This “issue” has flaired up again as Trump attacks Canada again.
The short answer is that in the short term Canada is moderately dependent on the US and the long term it is hardly dependent on America at all.
Right now we (Canada) have a lot of trade with the US. We buy mostly finished goods, and pay fees to American tech and copyright holders. The US buys oil (which it cannot easily substitute away from in the short term). The US buys cars from us (#2, but deceptive, since they’re made by US companies in Canada), a small amount of machinery like nuclear power equipment, and a grab bag of other industrial goods. We also sell Potash (about 80% of what the US needs) and aluminum to the US, for which there is no easy substitute: these things are in global shortage, and the best alternative for potash is Russia and despite various bullshit about American/Russian alliances, Russia doesn’t trust the US at all and would not be a reliable trade partner. Without potash American farmers are screwed, since it’s used for fertilizer. America can’t significantly improve domestic potash production, there isn’t enough in America.
There’s substantially nothing we buy from the US that we can’t get from China for less or Europe for a bit more. And what the US sells Canada is high value add goods, not resources. We’re a valuable customer.
And, at the brass tacks level, if all trade stopped tomorrow, Canada could feed itself and would have plenty of energy. Our houses would stay hot in the winter and cool in the summer, our trucks would have gasoline and diesel, our trains would run and our planes would fly.
Canadian dependence on America is about 80 to 90% a legacy issue. We currently do a lot of trade with America, but we don’t have to. We can sell manufactured goods to Europe, and resources to China and buy from China and Europe and various other nations. Nothing we get from the US is a “must have with no feasible replacement.”
So the game is very much along the lines of the old joke about saying nice things to a barking dog while you find a rock. Not that we will ever fight the US unless they invade, but we just need time to disentangle our economies and move to reliable trade partners.
America could hurt us a lot if they cut of trade, but it wouldn’t be a mortal blow and we would recover. We’d prefer to do it slow, but if we have to do it on an emergency basis it can be done.
Canada doesn’t need the US. It just needs some time to change trade partners, and that’s what Carney is doing, because as he has said, it no longer makes sense to do business with the US.
We’ll talk a bit more about trade with the US from a global perspective soon, but basically the US has a legacy trade position: no one needs to buy from it any more unless they’re stupid (Europe refusing to buy Russian gas). Selling to it is still necessary for many nations, but that will become less true over time.
America’s prosperity and power are both legacies, they have no solid foundation to stand on any more. Ironically Canada is in a better position in the middle to long term than America simply because it only has 40 million people and is a continent sized country with a continent’s worth or resources. The only significant danger is an American invasion.
This site is only viable due to reader donations. If you value it and can, please subscribe or donate.
Bob
Yeah, it strikes me that if no one has the gumption to confront the bastards head on, and maybe it makes sense not to have it, they can at least just turn away and maybe that will eventually end this insanity.
Blimey that was a long sentence.
Like, I can’t do anything about the Gaza genocide but I have disengaged myself from anyone who supports the hideous, bloodthirsty entity to the extent of turning away from my family and everyone I ever knew and denouncing my pseudo ethnic cultural affinity to an old Levantine religion my Polish forebears foolishly believed they were affiliated to.
Is that better than nothing?
I don’t think I need to buy anything from America or sell them anything.
Ducks
Overall, it looks like that Carney is currently the best western leader and certainly seems to be the most forward looking. By the way, what is the news with regards to the F-35 versus Grippen jet fighters. One hears reports on the intertubes that Canada will be ordering more Grippens than F-35s. The legacy media just report that nothing has been decided yet. Someone said that getting the Grippens with be revenge for the the forced cancellation by the US of the Avarro jet project in 1959.
Jefferson Hamilton
“The only significant danger is an American invasion.”
Is that true? Seems to me that the US is in a position to blockade you, too, and then where will that trade happen? I wouldn’t expect to get invaded, but I *would* expect to get Venezuela’d or Cuba’d. Your article from yesterday on what happens to people who don’t stand up to bullies is extremely relevant here. Surely if Canada minds it own business and just cultivates trade relationships that could cripple the US, the mad dog empire will just roll over and let it happen. Surely.
Ian Welsh
A blockade would suck, but we are not Venezuela or Cuba and we have a lot of coastline, plus doing so crosses a boundary, we are an anglosphere/Euro country. There would be a firestorm.
