but look at the alternative. Oppose him and he will support your primary opponent, like it happened yesterday in Texas.
The problem is his pied piper like hold on the populace which happened because the parties did not actually try to solve the problems. Sure they did solve some, but then they closed their eyes to the evils their group demanded - sanctuary cities on one side, and "right to life" on the other side.
The craziest maga people want open conflict.
We’re only a year into this madness. It’s only going to escalate.
> We could've had another 20 presidents in a row who didn't go and break the norm of maintaining global alliances and not threatening to invade our neighbors and closest allies constantly.
US Presidents and other influential leaders, particularly Republicans, breaking any and all norms when it suited them has always been a thing. 'member Watergate? Moscow's Bitch McConnell? Bush Sr invading Iraq? Bush Jr invading Afghanistan (I'll give him a pass on that one though) and Iraq? Trump all but eliminating NATO, setting the stage for Biden to completely get bonked on the Afghanistan retreat, and now invading Iran? Republicans yapping about "financial stability" when a Democrat is in power and gorging themselves on debt and tax cuts for the uber rich when they get in power?
The US political system has been rotting from the inside for well over half a century. Trump was inevitable because when you got a rotting compost pile, eventually there will be fat maggots rising out of it.
If us Europeans are to trust the US again, y'all need, just like us Germans after WW2, prove you can be trusted again. Reform campaign financing, voter suppression, FPTP, the entire way how Congress works, break apart your mega corporations, and finally arrest everyone involved in Trump's presidency and, while we're at it, Sam Altman. Y'all need to go through a serious reckoning, acknowledge how hard y'all fried not just your own country but everyone else as well, make amends for it and prevent a repeat.
Eh that is just general rot, Trumps brand is a more acute rot.
He is brazenly corrupt and petulant in foreign policy in a way we haven’t seen before.
> He is brazenly corrupt and petulant in foreign policy in a way we haven’t seen before.
Oh, definitely (although I'd say Bush's WMD lies regarding Iraq come pretty damn close).
But my point was... when the entire foundation and basement are rotting, eventually there will be pests exploiting that. If it wasn't Trump, the Tea Party and rabid Evangelical crowd would most likely have found another puppet.
There is also the fourth - the press, which is either actively cheerleading him, or sanewashing every insane thing be does, or walks an eggshells around him.
Without the second election of Trump? It's likely. Canada's aircraft industry got majorly burned by the US in 2017 during his first administration and Biden didn't significantly reverse the impact in any way.
> Canada's aircraft industry got majorly burned by the US in 2017
Canada's aircraft industry has been on life support since long before Trump took office, having been forced to partner up with China.
The C-Series was divested to Airbus, the Dash 8 isn't produced anymore, and all Bombardier proper produces are biz-jets.
I don't disagree that Bombardier commercial aircraft was struggling before that tariff - but it absolutely was the nail in the coffin. They actually ended up selling off the C-Series to Airbus for 1 CAD as a symbolic f-you to Boeing over the whole affair. The WTO ended up finding in Bombardier's favor but it came in too late to save the company from the financial damage.
Whether the C-Series would have been profitable for Bombardier without the extreme heavy-handed US intervention is not particularly clear but the outlook already wasn't great - still, it's inarguable that Boeing leveraged lobbying to quicken Bombardier's demise.
Lol, why do you think the C series was divested to Airbus?
https://www.reuters.com/article/business/trump-administratio...
trump is now going after said biz-jets
its straight economic warfare on behalf of Boeing
Obviously not. Canada would gladly have kept paying 2x market prices just to stay in the good graces of the US, with a presumption of 'free' defense in exchange for paying so much.
This era is over. US defense companies now need to compete for real.
The US doesn't even use the Wedgetail, and has cancelled and then un-cancelled it:
https://aerospaceglobalnews.com/news/pentagon-e-7-wedgetail-...
The world is slowly moving away from the US. It's interesting because this administration main goal was to MAGA.. but it happened quite the opposite thing. It turns out, the world doesn't need much of the US products and services.
Here is some hard data to back that up; the Country Perceptions Index.
https://www.niradata.com/country-perceptions
This was interesting but it seems that it requires me to access to properly see the data of all countries (which requires me to contact them basically and perhaps be a business, not sure)
I would find it interesting if you can share with me hopefully a less restrictive chart than this. The data does seem interesting to me.
Here you go.
https://www.niradata.com/global-country-perceptions-2026
(From the above, following the link to free sample for USA data is very revealing. )
Thanks the data is interesting.
The net perception of US among its top trading partners being all negative seems a clear indicator.
Sad that niradata has paywalled rest of the data because I was interested in the rabbit hole of comparing different countries. From the data:
Across the 84 countries that evaluated the United States, 22 had a net positive perception, while 62 had a net negative perception. The average net perception of the United States is negative (-16), ranking #128 out of 132 countries.
The key word is "again". This was a nostalgia play, America was a big deal fifty years ago, therefore just wind back to fifty years ago and we're "Great Again".
This play seems insane because Time's Arrow points only one way, but it succeeded (in the sense that people supported it) because it's predicated on Facts Aren't True. It doesn't matter that Time's Arrow points future-ward, that's just a Fact not a Truth so we can just disagree.
Facts Aren't True can actually work for stuff where all you're doing is messing with people. Your Courts are just people and they can reject observable reality and substitute your own Truth with the Kavanaugh Stop, a week in jail becomes "brief" and your skin colour becomes "reasonable suspicion" for example. Your executives can pay themselves huge bonuses for imaginary success while concretely the company fails and eventually collapses. Stock markets can soar as the real economy they're "reflecting" buckles and fails.
"Facts Aren't True" is a stupid choice because unlike the people, Mother Nature doesn't give a shit about your Truth. So America won't actually become Great Again, but it is able to delude itself about this at a cost to its standing in the world and to its own future.
What are you talking about? The US is something like 70% of global company value. The whole world revolves around it.
Your comment can be summed up by appearing to know the price of everything, and the value of nothing.
Over the last few months we've seen announcements of shifts from US-based supply chains to non-US-supply chains. As an American, I think this is prudent, based on what has happened in the last year and change. The US is no longer a reliable partner and this is what you do when that happens.
100 years from now, the last 15 months will be written about in no uncertain terms: this administration has loaded many footguns and pulled the trigger, over ideologies which are just plain stupid. "America First" indeed. Soft power is power. "Forever" wars are wars we shouldn't be in. Retribution by POTUS acting like a 5 year old is disgusting no matter what party that person came from.
It will take decades to recover from what has and will happen during this administration's run. Let's hope the power they have ends in November 2026 and not Nov 2028.
> no longer a reliable partner
That's putting it mildly. Threatening to invade allies justifies stronger words.
Look around you. What products do you own with a US supply chain and what has a Chinese supply chain.
How exactly is that related to their point about nations moving to alternative supply chains away from US based ones? They're saying the administrations actions are counterproductive, and driving away both money and influence from their allies.
And yes, most consumer goods from everywhere come from a Chinese supply chain ... but we're not talking about consumer goods here. We're talking in this case about military purchases. There aren't many western countries buying military hardware from China.
Supply chains are not just components, but things like military planes. See referenced article.
Do you have a point?
Saying that products with US based supply chains are rare does not somehow detract from the point of moving away from the ones that still exist.
And they do exist, just not for consumers, or at least not at a price most people are willing to pay.
The point is that focusing on a rare us supply chain obscures the bigger picture.
It sounds like you're obscuring the point by muddying the water here.
I don't understand either of your points tbh
Maybe the insanely expensive ($400 +, for no good reason) kitchen mixers?
Though, one can buy inexpensive chinese ones if one knows where to look.
Guess the people writing on HN here don't have Mac's, iPhones or iPads or use whatever the watches are called.
The supply chain for apple products is almost entirely Chinese. From BOE displays to PCBs and passive. Then assembled in China.
The supply chain of relevance is the critical software, infrastructure to run it, and ability to remotely kill it if an ally stops being an ally.
Nobody cares if their dollar store trinket was made overseas. And nobody would buy it if it was made in America because that same trinket would cost 5x.
