this bridge wasn't built to generate revenue. it's not about profit. the bridge was a needed upgrade in infrastructure and it will make it much easier for canada to keep drugs and guns out of the country. that's what this was about. the other bridge and the tunnel were built in the early part of the 20th century. they're ancient and should be torn down. canada needed a reliable port of entry coming from michigan that it can control access to and that it can not worry about for the next 100 years. 

the bridge is invaluable to canada.

and i live here. i'm happy to see detroit continue to transform into a nature reserve. i have no opposition to throwing more money at detroit. not at all.

that said, while trump may not have gained anything substantive and it might be optics, there's still a lesson to learn from this process. it seems like the agreement that showed up in writing was not the same thing that was agreed to verbally. that seems to be the process that donald trump uses, unfortunately: he tricks you into agreeing to something, then changes the terms in the contract. he calls that "the art of the deal". it sounds like nogoodnick thieving and scheming, to me. he's a dirty fucking scoundrel. he's a lying, no good piece of shit. he's somebody that you wouldn't do business with at all, if you weren't forced to.

nobody should agree to anything with donald trump ever, unless it's presented in writing first. that would certainly apply to any kind of free trade deal.

participants should predict that attempts to isolate parties are exactly that; the trump administration will key on you, single you out, separate you from your peers and try to take advantage of you, if it thinks you're weak. agreements made verbally with isolated parties will not be upheld in writing, but key changes will be made in the details of the contracts.

this is a historic break from america's post world war two role as the policeman of the world to america's new role as the pirate gang leader of the world. america is making new friends in it's new role and losing old friends in it. canada needs to watch what it signs with this new america. 

 

https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/gordie-howe-international-bridge-deal-canada

but canada does not have a "grocery competition problem". people talking like that don't know what they're talking about, and should be aggressively called out for it.

what canada has is a poor climate, a bad geography and an increasing problem with overpopulation due to foolish immigration policies, given the minimal population that can be directly supported by the land types we have.

these losers keep succeeding in shutting things down. that's what they want.

stop cancelling queer events when religious bigots demand it.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/berlin-pride-parade-car-crowd-christopher-street-day-9.7284516

when you hear people blame things on a lack of competition, it's generally a clear indication that they don't really know what they're talking about.

the reasons that food prices are high in canada are complex. much of it has to do with geography, and the reality that canada imports much of it's food nowadays. a weak dollar makes items like coffee more expensive. some larger amount of local greenhouse production could potentially reduce prices by reducing transportation costs, and these would be smaller companies, but that's not a competitive process and it would be misleading to suggest that any benefits are resulting from competition. the decreased costs would be mostly due to using less oil. this is a substantive shift in production that is slowly underway and could actually benefit from government subsidies to help it compete, not an increase in competition. much of canada's food production network is designed to eliminate competition because it's harmful.

this is a go nowhere strategy. the absolute last thing the grocery industry needs is more competition. that's just going to make everything more expensive, as the costs of competing get added to the overhead. competition = inflation.

somebody somewhere that is making decisions went to school in the 70s, apparently, and has an extremely out of date concept of capitalism. there was this whole big data revolution in the 90s and 00s that uprooted all of this. they were able to actually get the data for the first time in the history of economics and they realized the homo economicus was just wrong: no, competition, does not decrease prices, it raises prices because it increases costs.

so, the entire concept is rooted in a basic point of ignorance and reflects priorities being set by somebody very out of touch with reality. some secretary or staffer needs to quietly get to shutting this down, because it will do nothing but waste money and embarrass the government. it's ideologically incoherent.

competition is an expensive cost that companies seek to avoid. when companies are forced to compete, it will always lead to higher prices, as consumers will always pay for the costs of competition through higher prices.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-grocery-competition-carney-food-strategy-funding-food-hubs-food-terminal-9.7282701

the next candidate for mayor of new york should run on a platform of publicly funded facial hair removal for all, to get rid of all of the unwashed, dirty bums at city hall.

there's going to need to be ground troops in yemen and these barbarian houthis are going to need to be entirely eradicated. like, wiped out. no prisoners. just erase them.

biden utterly failed in his responsibility to global security on this file. he irresponsibly ignored a pressing problem that now has to be dealt with through overwhelming force.