But we would have enough to eat (unlike Cuba) and enough fuel, and so on.
Ottawa is a fair ways from the border, a kidnapping operation wouldn’t be that easy and wouldn’t matter much anyway. We obviously should be upgrading our military to deal with US threats like a blockade: missiles and drones and concealed land launch sites, etc… but that will require ending our military alliance and we won’t do that for a while yet. Ducks in a row, and all that.
capelin
Positive take on the situation, thanks. Canada does have a lot going for it.
But, they could blocade our coasts pretty easy, and sabotage society, and general goings on, in a lot of ways.
Just integrated computer systems and networks.
What, 85% of Canadians live 100 miles from the border. We’re a tenth their population.
And most importantly, Canadians have long since lost their fire and focus. A sizable portion would support becoming American, most would grumble and see which way the wind blew, and a portion would would reluctantly fight their American brothers. Canada aint Yemen.
Ottawa is a lot closer than Caracus… didn’t the Russians move their capital from Lenningrad/St Petersburg, to Moscow, specifically for buffer?
Flin Flon? Ft Mac?
cc
> The only significant danger is an American invasion.
Indeed, the greatest threat to Canadian sovereignty is hands-down the USA. Yet some Canadians apparently still think it’s a good idea to buy F-35s that the US could easily ground …
About 7 years ago, in 2018, Canada (in the first years of Justin Trudeau) had, commendably, actually been trying to diversify our trade away from just the US, primarily through pursuit of a trade deal with China, an important and growing market.
The US, in Trump’s first term, actively foreign-interfered and foreign-meddled in Canada to stop that democratic and sovereign Canadian choice: first going out of their way to overturn the long-established NAFTA agreement and explicitly insert an unprecedented clause into CUSMA/USMCA to discourage trade deals with so-called “non-market countries” – a naked euphemism for China: that clause was widely recognized and reported as the “anti-China clause”, clearly aimed at very strongly discouraging a Canadian trade deal with China.
Just 8 weeks later, to further ensure that our government would not – could not – resume its prior sovereign decision to pursue increased trade with China, the US then got Canada to detain and arrest the Huawei CFO on a stop-over on her way to Mexico. Justin Trudeau, eager to please Trump and the US – especially after Trump called him weak and two-faced after the 2018 G7 in Quebec – foolishly and eagerly fell for the trap, and that arrest and her subsequent multi-year detainment destroyed the previously good relations between Canada and China, ensuring that Canada would not be able to significantly diversify its trade from the US to China.
In the subsequent years, the US only continued its campaign to influence the Canadian politicians, media, and public against China. The Uighur oppression narrative was pushed, much of it hinging on just one or two highly questionable reports, including one from ASPI, the “Australian Strategic Policy Institute”. ASPI has recently been revealed to have been funded by USAID, a US State Department organization used to fund NGOs, think tanks, and opposition groups in other countries to influence and interfere in those countries. As a result of those concocted and planted narratives, Canada’s sheep-like parliament even voted to officially condemn China of “genocide” in 2021, further destroying the relations and the path that Canada had been pursuing as a sovereign nation up until mid-2018. (But of course, Parliament has stayed silent about the horrific genocide in Gaza.)
This was then conveniently followed by accusations of “foreign interference”/”foreign meddling”, largely associated with China, leading to Canada holding a much publicized commission, further destroying those ties and pathways. Were these accusations also fed by foreign actors seeking to influence Canada’s democracy? We have yet to hear which foreign actors these reports came from or what evidence they gave. Did they ultimately originate from the US, perhaps by way of their many deeply-integrated channels of influence into Canada? The likes of CSIS, ex-CSIS figures, the Privy Council, and our establishment news media, have continued to actively push foreign-seeded narratives designed to hinder Canadian economic, and thus political, independence. Are they really defending Canadian sovereignty or are they in fact serving as unwitting vectors and vehicles to help weaken and dismantle Canadian sovereignty?
In 2022, the US blew up the Nordstream pipeline to sabotage and prevent economic ties between Germany/Europe and Russia, and to make Germany/Europe more economically dependent on the US.
Was the 2018 US request for Canada to arrest and extradite Meng Wanzhou analogously designed to blow up the possibility of increased economic ties between Canada and China then and into the future, and keeping Canada ever more economically dependent on the US?