People barely even care about their privacy these days, it seems.
But governments still seem to care about their military independence in the rare event they are at odds with an ally.
Bring back the Arrow
The Arrow would be a terrible, terrible aircraft for today's world.
It was built to shoot down Soviet bombers coming over the North Pole. It could not perform air superiority missions because it was too big to be agile. It could maybe be a strike fighter, but generally its reputation overstates just how good it would have actually been.
Something new please. We should be looking forward not pining for what could have been.
The future of air superiority, particularly with respect to sovereign defence is passive or quantum radar, autonomous A2/AD and directed energy.
we can still call it an arrow though
or a whole series of arrows
While $3.6 billion is a big order, Boeing stock price is up 2% so the market (which has global participation) doesn't seem to view this as very negative in the short term?
I can understand why this change happened. Even if American equipment is superior, there is a lot of value to not depending on a supposed 'ally' which
* Arbitrarily slapped high tariffs on all goods from Canada while exempting Russia and Belarus.
* Threatened to take over the country by force.
* Officially suspended the Permanent Joint Board on Defense between US and Canada because of criticism of US foreign policy by the Canadian PM
From a very practical PoV, the only military threat to Canada is from the U.S.
Even if the U.S. and Canada are enemies, if Canada is being attacked by a country that is not the U.S., then the U.S. will come to its defense because they don’t want another nation with the capability to attack Canada to have a North American presence.
So given that the U.S. is the only possible military threat to the U.S., and now that the U.S. has openly threatened Canada, it’s incredibly silly to buy weaponry from the only country that could militarily attack you and almost certainly won’t share repair material, parts, software source etc. and possibly has a kill switch.
The Gripen is also a very practical design and much simpler to support. Canada can host the data locally as opposed to in the USA. The F-35 is very sophisticated and but maybe to a fault. I'm reminded of how technically superior Germany's vehicles were in WW2. The simplicity and field serviceability the USA vehicles had made a difference in combat.
its currently doubtful that the US would come to canada's defense
maybe offer some targetting intelligence, but most likely the US government would look to sell out canada for peanuts, the same as trump has been looking for with ukraine, and now taiwan
If the US decided to attack Canada then having Swedish 4th generation fighters instead of US 5th generation fighters will make literally no difference in the outcome. This isn't a serious calculus.
The Gripen E is 4.5 gen, and I am not sure having US fighters in a war against US would be so much better.
Russia is the other threat, but yes the US is the greater threat now
> "Even if American equipment is superior ..."
To address the article's context, is the E-3 Sentry superior to the Erieye/GlobalEye?
The E-3 is a dinosaur.
The E-7 Wedgetail is a vastly more capable platform than the Erieye/GlobalEye in pretty much every way, but costs four times as much, and there are other issues with Canada and Boeing as have been pointed out by another commenter.
Delivery schedules are also likely a factor. Assuming the USAF actually orders the E-7, they'll probably get first priority on the Boeing production line. Any export orders would have to wait.
>The E-7 Wedgetail is a vastly more capable platform than the Erieye/GlobalEye in pretty much every way
The airframe itself, perhaps. As for the radar, that remains to be seen. The E-7 uses an L-band AESA radar, whereas the GlobalEye's radar operates in the higher-frequency S-band. In general, higher frequencies are better for engaging smaller/faster targets, but perform worse in adverse weather conditions.
It's been a long time since I took my electronic warfare courses, but in a situation where the radar is expected to spot small drones and other targets I would prefer a higher frequency radar.
It should be noted that the US military itself didn't want the Wedgetail in favor of a space-based solution, until Hegseth forced them for publicity reasons.
Was it just a publicity issue? There was a real risk of a capability gap in that all of the old E-3 airframes would have to be retired long before a space based solution could possibility come online. Plus in an era of anti-satellite weapons proliferation, a crewed aircraft might actually turn out to be more survivable.
Hypocritically, Kegsbreath himself is on record saying the concern was about E-7 survivability: https://www.flightglobal.com/fixed-wing/2025/06/us-defence-s...
The comparable aircraft is the more modern E-7 Wedgetail, which has many features that are superior for Canada's use case (notably including range and NORAD integration). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_E-7_Wedgetail
Canada has unfortunately been in conflict with Boeing since before either of Trump's terms, originally triggered by Boeing's trade complaints regarding Bombardier's government subsidies.
is norad integration actually important?
norad might not exist in 5-10 years
Canada has little used for airborne early warning outside of NORAD; the country has little independent air defense, and has not performed any foreign air superiority missions since the Cold Warz
> Even if American equipment is superior
I'd mention that whether a piece of tech can beat another one on one is a consideration but a larger concern is how maintainable your fleet is. Canada is specifically moving to grow ties with the EU (and has joined their defense industry network) which really incentivizes having a fleet that is a similar makeup to other European countries.
The tariffs and international unpredictability of the US is one motivator - but growing closer to EU markets is also a specific focus of the Carney government. The current Trump administration isn't even the only rationale for this - in 2017 the US imposed extremely heavy tariffs on Bombardier that bankrupted the majority of the corporation.
They also make the underlying bird, so parts aside from the electronics are native.
There are a ton of considerations, starting with 'Doctrine', then tactics, other equipment, integration, other kinds of dependencies. So many things.
Often there are acute, specific needs, aka Canada has to land these all the time in the arctic, you need bigger hangars for the bigger gear, maybe we need 'more units for wider coverage' over large land mass.
Some gear is better v Russians, some gear for China threat.
Etc. Etc.
> while exempting Russia and Belarus
I thought they were sanctioned to hell and back. Do tariffs even apply as a concept?
Vastly inferior and overpriced. From now till delivery the US will blackmail the buyer with delays and increase the agreed upon price at least 3 times. Standard practice.
It's kind of insane they trusted us to begin with. Why?
Americans were our brothers. We had been partners for over a hundred years.
And yet...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Plan_Red
Not defending the US here (not least because as a European I'm deeply pissed at the US government and the people backing it) but every country with a large military has similar plans, they are used as a training exercise/staff exercise rather than as realistic plans (as noted in the article you linked).
I like this analogy - sparring with each other like toddlers do, before realizing that they have a lot in common as they age, like the English language, industrialization, the systemic abuse of natives, Big Oil, the World Wars and racism.
Now that they're older, they're sparring once again, just like siblings do over the parents' estate.
I like your analogy, and want to add a sad addendum: parental illness and death is frequently the cause of sibling estrangement. Let’s hope this isn’t prolonged.
This is terrible analogy. We're more like neighbours, and US is a bully. We made a decision not to have much a fence before we were friendly neighbours. We regret that decision, and are planting a hedge and reaching out to our other "neighbours" for support.
The whole neighbourhood thinks you're assholes and bullies, we're all scared. But that is bring us closer together as result, so there's some upside.
Racism? Oh man, visit any other country that is more homogenous.... lol. Everything is relative.
Siblings can also be bullies.
Canadian and American racism is documented in specific events, unlike in other countries. I'd be hard pressed to find specific racism-driven events in Poland or Czechia, even though they top the racist charts.
I'm not American so your second point is completely moot.
Sir, Nawrocki is only the president because of racist pressures. I don't even hate him but you cannot argue that he would be elected if it weren't for fear of foreigners.
Why trust anyone? Really what stops a Trump from getting elected anywhere else? The citizens seem smarter or less bigoted? Are you sure that will always be the case given the agitprop in every form of media and internet communication in every language on earth?
> Why trust anyone?
Because comparative advantage.
There have been many elections in many political entities where a politician got elected because one group of citizens really liked that politician; and another group of citizens thought that politician was extremely, historically bad. This is inherent to mass democracy itself in any polity where there are real and deep-seated differences between different groups of the electorate. "A Trump" - in the sense of a politician whose opponents describe in apocalyptic terms and consider that politician's supporters to be stupid and bigoted - gets elected all the time in all sorts of places.
True. But we seem like the least trustworthy people on earth at the moment. After israel, anyway.
Trump has nothing to do with it.
