the 50% import tax on goods from vietnam and india might be frightening to people that base their profits on child labour, but there's an upside to that. these are not countries that even import raw materials to north america, their export economy is almost solely designed around the exploitation of child labour.

i would rather see punishing taxes levied on an economy that relies on child labour than free trade with them.

that's not what anybody in trump's administration is thinking, except maybe tulsi gabbard. sometimes you can see unintended upsides in the policies of opponents.

inflation aside, if the us dollar survives that, this might not land badly, after it explodes.

these tariffs are probably the biggest threat to the greenback since the nixon shock.

from what i can tell, trump isn't fundamentally altering anything in the relative trade balances. he put steep tariffs on almost all of east asia, and also put steep tariffs on europe. he put lower tariffs on canada, mexico and most of latin america. that would means that north and south america remain preferred trading partners, relatively speaking.

it's really just a giant, huge consumption tax hike.

and it should result in subsequent giant, huge inflationary effects, although it remains to be seen if it can remain localized in america or not. canada is inevitably going to get hit with the inflation.

there is some possibility of this going zimbabwe-like, but i don't think it's that high. the fear is if the inflation starts feeding back. if that happens, it gets out of control.

these consumption sites reduce the spread of aids and other communicable diseases from needle sharing, which is a net public health benefit and saves the taxpayer untold millions of dollars on unnecessary treatments. to some extent, they also speed the inevitable process of overdose up.

the focus should be spent on prevention. i can't imagine why anybody would choose to take any kind of opiate, given the media around it, but they do.

that said, i would also like to see a national investigation into the conditions in which people become addicted to opiates in hospitals. i've had to push my way out of emergency rooms out of fear of being injected. they are aggressive enough that it opens up a lot of questions about kickbacks. drug companies should not be permitted to pay doctors to prescribe anything, but there needs to be a strong prohibition and crackdown on doctors getting paid to prescribe opiates, and there needs to be much more stringent consent clauses worked into people getting injected with opiates when they're unconscious. apparently, well over half of opiate addicts first got injected when they were unconscious and wake up addicted.

life saving healthcare should not come attached to a life ending addiction.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/election-2025-day-15-campaign-promises-1.7503265

even if the steel and auto plants only idle temporarily in the long run, there's still a great opportunity to retrain hidden in the layoffs, which have already started.

have you recently been laid off due to the tariffs? get a construction hat. you're needed.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/housing-affordability-construction-canada-1.7499260

it's quite the swing in the canadian election polls. why is mark carney polling so well?

canada needed to get past justin trudeau. the country was sick of him. polievre was the guy running, but he was clearly unelectable. a lot of people opined when he was running at 40% that it was a mirage and that would never happen. carney is the escape mechanism people needed.

however, he's also going through his honeymoon phase in the course of an election and that is dangerous. i don't quite understand the movement from the bloc and ndp to carney, other than that..

mark carney is not a politician, so he made the most obvious mistake a rookie politician can make in canada, which is running on hockey. he's not running on his record as a banker or on his ability to fight trump or on what he would do to fix the housing crisis, he's running on hockey. the rookie mistake is actually working.

for now.

it's going to blow up. so, the liberals better hope they do get a majority.