(Imagine if Justin Trudeau were still in power? He’d probably be bending himself over even more to try to satisfy Trump. He’s the one that decided to throw billions of Canadian taxpayer money away into the US F-35 boondoggle …)
It’s quite clear that the US is pursuing Western hemispheric hegemony:
Trying to rename the Gulf of Mexico to “Gulf of America”, Panama Canal coercion, Venezuela night-time raid and abduction of Maduro and his wife, killing about 80 people in the process, oil tankers seizures/piracy, the oil and economic blockade of Cuba that could lead to starvation of its people, attempts to take Greenland, repeated threats to turn Canada into a 51st state …
If Carney stays silent on the US human rights abuses against Venezuela and Cuba, he only encourages the US to continue on its path of criminal thuggery – who will help Canada when it’s our turn?
spud
canada will fall into the “kinda sleazy rice” formula, she said it was not fair russia had all of those commodities, signaling what bill clinton started when he gutted yugoslavia and iraq, soros wanted the lithuim mine, and it was made public. oil companies wanted iraq oil.
so split canada in half. seize the st. lawrence seaway. blockade vancover area, and st. johns and halifax on the east coast. that could really hurt, and hudson bay is blocked by winter, and seizing greenland.
leaving the McKenzie river and the yukon river. both navigable, but short shipping season.
there are of course other ports, but getting the major ones will really hurt canada.
when you are dealing with desperate psychopaths, anything is possible.
Joan
I hope I’m just being paranoid but I genuinely worry that the US could invade to try to seize the entirety of the Great Lakes. They wouldn’t get support from Americans living at the Canadian border, since we love our Canadian sister cities and cross back and forth for camping and vacations all the time (well, before 2025), but the psychos in the White House could just recruit thugs from elsewhere and ship them up here to do it.
mago
Alberta. Dirty oil fields. Energy sinks. Secessionist sentiments. Shipping dirty crude across the mountains.
Anyone here familiar with Maurice Strong? No? Not providing links, but the curious can check it out. He was an Alberta energy tycoon who sold his assets and brought his influence to rural western American outposts and the United Nations. I’m familiar with his family, not that it matters. Just saying. Whenever I think of Canada and secession and dirty tricks and tar sands oil I remember Maurice and Alberta.
And oh yeah, there’s a Kashoggi arms dealer connection, but I won’t get into that.
Dan Kelly
Tell the damn story mago.
Mario
There’d be no need for invasion. There are so many easy ways for USA to hurt Canada:
– blockade the port of Vancouver: piece of cake
– bomb the electric transmission and power plants in the middle of winter
– in fact they could probably hack them, no need to waste explosives
– instigate a colour revolution in Alberta
– assassinate Carney
They have a lot of practice with each of the above action all over the world. The only thing that stops them is that they already get all they need from Canada.
Feral Finster
“If Carney stays silent on the US human rights abuses against Venezuela and Cuba, he only encourages the US to continue on its path of criminal thuggery – who will help Canada when it’s our turn?”
Nobody. The hope is that the crocodile will eat Canada later.
Anyway, the politicians don’t care. Why should they? Even if YBGIBG weren’t a thing, they’ll line up for comprador jobs.
Charles P. Steadman
I like the idea of any nation shunning F-35, it’s a hunk of crap that likely will be delivered with a US DoD kill switch anyway..
That said, Gripen is powered by a license built version of the US designed F404 engine, similar to that found in the F-18. Not sure if Volvo Flygmotor could continue to make them if Dump pulled said license, hopefully they have organic capability to machine all parts themselves .
Further irony: there is more American content in the GE powered A380, by $ amount, than there is in the Boeing 787, 2/3 of which is built overseas. Boeing merely snaps the manufactured pieces together (badly, in the scab-staffed Charleston plant).
The 787’s aft pressure bulkhead is manufactured by an Airbus subsidiary, Latecoere, in France.
Purple Library Guy
Mario, the US does some of that stuff we’ll go down there and do some false flags, start your damn civil war for you. Talking of easy ways to hurt countries. Most of the places the US hurts can’t come after them in return because there’s an ocean in the way.
spud
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MmUDZK63WLE
Trump’s Dollar Domino & the U.S. economy reckoning: Top Economist Warns
————-
keynes warned against free trade,
https://pulsemedia.org/2011/05/07/john-maynard-keynes-national-self-sufficiency/
“But it does not now seem obvious that a great concentration of national effort on the capture of foreign trade, that the penetration of a country’s economic structure by the resources and the influence of foreign capitalists, and that a close dependence of our own economic life on the fluctuating economic policies of foreign countries are safeguards and assurances of international peace. It is easier, in the light of experience and foresight, to argue quite the contrary.”