> Trump has nothing to do with it.
Genuinely, what makes the US untrustworthy if not Trump? I’m curious what I may be missing.
The seventy odd million people who looked at Trump and everything he is and then voted for him.
The entire congress and senate of the US who sit by while he does this and the supreme court who lets him, entire departments of the US government co-opted by sycophants put in place by Trump.
There is little to trust in the United States at the moment, you look a lot like the Weimar republic.
I guess I internally equate “Trump” and “Trumpism” - who’s to say what the chicken and the egg is with that whole situation.
> The entire congress and senate of the US who sit by while he does this and the supreme court who lets him, entire departments of the US government co-opted by sycophants put in place by Trump.
It is amazing how much people bend the knee to further their own ends. People like Stephen Miller who probably see Trump as a useful idiot, and hold great contempt for him, as long as he can enact his white supremacist agenda.
The leftist circles I run in like to joke that this could’ve just been properly avoided if we hadn’t fumbled reconstruction as a nation.
Remember the guy who promised he'd shut down Guantanamo? Or the guy who made up some weapons so he could invade Irak? Or the guy who ordered Northstream to be blown up?
> Genuinely, what makes the US untrustworthy if not Trump?
We invaded Korea, and then Vietnam, and a few hundred other interventions that don't seem to be sanctioned by the international community. All because of a hardon for ideology that doesn't seem to actually reflect the interests of the people who live here.
> We invaded Korea
what a terrible bad faith arguemnt
N Korea invaded the south and the UN voted to create a joint force in there to defend it.
Not only is this true, there are about 50 million people in the south who are incredibly grateful for US involvement. And about 26 million people in the north who are, on average, several inches shorter than the southerners due to the end of US involvement.
The people in the north aren't worked to death tho
Erm, yes they are. There are generational camps as well where people live because their parents and grandparents offended the Kim dynasty.
What evidence of this is there? We have plenty of evidence of the working conditions of south korea, however.
We forcibly inserted our forces onto a peninsula to support a state that exterminated hundreds of thousands of people that nominally opposed it. If you want to call this something other than invasion that's your choice. We can all judge what character your faith takes
Most of those were sanctioned by the international community. Look at the participants.
We had the international community on a leash after WWII. This means nothing.
Leash or not, there was international support as a fact.
Great. I'm happy you're willing to recognize our fucking empire for what it is
Oh I get downvoted all the time for telling people about the american vassal states on HN. People, especially those living in these vassal states, seem to take offense to hearing that reality.
Former vassal states, thanks to Trump.
Israel seems trustworthy in the sense that their priorities and aims are abundantly clear to everyone. People are pissed about Israel for Iran right now, but, I mean, there is a reason why they are attacking Iran right now and not Egypt or Turkey. You go about and poke the bear like Iran has done for decades with Israel, you get these outcomes. Egypt tried to poke the bear but that was decades ago and they've since learned there is nothing to gain there.
Nobody is buying this narrative of Israel being provoked, because the reaction to the provocation, if there ever was one, is completely disproportional.
Israel had settlements in Palestine way before the conflict outbreak, and nothing explains the systematic targeting of civilian infrastructure on Lebanon but for Israel just going supernova, like Germany and Japan back then.
Israel's faults do not mean they were not provoked. Iran has been sending everything they can to anyone who wants to harm Israel.
What Israel has done is a completely irrelevant to what Iran has been doing.
> What Israel has done is a completely irrelevant to what Iran has been doing.
It's certainly easy to say "X provoked Y, ignore what Y did first to provoke X".
I'm sure there was provocation, but we are taking about nations with extremely long recorded memory, so this back and forth of who did what goes back countless generations. It's utterly disastrous to go through this line of thinking when there are millions of civilians either dead or displaced and vulnerable.
Hey that's up to you. I will never vote for a person who supports Israel. Our parents may have been retarded but we don't have to be. I just see a state devoted to slaughtering as many people as they can. Iran looks like a saint compared to them.
I'm not supportive of them either. I just don't consider them untrustworthy though. Everything they do is exactly what they've always done since that state was formed. Easily the most predictable nation on earth, Israel. Easy way to get Israel off your back though? Stop funding terrorists like Hamas and Hezbollah that inevitably do something stupid to provoke the Israelis into armed conflict. It is really that simple.
True. Israel begins, Israel assassinates and complains about being targeted by terrorism. Israel begins the loop again. What is more reliable than Israel?
Iran would be a better ally. China would be a better ally. Fucking Russia would be a better ally. Why did we decide to die on the hills of (loosely translated, I guess) mageddo?
But instead our state leans into exterminating people because our PR team was inspired by Goebbels and was trained to hate muslims
It is like a modern day state of Prussia. A beachhead and airstrip in the middle east. Weapons manufacturing. Rocket science. A cyber security firm. An intelligence agency. Some of the best in the world at these things. All wrapped up into one. This is why nations like to ally with Israel.
But again, if you don't want problems with Israel don't make problems with Israel. Their populace is militarized like few other and seemingly with a lot of political cohesion. Egypt has learned not to poke the bear. So has Jordan.
I mean, you dont know much about Iran, I guess. Like, it is a victim in this was and Israel is apartheid state.
None of that makes Iran better, not even now as they still execute daily. And are extremely harsh to own minorities. Oh, and to whole one gender.
Iran looks like saint when you ignore Iran actions. And again, yes, the war was bad decision.
Trump can be voted in everywhere, but american constitution makes curruption effectively legal, president effectively lawless and provides no balance to unchecked presidential power. Money in politics are speech, so just unlimited, so any person even having change to be president have to do what Epstein class like.
And it is constitution itself. America had lawd trying to deal with above and supreme court gutted them.
Because Trump is a new, and (hopefully!) a one time phenomenon.
He is unique in that he seems to have absolute control over the Republican base which makes all internal party checks fail. The rest is provided by a hyper polarized media landscape and a conservative supreme court majority that seems to be open to radical upheavals. The combination of all three has rendered the constitutional safe guards ineffective. In other words, we seem to have run into an edge case in the US constitution.
The supreme court won't change materially in the near future and likely the polarization will continue, but it's hard to image someone in the future with such an absolute grip on either party. So, hopefully a soft restart of the system in 2028 will be the last of this edge case for a while. That's the hope, anyway!
The two countries have far more in common shared interests than differences, so odds are things will drift back to normal in the future.
Trump did not rise to power in isolation. He has not remained in isolation while in power. Voter support for Trump is still reasonably strong, and Trump and his supporters have ensured that the mechanisms of Government are packed with loyalists.
America chose this. America continues to tolerate this. America enabled this.
This isn't something that Trump can be scapegoated for. This is what many Americans wanted, or at the very least, it is what many Americans are willing to tolerate.
We have lots of issues with Canadian protectionism, around $46 billion of them.
We also take issue with them cozying up to the ChiComms.
The trade deficit with Canada is because Americans are buying Canadian products.
Enough Canadians (seriously, the vast majority) live close enough to the border that they could make a weekly trip to the USA and purchase American dairy and other American goods. In fact, prior to the tariffs many Canadians did make regular shopping trips across the border.
So let's be clear: we were buying your products to the extent we wanted to, already.
no the trade deficit is the US buying canadian oil at a deep discount.
canada buys US products and services to a large trade deficit where canadians get stuff in exchange for dollars.
its just oil that the americans are really buying from canada
True enough; but they want to make it about Canadian Dairy, Softwood Lumber, Steel, Aluminum and so on.
As someone unfamiliar with the US-Canada trade relationship, it would be helpful if you developed this argument instead of stating it as a fact. I'm not well-placed to know whether your belief that Canada has bilked the US out of 46 billion dollars is well-founded or not.
It represents the trade deficit the USA has with Canada. To believe that this is a problem as a result of Canada's nefarious actions is to believe that Canada is preventing its citizens from purchasing American product.
Which is a common refrain with respect to our supply management system for dairy; but to believe this you have to ignore that the USA has _never once_ managed to export enough dairy products to Canada to meet or exceed the import quotas set by the supply management regime.
