donald trump in truth doesn't want to compete with anybody because he's a loser. what he wants is to bully somebody. so he's identified somebody vulnerable and smaller to pick on that he is sure he can win a fight with and then called it "competing". then, he'll claim he won, probably to make his father proud, like the dumbass fucking man-ape that he is. ooga booga. me win, you lose.
so, when canada announces an ill-perceived project to transport gas to asia that is unlikely to happen (and probably won't happen), trump responds by announcing a pipeline from alaska, because he wants to compete with canada. oddly, he also seems to want to reduce prices, which would make the economics of the project infeasible and which nobody competing in the business would support.
and who will pay for this stupid dick-waving exercise in manly competition? the asians will pay for it.
in fact, the response from the koreans and japanese around the issue is important to take note of as it's very similar to what the europeans are telling canada, and it opens up some insight into what the market for this gas in asia actually is, which is low and dwindling.
these asian countries were very successful in the 80s and trump, like much of the american capitalist right, is time capsuled in the 80s, so he is looking at asia in 2026 like it's still 1985. that was 40 years ago. 40 years before 1985 was 1945. it makes no more sense to look at japan today through the prism of 1985 than it did to look at it through the prism of 1945 in 1985, although that's less obvious, because the truth is that american cultural development began to slow down with reagan and came to a halt in the early 21st century. progress has been much slower over the last 40 years than it was in the 40 years before it. we're stuck in time, so it's become difficult for us to understand just how long ago that the bad old days of stupid 80s bourgeois excess really was. it was not a quarter century ago. it was almost a half century ago. does that language help?
the japanese and koreans are today mired in debt and facing a superpower staring them down that may very well swallow them whole. i don't expect that the chinese are actually that concerned about taiwan. in terms of industrial capacity, and revenge in an area with a longer memory than the atlantic world, i would imagine the immediate target is largely helpless japan. the most important military targets would be malaysia and the philippines. korea would just get occupied as collateral, like denmark in world war two - but usefully. they aren't these economic powerhouses that they were in the 80s anymore and it's been a long time since they were. the era of nintendo and toyota is long over.
regardless, trump wants them to pay for the gas pipelines.
and the koreans are saying they want to build nuclear plants and invest in renewables instead, because they don't even want the gas at all, they're trying to get off the gas. the europeans are telling us that, too, but we're just trying to sell them more and more gas. we're not listening.
if canada wants to embrace state capitalism, i'd suggest that's ill advised, but it should take note that reaganomics is wrong - demand is not created by supply. you don't create demand for a product by increasing the supply of it. companies that try to create demand rather than respond to it will fail. if canada wants to be a state capitalist dictatorship that makes it's money in the energy industry, like some backwards arab country, it needs to produce the kind of energy that is in demand, not just maximize it's ability to supply.
and trump will lose this competition, too - the one he set up against a weak competitor so he could win, all to make daddy proud.