“There may be some financial calculation which shows it to be advantageous that my savings should be invested in whatever quarter of the habitable globe shows the greatest marginal efficiency of capital or the highest rate of interest.
But experience is accumulating that remoteness between ownership and operation is an evil in the relations among men, likely or certain in the long run to set up strains and enmities which will bring to nought the financial calculation.
I sympathize, therefore, with those who would minimize, rather than with those who would maximize, economic entanglement among nations. Ideas, knowledge, science, hospitality, travel–these are the things which should of their nature be international. But let goods be homespun whenever it is reasonably and conveniently possible, and, above all, let finance be primarily national.
Yet, at the same time, those who seek to disembarrass a country of its entanglements should be very slow and wary. It should not be a matter of tearing up roots but of slowly training a plant to grow in a different direction.
For these strong reasons, therefore, I am inclined to the belief that, after the transition is accomplished, a greater measure of national self-sufficiency and economic isolation among countries than existed in 1914 may tend to serve the cause of peace, rather than otherwise. ”
———-
i believe that china wish’s to keep its surplus, and replace the U.S. at the same time. Keen is quite aware of what china is about to do, and he is warning them.
yet the smell of money from a trade surplus, and that also means no reforms, is just to strong for any country.
so just like after WWII, no bancor. instead i am thinking russia and china will use gold instead of a bancor, which will leave the U.S. in a unimaginable grinding poverty.
Truman repeatedly vetoed the coming free trade regime that again, reared its ugly head after WWII, we got Gatt from his veto’s, Gatt was voluntary, and allowed quota and tariffs. bill clinton destroyed Gatt, and replaced it with the W.T.O. FASCISM.
———
https://nader.org/1994/10/01/bill-clinton-and-gatt/
“He becomes the Arkansas hurricane when the global corporations give him his marching orders on the Uruguay Round of GATT (The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade). Then our President really gets his adrenaline up and successfully demands a special session of Congress after the election to approve this international autocratic regime, the World Trade Organization (WTO).”
and Keen knows it was bill clinton.
different clue
@Mario,
If the DC FedRegime decided to get that way nasty to Canada, Canada would have some ways to get just as nasty right back. Am I sure about that? No. But do I think the experiment would be worth performing just to see? Very strongly no.
capelin
capelin wrote, “But, they could blocade our coasts pretty easy, and sabotage society, and general goings on, in a lot of ways.”
‘A lot of ways’ could include tipping some Manchurian-esque loose cannon into bullshit.
“This stuff only happens in America…. we must be in America…”
Even if it’s just a wtf shock, it softens things up, like a flash-bang tossed into a room.
There’s lots of literature on Nudging and Phyc Manipulation of populations.
What kind of woman wears a skirt in Feb in northern Canada. On a mission.
different clue
For anyone interested in Maurice Strong, I remember reading many years ago a Rigorous Intuition blogpost about Maurice Strong. It still exists on the interwebs.
” Thursday, April 21, 2005
“Some people call me Maurice” ”
https://rigorousintuition.blogspot.com/2005/04/some-people-call-me-maurice.html
Bukko Boomeranger
There are other ways for the USinsanians to keep their grips on Canada besides invasion. Such as suborning the leaders there. People tend to think of Empire Geopolitics like it was a “Risk” board game with armies invading to take over territory. That’s messy and breaks things in the places that an empire wants to dominate, though. There’s no need for thousands of troops if there are a hundred muckety-moops who will jump through Unka Sam’s hoops. Not just the ones in government, although they’re important. It could also be business tycoons, finance maggots, “civil society” figures, media spokesholes, celebrities… Influencers! What they say, many will follow. All it takes is cash. Perhaps with a little kompromat on the compradors too.
So don’t be dreading the jackboot treading on your frostbitten face. It might be a bling-y finger and lipsticked mouth directing you. Glamour instead of gunfire. I could name two characters from a prairie province who have signed on already, except I’m not Canajun so that would be rude. But the Subservience Strategy has started. A kinder, gentler colonisation.