The truth is that Canadians simply don't seem all that interested in purchasing American dairy products.
> The truth is that Canadians simply don't seem all that interested in purchasing American dairy products
Yup, taking this a bit off topic: I've always bought dairy products with the blue cow on it (signifies Canadian dairy). The US dairy industry only wants to export into Canada when they have excess, and leave us dry when they don't, so i strongly support Canadian dairy production.
He’s not telling the truth.
https://economics.td.com/ca-canada-us-trade-balance
Erm, Apple gear, cheap stuff, and much of the generic drug market comes from those ChiComs. Or is it ok if the US does it?
meanwhile, the US is trying to get a much closer relationship with china than canada, and does a hell of a lot more trade with china than canada does.
its literally just oil that makes up that trade surplus. if you want the taps turned off, that can be arranged
> We also take issue with them cozying up to the ChiComms.
does everything possible to spite the Canadian economy. then has the gall to be surprised that Canada would cozy up to people who don't shit on them
who would have guessed?
> Because Trump is a new, and (hopefully!) a one time phenomenon.
Trump is already, on his own, a two-time phenomenon. Leaving aside broader cultural issues and patterns, "one-time only" has been clearly incorrect for a while.
> He is unique in that he seems to have absolute control over the Republican base which makes all internal party checks fail. The rest is provided by a hyper polarized media landscape and a conservative supreme court majority that seems to be open to radical upheavals. The combination of all three has rendered the constitutional safe guards ineffective. In other words, we seem to have run into an edge case in the US constitution.
The US constitution has absolutely nothing at all to say about political parties or the particular state of the media landscape, or for that matter the partisan alignment of justices of the supreme court. It's incoherent to suggest that there are "constitutional safe guards" that should have prevented the election of a president (or the exercise of power by that president), who is supported by about one-half of a very polarized electorate and opposed by a separate one-half. Everything about the Trump presidency is as constitutional as every previous US presidency, including the phenomenon of opponents of the president trying to claim that specific things they do are or should be unconstitutional.
The problem is that it isn't just an "edge case" in the constitution - the whole thing is fundamentally flawed from the very beginning. The US isn't going to be trustworthy until it manages to reshape itself into a proper democracy with functional checks and balances.
Considering the right-wing politicians are trying to turn the country into a theocratic nationalistic dictatorship and the "left-wing" politicians are content with getting votes by nothing more than not being right-wing and collecting corporate bribes: good luck with that.
> Because Trump is a new, and (hopefully!) a one time phenomenon.
unless the US extinguishes all of its billionaires and somehow convinces 1/3 to 1/2 of their population to not vote against their own interests it'll happen again
Nixon, Reagan, Bush, Trump - not a one time phenomenon, more of a natural progression.
A lot of blame-trump-copium, itt
this has been happening before anyone even thought trump would run: in 2015 trudeau ran on cancelling the f35 purchase. So what did obama do to canadians?
aside from political alignment, theres a lot of geographic, budget and climate and stategic alignments that would put swdeen designers in the same headspace.
You missed the absolutely huge one: that the plane it's based around is a Bombardier aircraft manufactured here in Canada.
And in general this is how Saab has tried to court us -- by making promises (how real is unclear) to bring manufacturing jobs to Canada to build things.
That is something the US has not done, will not do, and most importantly cannot do under Trump/Bissent/etc.
Canada is very unlikely to be invaded, so the actual military effectiveness / superiority is only one factor. Reducing unemployment and enhancing our manufacturing sector is as or more important.
> Canada is very unlikely to be invaded
Except from the south.
If it’s invaded then a few Swedish panes will really not matter
ukrainian drones will though, and saab is also selling to ukraine
Or, as it turns out, from within. (Looking at you, Danielle Smith).
But yes you're right. The only times we've been invaded were from that direction.
Danielle Smith is plainly a US agit-prop effort. Probably in concert with the Russians, since funding separatists is their MO
> Or, as it turns out, from within. (Looking at you, Danielle Smith).
Pretty sure that's a prong of the southern strategy.
> But yes you're right. The only times we've been invaded were from that direction.
Looked it up:
4 Times the U.S. Invaded Canada
https://www.mentalfloss.com/history/war/4-times-us-invaded-c...
They really had to stretch for #4.
> * Arbitrarily slapped high tariffs on all goods from Canada while exempting Russia and Belarus.
This is due to sanctions. There is no trade between Russia and the USA to put tariffs on.
Makes me wonder what the penguins of Heard and McDonald Islands would say about this
We call this confirmation bias.
The Saab is likely cheaper to operate as it's a smaller plane and Canada only has to patrol its northern border.
"We call this confirmation bias".
I'm genuinely curious to know what you think the author's pre-existing beliefs are.
You seem to have a few of your own: "Canada only has to patrol its northern border"
> You seem to have a few of your own: "Canada only has to patrol its northern border"
the Canadians do not aggressively patrol the southern border because that is where all of the people are -- unlike the north -- and because the reality is that the entire Canadian military is basically a speedbump for if/when the US invaded in earnest.
Americans: X country is only a speed bump for our awesome military. Also Americans: Have never managed to win a single war on their own while usually fighting underdeveloped tribes whose most advanced equipment is sandals, while at the same time both allies and enemies have a billion jokes on how bad they actually are.
You need a special kind of personality to be this confident while currently losing a war, one that is, well, associated with Americans.
Open a history book. They do a lot more than patrol the northern border. Canada was involved in WWI, WWII, Korea, Iraq 1 and 2, Fall of Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Libyan civil war, Iraq civil war, Syrian civil war and ISIS conflict, Yemeni civil war, and a smattering of other conflicts over the past century.
Canada, as a commonwealth country, was involved in ww I and ww ii years before the us decided to get involved. Or more involved than selling arms.
> Canada only has to patrol its northern border.
At what point on this current trajectory in the US would that change... mostly facetiously, but not entirely..
Canada would only have to patrol its southern Alberta border /s
No coincidence that Albertans are sparking up the seceding issue again. When 10% of the population produces nearly 20% of the country's GDP it's a breeding ground for contempt. And it also seems like Albertans are the butt of a lot of jokes from the other Canadians anyway.
I'm sure this US government would love to see an "independent" Alberta.
You're rounding both ways to exaggerate your point. 2024 numbers, Stats Canada (via Wikipedia) has Alberta at 11.9% population, and 15.25% GDP.
They (and Sask too) do swing on the higher end in GDP per capita, but it's not a 2:1 by any stretch.
> […] 15.25% GDP.
Which isn't that far off from BC's 13.80%:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Canadian_provinces_and...
And this is mostly thanks to the oil sands. Will that always be the economic engine it is today?
This is false. Alberta is NOT the economic engine of Canada, that’s a huge misconception of a group of Canadians (mostly Albertans) [0]
[0] https://youtu.be/5lSJpqA8RU4?si=fxwKpUFFKO7gK63E
You're right but you should cite something other than the CBC, since it will just be immediately dismissed by the biased as biased.
Alberta is very important economically. I'm from there. Ontario (I live there) and Quebec and BC are also massively important. And fanning the flames of disinformation and playing grievance politics to make Albertans feel discriminated against has become an extremely serious problem.
Wab Kinew was very eloquent on this topic yesterday.
I would think Ontario is the centre of Canada as it has the most people and the financial centre. Google's AI says 38% of GDP. And the problem Alberta faces is who wants to separate, what do they want to do afterwards and what ground do they actually own (vs. treaties that predate Alberta).
When Alberta at least catches up to Quebec in practicing being independent (runs its own police, collects its own taxes, has its own pension system, maintains foreign services, ... They might decide the extra taxes to pay for such is less "fun". And they need a border to ship stuff through.
alberta has the border to ship stuff through, the only one that actually matters, to the south
rounding errors east and west dont particularly matter
North America's biggest oil pipeline -- Enbridge Mainline, which has a capacity of 3.2M barrels per day -- runs east through Sask, Manitoba, ducks down through Michigan, and then splits before coming back into Canada in Ontario in two places (including Line9 ~1km from my house.)
