Summary
Canada is preparing to retaliate against Donald Trump’s proposed 25% tariffs on Canadian imports, which could trigger the largest trade war between the nations in decades.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau promised counter-tariffs worth $37 billion, with potential for further measures, depending on Trump’s final order.
Canadian officials warn the tariffs could harm both economies, disrupting key sectors like automotive, energy, and agriculture.
Labor leaders expressed concerns over job losses and urged collaboration. Canada hopes to avoid tariffs by highlighting their mutual economic impact to U.S. lawmakers.
I love long-discredited economic ideas making a comeback. As someone who studied Econ, it’s just peachy seeing people vote to be poorer because no one remembers the last 50 times this was tried and didn’t work.
Please, everyone read about the 1800s. I’m not completely hostile to crypto but so many crypto people are like, “What if we had a ‘free banking’ era? Surely, there’s no downside.” And you just slam your fist on the table and say “Please read one AP American history book. An actual textbook, not a YouTube video. I’m not a particle physicist because I watch PBS Space Time.”
Could you give me a quick summation of why a free banking era is a bad thing and how it relates to the 1800s?
Not trying to start an argument, just genuinely curious
So, essentially, every bank was issuing its own currency. But banks fail all the time. And no one knew what was real money. I’m saying this on Lemmy so I’m clearly for distributed things but cash money needs a central bank, for trust reasons. Gold is a stable element so it was that for centuries but it also led to horrible things. Like an entire hemisphere dying of smallpox.
So, long story short, after WWII. we settled on the U.S. dollar, which was then pegged to gold. Eventually, Nixon decided to unpeg it from gold. Which was fine because gold was arbitrary. We could have pegged it to any element on the periodic table. Bretton Woods is what to google to read more.
So, what is the dollar backed by now? Mostly the U.S. Navy and trust built over time. It’s not perfect. America has never defaulted on its debts and you can exchange dollars for local currency at any airport. The independence of the U.S. central bank is a big reason. But if you’re writing a contract for a global deal, you use dollars. If Argentina wants to buy something from Vietnam, the contract uses dollars.
In the 1800’s, there was no agreed upon currency. Banks made their own currencies. And it was a catastrophe.
Basically, if you go buy dope, the dope man isn’t taking foreign currency except maybe U.S. dollars. Euros are probably fine but the dope man isn’t taking shit that can’t be changed into local currency. He’s got bills to pay too.
American dollars have value for irrational reasons but they have proved the test of time.
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the principal hypothesis of the bitcoin experiment is that a central ledger and issuer is not actually necessary, and it’s still going strong
central banks are a hell of a lot better than the hodgepodge that arose in the 1800s, but it’s not proven that they will outlast an adequately designed decentralized implementation (whether it’s bitcoin or something else)
there are plenty of problems down the road for bitcoin, but there are arguably more for central banks. can a centralized currency survive the failure of its backing empire?
I think it’s a bit late to tell people to look up why this won’t work, especially on Lemmy.
Everyone here knows Trump is not going to be good for the economy and can’t or won’t do anything about it.