Like & Subscribe
Bukko, that was fabulous. Imaginative and clever. Very Hunter Thompsonesque.
I swear, we must be living in a simulation. As if made to order and well beyond coincidence and irony considering the current context and geopolitical climate, Canada experiences its worse mass shooting in its history and as fate would have it, it’s a tribute to Charlie Kirk considering his commentary about mass shootings and trans people.
different clue
Here is a visual meme-joke about Celsius versus Fahrenheit. The characters are officially flagged UK and US, but since Canada uses Celsius, maybe this is tangentially related for humorous relief.
From the PeterExplainsTheJoke subreddit.
” Petahh i’m low on iq ”
https://www.reddit.com/r/PeterExplainsTheJoke/comments/1r2unkc/petahh_im_low_on_iq/
( That is not actually the reason we use Fahrenheit degrees, though. We use them because they are Natural and Organic, as God made them; and as discovered by that Great American, Gustav Fahrenheit.)
different clue
Blockading Canada will get more difficult the more that global warming de-ices the Arctic Ocean in summer. During the ice-free summer Russia could move major amounts of stuff from Russia’s Arctic coast to Canada’s Arctic coast if the coming ice-free Arctic Ocean summers develop as expected. And EUrope could move all kinds of things from EUrope into Russia for Russia to move to Canada by that “over the top” route if the geopolitical ice floes grind around that way.
Kouros
How mny Canadians are living and working in the US? One million?! Plus the winter birds… There would be a lot of noise everywhere if the US would start to act really tough on Canada, a la Venezuela, Cuba, Russia, Iran, or N. Korea…
The gangster nature of the present administration would really come much clearer in the open.
eg
I am old enough to have been among those who opposed the original Free Trade agreement between Canada and the US. Having been right on that file is cold comfort now, but I am still with Ian. We need the US like a fish needs a bicycle …
different clue
I looked up ” relative abundance of potassium in earth’s crust” on search-engine and found this . . . among other things . . .
” Potassium is relatively abundant in the Earth’s crust, making up about 1.5% to 2.32% by weight.
Abundance Estimates
Potassium constitutes approximately 1.5% of the Earth’s crust by weight
.
Other estimates suggest an average abundance of around 2.32 weight percent
.
Occurrence
Potassium is primarily found in minerals such as feldspar and micas
.
It is often extracted from potash (KOH), which is mined in various locations including Germany and the USA
.
Significance
The presence of potassium is crucial for various geological processes and is a key nutrient in agriculture, influencing soil fertility and plant growth ”
So potassium is diffusely “abundant” but the potassium oxide ( potash) that is concentrated enough a source of potassium to be worth mining and using for manufacture potassium chemical formulations for mainstream agriculture is rare. And the mainstream agriculture sector which relies on potassium chemical formulations from mainly-Canada-sourced potassium ore ( potash) would be lost without it.
Would organic agriculture be lost without it? No. Organic agriculture already functions without it. Organic agriculture makes do with the low potassium levels already difusely spread thoughout many soils, and if increased or replacement inputs are needed, makes do with low-potassium-percentage rock-based sources like granite meal, greensand, etc.
If Canada embargoed potash to the US, which could happen given the current trend of events, then Organic agriculture would be the default US mainstream. Yields would go down, but not to zero. With zero artificially concentrated potassium inputs based on mined potash, would America be able to feed itself? I think so. Would America be able to grow the vast rivers of agribulk commodities it currently grows for export? Possibly not. I don’t know if “Organic Agriculture” could generate enough agribulk volume for big-to-huge exports. But given the ongoing “burndown of the customer base” being carried out by the TrumpAdmin and its thinking brain dogs, that could become irrelevant. What does a potassium-fed ability to grow agribulk commodities for export matter if there is zero overseas market left for those exports?
( A Canadian potash embargo would create a Hard Time for every American who is not pre-prepared in advance for such a possibility. Given that such an embargo would default-drive American agriculture over to default-Organic methods, the demand for American-mined low-percent-potassium rocks and minerals for grinding into powder and applying as-is to agriculture would drive the prices for granite meal, greensand, etc. way up. Maybe the 50 million American suburbanites who have a yard capable of supporting a garden should buy and stockpile a reasonable lifetime supply of granite meal, greensand, etc. starting now for the backyard gardens they really ought to be creating starting now . . . while they still can).