Ontario is one of Alberta's biggest customers.
Then there's westbound ... TMX capacity of 890,000 barrels a day, to BC ports (and then on to China).
vs southbound lines to the US
Keystone, 640,000 BPD
and Express 310,000
Please check your facts.
Did you watch this video? About half way through he confirms that Alberta has the highest GDP/capita in Canada and is the largest (per capita) tax contributor. Ontario is obviously larger in absolute terms, but it has at least 4x the population.
> About half way through he confirms that Alberta has the highest GDP/capita in Canada and is the largest (per capita) tax contributor.
Nunavut and NWT have higher per capita numbers, but that's territory versus province:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Canadian_provinces_and...
Yukon and SK are in the >90k range, both ~5k below AB.
As with any time you deploy an average... (And I'd expect better on this forum of all places)
Show me the distribution. Show me the median not just the mean. Show me the standard deviation.
Otherwise ... abused.
Yes, we all know oil is an extremely profitable (and environmentally destructive) commodity. That doesn't make the typical Albertans somehow responsible for holding up all of confederation. Just means oil is making some people very rich. For now.
I'm from there and my family is in Alberta. I can tell you now that the oil industry ain't doing jack squat for them.
Do the oil profits even stay in Canada? Taxes maybe, but it’s not like the province owns the wells.
I think 70-80% of investors are down South, so not much stays here no. And jack shit goes into the heritage fund, just for aimco to throw away (sorry invest).
They get to "own" them when it's time to "clean them up" after they're abandoned by bankrupt shell corporations, that's for sure.
https://www.pgic-iogc.gc.ca/eng/1588343274882/1588355750048
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/abaondoned-oil-well-o...
https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/what-did-alberta-do-with...
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-more-than-1...
But Trudeau had it out for Alberta. Better off separating. Yep.
So then by your arguments above, you're good with California leaving since they'd be a G6 nation on their own?
Because as you would might say: I'm sure this Canadian government would love to see an "independent" California.
Texas has entertained the idea of seceding for 150 years. And they would be a G7 country if they did. But they would have to fight a war to do it. USA already went through this once.
The only thing really stopping Alberta from leaving is whether or not BC, Ontario, and Quebec are willing to fight a war to stop it.
And that gets a lot more complicated if the US also wants Alberta to go independent....
Texas would be a G7 nation for about a week if they seceded from the US. Being the logistics hub for a country only works if you’re part of that country.
It’s just a logistics hub? Are you ignoring the oil and natural gas that’s supplying the world these days?
I have a feeling Mexico wouldn’t torpedo their relationship with the United States by continuing to buy all their oil from Texas.
The instant Alberta secedes from Canada, the Indigenous would secede all unceded Treaty land from the independent Alberta. Which includes all of the tar sands, the source of Alberta's wealth.
Canada might not be willing to fight, but the Indigenous probably are.
> but the Indigenous probably are
None of this matters in this context. The indiginous people literally do not matter. It's bad, but it's just how it is when white Europeans start fighting over land in North America. We have 3 centuries of evidence.
I'm gonna go out on a limb and say if Canada wasn't willing to let Quebec leave, and they've tried with significantly more effort than Alberta ever has, then they're not going to let Alberta go.
We already have a clause in our constitution to allow for orderly withdrawal from Canada. We'd have to resolve the first Nations angle which would probably be more of a hurdle.
>The only thing really stopping Alberta from leaving is whether or not BC, Ontario, and Quebec are willing to fight a war to stop it.
Unlike the individual US states, Alberta never joined Canada. It was not an entity that existed prior to Canada's confederation. Alberta was basically pencil-whipped into existence by carving out a chunk of an already existing territory (the Northwest Territory).
Despite American and Russian destabilization campaigns in Canada, there is no legal mechanism by which Canadian provinces can unilaterally secede.
>And that gets a lot more complicated if the US also wants Alberta to go independent....
Recent past polling overwhelmingly showed Albertans in favor of remaining in Canada. This latest frenzy is widely known to be a foreign influence operation.
The implication that this somehow weakens Alberta’s constitutional status is false. Alberta is a full province under the Constitution of Canada with the same constitutional standing as the other provinces.
The Supreme Court has already ruled that Canada and other provinces would be obligated to negotiate terms of separation should a province ever vote to leave in a clear referendum.
Yes, support for leaving is probably at 10-20%. Just having the referendum will build the infrastructure and political machinery for keeping it alive for a long time from the first try. I live here and I'm not a fan of Smith for encouraging it at all.
>The implication that this somehow weakens Alberta’s constitutional status is false.
I implied no such thing. In fact I was careful to use the term "unilaterally" when referring to secession. My understanding is doing it properly would require a full constitutional amendment.
> there is no legal mechanism by which Canadian provinces can unilaterally secede
Legal? Who's laws? Albertans can just declare that they don't respect Ottawa's authority, right?
Guns and bullets are the only "legal" currency. It's not paperwork.
If Canada cuts off the money tap, that health and security bill is going to be significant.
>Albertans can just declare that they don't respect Ottawa's authority, right?
Sure, but just like nobody gives a shit about what Sovereign Citizens do or do not respect, such a declaration would only carry weight if there are enough people that want to mount an armed rebellion. And despite what American influence operations would have you believe, there simply aren't. Most Albertans want to remain in Canada.
Of course the US gov would love to see an "independent" Alberta... They'd see that as easy oil reserves to put their hands on and a weaker Canada. They're working with traitors in separatist organizations as well as PP and trying to import MAGA into Canada.. Albertan's, due solely to their location, stand on oil riches... They don't have to do much to be the country's highest earners, its literally handed to them on a sticky black oil platter. (Not saying they don't work hard... loads of people work just as hard in other fields that aren't covered in gold though). They have the highest median pay in Canada, pay the least taxes.. Yet still spend their time crying and saying they're keeping Canada afloat... They're not Canada's highest GDP province... And other provinces don't spend their time trying to sell out to the US, even after the US threatening to destroy Canada, economically or otherwise. That's treason my guy. There's not too many ways to say it. Also, Alberta's population isn't even close to having the votes to even considering separating, without getting into all the other issues they're trying to pretend don't matter. The whole thing is a joke.
According to Wikipedia, Alberta accounts for 11.52% of the national population and 15.25% of the GDP. Such injustice.
That's not the injustice. The problem is that Alberta's political interests are very poorly (if at all) represented federally. This has come to a head a few times in the past with things like cancelled pipeline projects or the NEP[1]. So the issue is that Alberta has 11.52% of the population, contributes 15.25% of the GDP, yet must constantly fight against policies that put it at a disadvantage or run counter to its political leanings.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Energy_Program
> Estimates have placed Alberta's losses between $50 billion and $100 billion because of the NEP.[32][33] Alberta still initially enjoyed an economic surplus due to high oil prices, but the surplus was heavily reduced by the NEP, which, in turn, stymied many of Lougheed's policies for economic diversification to reduce Alberta's dependence on the cyclical energy industry, such as the Alberta Heritage Savings Trust Fund, and also left the province with an infrastructure deficit. In particular, the Alberta Heritage Fund was meant to save as much of the earnings during high oil prices to act as a "rainy day" cushion if oil prices collapsed because of the cyclical nature of the oil and gas industry.
Cancelled pipeline projects? Ottawa doesn't cancel pipeline projects. All the problems with pipeline projects are caused by environmental reviews etc, which fall under legislation brought in by Stephen Harper, an Albertan.
It's much the opposite, Canada just spent $34B to ensure the Trans-Mountain pipeline got built. Alberta is the one that gets the resource revenue, but it's Ottawa that has to pay for your pipelines. That's hardly fair.
Alberta has one legitimate grievance, the NEP. Which is a plan that was cancelled by Mulroney over 40 years ago.
The AHSTF performed poorly because successive Albertan provincial governments slashed contributions to it, not because of the ghost of the NEP. It was established in 1976, then contributions were cut in half in 1983, and eliminated entirely in 1987. The NEP was gone by 1985.
What hurt Alberta was every cyclical crash in oil prices, and their steadfast refusal to implement additional revenue streams like a provincial sales tax while spending instead of saving their resource-boom surpluses.
> And it also seems like Albertans are the butt of a lot of jokes from the other Canadians anyway.
This is hardly my experience as a Canadian. They're not Newfoundlanders, for crying out loud...
I thought Québec-bashing was a national sport.
What is stopping the Swedes from electing a jackass? They seem smart for now? It happens in Europe too. All these weaknesses are liable for any country in a democratic model where executive is controlled via popular vote. Population is trivial to manipulate. This is the new world. Running to Sweden doesn't change the underlying issue of the ease of manipulating an electorate using technological affordances to capture a nation from the inside without a single shot fired.
It can happen in Sweden too but it is less likely to. We don't have a president, we have a prime minister with limited power. We have a stronger democracy run by coalitions instead of a single party. One jackass is not enough in Sweden.
I do think first past the post is a big part of the problem. Combined with primaries dominated by the most radical parts of the population you have the recipe for very unhinged results.
Nothing, but when your spouse turns into an abusive piece of shit, breaking up with them and looking for a new one is the right call.
Sure, the new one might turn into one too, but that's no reason to stay with one who is definitely one.
Trust arrives on foot and leaves on horseback. That's the obvious result of Trumpism - when you seek to turn every interaction into a short-term win for you, people simply stop doing business with you whenever they can avoid it.
Tens of millions of Americans voted for this guy three times, overwhelmingly twice - this is how the country wants to act.
If he and his cronies are removed from power and prosecuted and everyone pinkie swears to never go down this road again, maybe we can look into rebuilding some of that trust. In the meantime, you reap what you sow.
Run from the US. Create a new seat of power all you want. Putin will put in his manchurian candidate wherever the power lies. The fact this happened to the US is really a byproduct of its global position. So create a new global leader, and that will be the new target for capture via propagandizing the electorate and electing a sympathizer. Running never solves anything. The problem is still the problem, and is not getting addressed.
Democracy in the US is sick at the best of times. It's a fundamental flaw in strong executive presidential republics, doubled down on by the legislatures ability to constantly redistrict in a way that advantages the incumbents, tripled down on by the lack of a plausible mechanism to have a non-confidence motion.
Canada can't solve this problem inside US politics. Only Americans can, at any one of the three boxes. It can only work to disentangle it's critical dependencies, and to protect its own interests.
And democracy isn't sick in the UK that elected conservatives to leave from the EU? It isn't sick in Hungary that elected Orban? It isn't sick in Germany where 1/4 of the bundestag is comprised of AfD? Far right is rising in Canada too in recent years (1).
1. https://universityaffairs.ca/features/northern-shift/
Citing one bad election or referendum, and another country that just had a complete political upheaval that has blown up in our good friend Orban's face, and a third that's up in the air isn't as strong an argument as you would hope it to be.
Any country can elect chucklefucks or vote for something stupid. Some of them have systems that are more resistant to the long-term damage they cause. Some of them are less. The US is definitely in the 'less' category as all of the checks and balances and systemic inertia completely collapsed.
Also, the other big difference is that when Hungary or the UK sneezes, Canada doesn't catch a cold.
Alright, if you think that the world is someone inoculated against this, I'm not sure what else to say. I just don't believe that at all. Humans are fungible and Americans aren't uniquely stupid.
Saab makes excellent AWACS systems, this strikes me as a good choice. It'll be interesting to see if Canada also invests in the Gripen long-term, as a replacement for the aging CF-18 fleet.
From the article:
> Saab is also in the running to sell Canada some of its Gripen fighters.
The Iran war has uncovered a vulnerability of the USAF's approach to basing. The USAF likes to build large, elaborate air bases. Many of the bases used to attack Iran have been hit by Iran.[1][2]
Large air bases are tough to defend from drones and missiles in quantity. There are anti-drone weapons, but now that drones are used by the thousands and tens of thousands, some of the attacks will get through. A major air base is a big, fat, soft target. Both the US and Russia have recently found this out the hard way. Air forces now need to disperse and hide. Saab, which stresses operating from minimal airfields and roads, has aircraft better suited to that.[3]
Stealth may not help as much, especially for fighters. Geometric stealth, which is designed to reflect radar beams to anywhere except straight back, doesn't help for bistatic and multi-static radar. All the players in the current wars have some of those systems now.
So, as in WWII, air operations anywhere near the enemy require dispersal.
[1] https://defencesecurityasia.com/en/iran-strikes-us-bases-mid...
[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/01/world/middleeast/iran-str...
[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QyD0liioY8E
The F-35 always seemed like a funny choice for a mainline fighter for Canada. Even the US has invested in many more F-15EXs. Having a Hi/Lo mix makes sense for a larger force, but equipping a smaller force with only exquisite birds doesn't seem to make much sense.
Then again, this is Canada - sensible decision making in military procurement just isn't something that happens here.
But the economies of scale are such that at least the $$ isn't completely out of whack (for purchase at least, maintenance I'm not so sure of). I would wager that the cost of maintaining those ancient CF-18s is pretty high now too though.
The F-15EX is designed to be a stand-off missile truck that works in tandem with a network of forward-deployed stealth jets. This compensates for the relatively low ordnance load-out of stealth jets. A stealth jet can designate and cue a target from the front using an F-15EX as a missile launcher safely in the back since it is non-stealthy.
The F-15EX isn't a particularly survivable aircraft on its own. It is a plane you'd only use if you have stealth jets and you plan to do air combat at scale. It augments the capabilities of something like an F-35 but isn't something you'd add to your fleet unless you had a lot of stealth aircraft.
That's how the USA uses it, and for that use case it makes a tremendous amount of sense.
I just think it's a bit too rich for Canada's blood. Perhaps the whole-system costs do balance out in the end: surprisingly reasonable capex, capable at many roles, excellent at NATO combined roles, etc. There's a lot to like on the balance sheet. But the maintenance costs are killer, and we're talking about an exceedingly underfunded military (thanks to the politicians, our military do wonders with what they have).
I mean, in any real engagement our fleet is going to be blown away by a real adversary in short order. This is about presence and deterrence, I'm just not sure how essential stealth is to accomplish those goals. It sure is a nice pay day for Lockheed and friends though.
The F-15A/C is designed to act as a missile truck, but the F-15EX was specifically designed to be a multirole strike fighter. You can operate it without putting 20 AMRAAMs on the pylon, or without an F-35 datalinked to it, and many countries do. The flexibility and heavy ordinance are the selling point at home and abroad.
Canada could very well operate the F-15EX without a fleet of stealth fighters. The F-35 is not an interceptor platform in any sense of the word, in an "all out" scenario like you're suggesting it's doubtful they would be any better than the CF-18 they have today.
I think the F-16 would have been a good bird for Canada's needs. The F-18 had the advantage of two engines, which strikes me as a good thing in the Arctic. If these two are off the table, things like the Saab are reasonable. There's only 2-3 countries one needs stealth fighters for, and 30-40-ish won't matter in such cases.
We've long pushed for 2 engines - which has made sense in the past. Even a successful ejection over the vast arctic would basically be a death sentence. Though some of our allies don't seem to have the same reservations, and it seems modern engines are a lot more reliable - certainly the F-35 only has one, so it looks like we're ok with it now.
The modern F-18's and the new F-15's would have also made sense, but agreed that modern F-16s would seem to be a nearly perfect fit if a single engine is now deemed acceptable. Given we like to keep equipment for as long as physically possible (and then some), the F-35 might have more runway (rimshot) in that regard though.
If the F-15 line is still in production, it's a damn fine bird and has broad mission capability. And the remaining B-52's are probably older that most of the HN community. At least those not retired or cashed out.
The F-16 lacks the range to operate effectively in Canada. They would need to load it up with multiple conformal or external fuel tanks, which wrecks performance, and would still need extensive tanker support.
Awesome, the more suppliers, sources and competition the better. Might this bring prices down and quality up?
Trust matters in business because it provides a sense of predictability
Is this the "multipolar world" that Russia keeps talking about.
We can also have a chuckle and imagine the kerfuffle in the US West Coast wanted to be the 11th provinces...
Saab uses the Bombardier Global 6500 here. Which is entirely manufactured in Canada. This is less politics and more about economics
Not 'entirely', the 6500's wings are made in Japan, the rear fuselage and tail in Northern Ireland and the engines in England.
Trump's damage to the USA will be studied extensively in the future.
Depends how much it gets damaged. There's a world where they won't know how to read in the future.
Now the interesting question to me is why is that a country with a tenth of population can have car, truck and military plane manufacturing yet Canada can’t, even with virtually all resources for inputs, including energy can’t.
Canada has many issues. First and foremost, their entire economy is basically 3 mineral extraction industries stacked on top of each other in a trench coat.
They are also (unfortunate?) to share a border with USA and be party to NAFTA. This makes it trivial for educated, professional Canadians to work in the US on a TN visa indefinitely. We know that the doctor and nurse brain-drain from Canada to the US has been ongoing for decades. But it's actually every industry since US firms pay 2-3x more than equivalent Canadian firms.
The reality is that Canadians get very good, tax-payer subsidized educations and then immediately go to the US to work for 10+ years and only return later when they need to start drawing on the Canadian social services for things like healthcare and family care. And Canada itself got none of the benefits of that workforce in between.
I saw a figure recently that the US issued an all-time-high 800,000 TN admissions to Canadians in 2016. And then in 2023 it surged to nearly 1.3 million.
>We know that the doctor and nurse brain-drain from Canada to the US has been ongoing for decades.
Its actually the opposite: it had been going on for some time, but has reversed for decades, and in recent years Canada has had _increasing gains_ of medical professionals from the US.
>The Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI) reports annually on the number of physicians moving abroad and returning to active practice in Canada (CIHI 1996–2005). In the early to mid-1990s, net losses averaged 400 per year. More recently, the number of physicians leaving Canada has decreased significantly, resulting in net gains of between 30 to 60 per year. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2645159/#:~:text=Th...
> The reality is that Canadians get very good, tax-payer subsidized educations and then immediately go to the US to work for 10+ years and only return later when they need to start drawing on the Canadian social services for things like healthcare and family care.
You write this declaratively as if it describes a typical or representative case. In the 11 years I’ve lived in Canada, this isn’t representative of what I see.
The direction of migration of medical doctors likewise shows signs of reversal. I’m a physician and my wife is a surgeon. We left the U.S. over a decade ago and are constantly receiving inquiries from US physicians about immigration.
> We left the U.S. over a decade ago
I'm assuming you were educated in Canada, and then you worked in the US (but now you don't)?
Thank you for your contributions.
> I saw a figure recently that the US issued an all-time-high 800,000 TN visas to Canadians in 2016. And then in 2023 it surged to nearly 1.3 million.
This citation is an order of magnitude off. The US doesn't really track/release visa numbers well, what you're citing might be the number of individual entries using a TN visa - visaholders go back and forth, it's not the total number of visa holders.
DHS estimates 130k Canadian visaholders in country in 2024. https://ohss.dhs.gov/topics/immigration/nonimmigrant/populat...
Canada has 22m workers, so 130k working in the States is nothing like what you're claiming.
>their entire economy
Resource extraction is about ~10% of GDP, compared to 3-5% in the US and 1-2% in mainland Europe. Scandanvian countries have comparable resource extraction % of GDP. It's hardly the entire economy. It's also diversified resource extraction, it's not dependent on oil, etc. Your claim is overblown.
Canada also supplies the US with most of its comedians.
These are extremely expensive programs that the Swedes have historically been willing to pay to maintain as much neutrality as possible in their defence procurement system. A Saab Gripen has almost the same flyway cost as an F-35 because of manufacturing scale differences (maintenance is far cheaper, though) and the Gripen is far less capable (it is one of the best western fighters if a full blown war happens and your bases are all destroyed, though). Sweden had unique defence requirements due to this that wasn't being met by others.
Sweden was forced to take their defence seriously due to their geography and political will. Canada has had an easy ride and when the going got expensive, we cancelled our domestic programs (most famously the arrow, but also a lot of other stuff).
There were plenty of good reasons to cancel the Arrow: it was very difficult to fly, it burned fuel like crazy, it had poor maneuverability, etc. A friend of mine is considered an expert on its history and is convinced it was the right call, despite going into his research as a huge fan of the plane.
Yeah, I agree it was the right decision - if for maybe the wrong reasons. The point I was trying to convey was that it was cancelled with no alternative because it would have been expensive.
Not that it invalidate your point, but Sweden has 1/4 the population of Canada, not 1/10.
Sweden does not have a car industry. The fighter jets are a different matter, very strong technical moat and need to prove the system in combat. You can't just start a fighter jet business.
What do you mean Sweden does not have a car industry?
Volvo and Polestar have their HQ in Sweden and huge manufacturing plants. They also develop platforms for some other Gealy brands including Link&co and IIRC also Zeeker.
And then there is the Koenigsegg...
It does with Volvo, although I couldn't say how big it is relative to global industry. Within Europe it's a large player
Volvo is complicated. Basically a lot of these smaller companies and countries realized there was no way they could make the economics work with the cost of electronics and software-related R&D being what they are. So they sold to larger players. But design and final assembly still happens in Gothenburg for high-end models that are typically destined for the EU market. The US now manufactures the SUVs.
Volvo was bought by Ford in 1999 and then sold by Ford to Geely in 2010. It had nothing to do with software related r&d, it was mostly down to Ford needing money after the financial crisis.
Volvo have factories in Sweden, Belgium, USA, and China. The new EX60 is manufactured in Sweden. The US factory makes the EX90, XC60, Polestar 3, and until recently the S60 sedan.
They also have a lot of R&D, sw dev, etc in Gothenburg.
Scania is Swedish, too.
A Chinese company owns Volvo since 2010 or so.
Volvo Cars is still headquartered in Sweden, and employ 22.4k people in Sweden out of 40k globally[1].
Given that the market for Volvo is global, it seems to me that Volvo Cars is still overwhelmingly Swedish, while at the same time being overwhelmingly controlled by Geely.
[1]; https://www.svt.se/nyheter/lokalt/vast/1000-personer-far-lam...
The car part of Volvo is owned by Geely, Volvo AB makes trucks, buses, etc.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volvo
Volvo still produces cars in Sweden. Koenigsegg still build their cars in Ängelholm.
The Top Gear enthusiast in me loves that you included Koenigsegg in this conversation.
But including a company that hand-builds a handful of hypercars annually in a conversation about the auto industry in Sweden is not the flex you think it is.
But by that metric Canada also has a car industry? Canada builds 1.5M cars annually.
Sweden had a native car industry they decommissioned themselves, in short, they basically gave up, but they’re not alone Australia, New Zealand did the same and so did Canada, but they’re starting to realize that they were a little bit hasty in giving up….
Then last, but not least the UK basically threw the towel in too on a wide assortment of industries, but they’re now discovering that that was a big mistake.
New Zealand had car assembly which isn't a car industry.
Although my friend was working at an injection moulding company in Christchurch that did some parts for Holden (GM) in Australia.
Looking at Ford, GM, and Stellantis, one can say the US doesn't really have an auto industry either. Certainly not a car industry.
Why are you discounting Volvo?
>> Sweden does not have a car industry.
Apart from Volvo, Koenigsegg and Polestar and Scania. Apart from that, you’re right.
If Saab wanted to they could spin up a car factory as well. But they are more interested in selling these airplanes the article is about.
BTW, SAAB did produce cars from 1949. General Motors bought 51% of SAAB Automobile in 1990, and it was defunct in 2016.
Canada has historically relied on a relatively stable trading relationship with the U.S. That relationship is a shambles. It remains to be seen how Canada retools itself; I imagine that we will see a blend of on-shoring and new trading sources. So it’s less of an issue of “can’t” and more “hasn’t (yet)”.
Frankly to me the fact Canada is "retooling itself" knowing well that this nightmare should be over in less than 3 years, and most likely next President will be a Democrat, but yet they keep retooling, means their strong (reliable?) assumption is that Trump Administration won't leave the office at all, similar to how Putin stayed in power in what arguingly is a Democratic Country.
The nightmare was supposed to be “over in 3 years” 9 years ago.
The foreseeable future is MAGA candidates with a coin flip odds of winning indefinitely.
A lot of people are still in denial about Jan 6th. They really tried to overthrow the election like actually in physical effect. Not hypothetically. They were trying to not certify the election and it came down to a hairs width. They're going to try to again.
This is Trump's second term and MAGA views won't disappear 3 years from now. Even if they assume that there will be a peaceful and lawful transition of power, I can see why they may be planning on the assumption that the "instability" (from their point of view) will continue into the future.
I disagree. You literally have one single human being in charge of 3 main branches of government, and multiple smaller agencies. Noone will manage US like Trump does.
Trump doesn't "manage" anything. Trump is "managed". The question is who all pull the strings.
It's all project 2025 and the heritage foundation running the government.
There's a "people won't get tired of our good cop/bad cop bullshit because there's money to be made" attitude in the US that doesn't even reflect our own point of view.
They're retooling because it doesn't matter who the next president is.
You're missing some of the history here. Canada's initial free trade integration with the US in the late 80s was controversial at the time, with opponents specifically predicting a slow erosion of sovereignty until one day Canada is forced to subordinate itself to the US. What Trump showed is that that concern was correct, although the erosion was fortunately not yet complete enough to force Canada's hand. The Canadian people don't want to be continually dependent on the goodwill of future US Presidents; they want "Canada should the US" to sound like "Taiwan should join the US" or "France should join the US", an obviously impossible idea that even the most vehement partisans would have to explain away rather than trying to make it happen.
As an addendum to this post, this debate between Turner and Mulroney over (what would become) NAFTA captures some of the feeling of the time [1]
[1] https://www.youtube.com/shorts/jlvb9czZFXw
[2] https://www.c-span.org/program/international-telecasts/canad...
It's not just trump anymore. The entire cabinet is project 2025 people, most GOP has turned or was replaced with MAGA. Project 2025 wasn't just about RAGE, it was a sycophant hiring system as people could send in their resumes and get into unelected positions.
The only chance is if the cult spell breaks with trump, as cults rarely survive that. But it at some point it will be too late, their takeover and ability to fuck with elections means you can't vote them out anymore.
It's actually that I think most expect the Democrats to either be to weak to fix it, or not much better even if they can win big. That's part of it, anyways.
That and there's been a clearly protectionist bias also among Democrats as well. We had to lobby the crap out of the Biden admin to get "Buy American" provisions to not exclude some standard Canadian things, etc. etc.
At the same time, flipping things around... it's clear that Carney and Co are holding out for November mid-terms on the trade front. Conservatives here keep lambasting them for not sitting down to bargain with the US to hammer out a deal, which is just the stupidest losingest idea you can think of. Trump is going to get hammered in November -- why would we sign a deal with a loser like that? To our disadvantage?
As a Great Power, Sweden had a great need for engineers to build forts, canals and other important infrastructure for the Kingdom.
These engineers came in handy when the Industrial Revolution started.
Thus Sweden has a long history of manufacturing industry.
We have a larger partner speaking the same language and with a largely synonymous culture and a heavily integrated economy as our neighbour. The moment a Canadian company sees success -- in optics, autos, science, medicine, weaponry, etc. -- it is absorbed by a larger US company and suddenly is no longer Canadian, and in many cases any Canadian operations will usually get choked out.
There are few examples where this isn't the outcome.
This has happened across Canada for well over a century, across every sphere. And in the process the Canadian input is retconned out of existence and Americans ponder why Canada "doesn't make anything". They post ignorant nonsense about how Canada is resource extraction in a trench coat or similar nonsense.
Sweden had nothing like this, and they punch way above their weight class because of this. Though that has been changing, for instance with a Chinese company buying Volvo, etc.
The only protection against this is...protectionism, whether explicit controls or implicitly by ownership or funding structures. Canada became a leader in nuclear tech by the nuclear industry basically being government owned. It became a transportation powerhouse by a government owned railway. And so on.
Change is afoot. Carney has made significant efforts to stop just sending hundreds of billions to the US and most military procurement will focus on Canadian products and innovation. Which leads to lots of gnashing and screaming by propaganda rags like the US-owned PostMedia (yup, even a lot of our media gets absorbed by the US, at least where it isn't explicitly barred from doing so).
> Sweden had nothing like this
Not entirely true. AstraZeneca and ABB are examples that remain partly Swedish but many companies were merged into big multinationals and eventually marginalised.
FWIW, Ozempic, which seems popular, came from a Danish Pharma. There's very large pharma in Sweden, related to the UK.
There are trade offs in all things. Trying to do everything yourself does also have a cost. It is not neccesarily better.
Resources curse
Because Canada has been poorly managed for a long time by all political parties that have been voted in.
Countries always use the threat of buying Swedish war planes as a bargaining chip to get a better deal from the US, or whoever they're really going to buy from. So these news are best believed when everything is signed, sealed, and delivered. This has been going on for at least 20 years with SAAB fighters.
From the article: "Saab is also in the running to sell Canada some of its Gripen fighters. Canada has a deal to buy 88 F-35 jets from Lockheed-Martin, but last year, after the US slapped tariffs on key Canadian imports, Carney asked the military to investigate whether it could cut back the order and buy some planes from another manufacturer."
Ask yourself: Why would a nation spill military secrets like this to the media? They're trying to put pressure on the US. Those Gripen fighters are in all likelihood staying in Sweden after all is said and done.
As an American with mostly headline-level knowledge of Canadian politics, this Mark Carney seems unusually competent and effective, as far as heads-of-state go.
Swimming downstream is easier than swimming upstream. Admitting basic reality we all talk about—eg that canada is a vassal state of the us—is only difficult until the cash river stops.
He was the Governor of both the Bank of England and the Bank of Canada.
bank of canada during the 08 problems, and bank of England over brexit, too
he's worked through a lot of emergencies
Mark is a technocrat. He started his political career after a long, successful stint as an economist and central bank governor. Nobody is perfect but he is about the best leader Canada can hope for to lead it out of the current funk it is in. Pivoting away from a long-term trading partner is not an easy process.
Frankly, the issues that Canada faces now stem from a long history of questionable policies, starting from when Diefenbaker shuttered the Arrow and stripped the talent and parts to be scooped up by Boeing, Lockheed et al all the way to when Mulroney & Reagan signed the FTA dooming Canada's private sector. None of this has been good for Canada's sovereignty and long term independence/success. A non-trivial amount of the SV luminaries that have started companies which showcase American inventiveness have a Canadian passport even though they don't advertise it.
The strained relationship with the US right now is actually providing ample opportunity for Canada to make some strategic long term bets without the "US foreign policy alignment" overhang. I'm optimistic.
Will Ferguson wrote a book named _Bastards and Boneheads_ [0] that told the history of Canada's prime ministers as one or the other. The bastards made history, the boneheads are remembered for their folly.
Mulroney and Pierre Trudeau were bastards, and supremely consequential in Canadian history. Joe Clark and Paul Martin were boneheads.
Which ones Harper and Justin Trudeau are may be too soon to tell, but Carney is clearly a bastard.
[0] https://www.amazon.ca/Bastards-Boneheads-Canadas-Glorious-Le...
> as the country seeks to reduce reliance on US defense firms
I wonder why ? I think we may be seeing a lot more of this.
Maybe we will get to see what US Corporations value more, real paying customers or large tax cuts w/stock buy back curtsy of US Gov Monetary Support.
Completely understandable.
It's like when your favourite restaurant gets taken over by new management, and you discover cockroaches and maggots in your Trenette al Pesto
You switch restaurants.
The US wedgetail order was canceled and Canada can't afford to fund the program on its own. But slop journalists will spin a geopolitical angle because it gets clicks.
Canada will pay for this
Yes. They're paying Sweden. It's in the title.