I think whether or not Canada agrees to the terms finalized to the US-MX agreement is irrelevant now.

From the last developments, it seems that Trump doesn't give a rat ass to even WTO if it doesn't fit its agenda as its member countries aren't doing shit on the China aspect.

It wouldn't surprise me one bit if US announces that it's dropping out of WTO and starts something else entirely. Rumors already float on the market about a new alliance between US, EU and JP to combat the frustration with WTO regarding China. US has the muscle needed to take EU/JP with it and wtf would WTO be if those countries aren't part of it? It would cease to matter.

The world trade is now in an uncharted territory where US is flexing its muscles to bring us closer to the economics theoretical perfect market (where there are 0 market barrier and each country or player concentrate at what they do best). Quite frankly, I wouldn't want Canada to be on the other side of the fence.

https://www.cnn.com/2018/08/27/polit...eal/index.html

Trump has repeatedly indicated he would prefer to reach bilateral agreements with Canada and Mexico, but the two countries have maintained a united front that a trilateral agreement is the only one they will sign. There was no indication on Monday that Mexico had abandoned that position.
Instead, the Mexican President Enrique Peña-Nieto, who joined Trump in the Oval Office by speakerphone, emphasized three times the importance of Canada joining the burgeoning agreement.
"I desire, I wish that the part with Canada will be materializing in a very concrete fashion, and we can have an agreement the way we proposed it from the initiation of this renegotiating process, a tripartite," Peña-Nieto said through a translator.

So trump had a press conference to announce a deal that doesn’t exist and can’t exist unless NAFTA is abandoned completely. I’ll give him points for showmanship (minus the telephone debacle) and knowing that the average American can’t fuckin tell the difference I guess.

Cue sea lion clapping for fish.

It's rather pointless for the US to start something new outside of WTO, esp if China is one of the reasons to do so. The proper thing to do would have been to pursue the explusion of China from the WTO. There are already good, strong reasons to do so, and pursuing it would yield far more political and economic ammunition to bring China down to its knees, and bow to the US' / Trump's will.

Sen. McCain is a role model not just in GOP but in the greater political sphere

this is someone who honours war ethics and morals to death if need be

basically refused his own release when the North Vietnamese found out his dad was a Navy admiral...as a result he endured 4 more years of unspeakable torture just so other PoW captured before him can see release

he stood for what he believed in right up to his death in the ninth decade of his life...an absolute trooper
Manic! along with the majority in this thread won't be having any of that
and Trudeau rather buy Oz scrap metal to replace our dinosaur warplanes than to deal with corporate America LUL

McCain's war story sounds pretty horrible and couldn't imagine going through it and staying until the people captured before him were released.

From rolling stone
https://www.rollingstone.com/politic...shrub-194272/:

You probably already know what happened. In October of ’67 McCain was himself still a Young Voter and flying his 23rd Vietnam combat mission and his A-4 Skyhawk plane got shot down over Hanoi and he had to eject, which basically means setting off an explosive charge that blows your seat out of the plane, which ejection broke both McCain’s arms and one leg and gave him a concussion and he started falling out of the skies right over Hanoi. Try to imagine for a second how much this would hurt and how scared you’d be, three limbs broken and falling toward the enemy capital you just tried to bomb. His chute opened late and he landed hard in a little lake in a park right in the middle of downtown Hanoi, Imagine treading water with broken arms and trying to pull the life vest’s toggle with your teeth as a crowd of Vietnamese men swim out toward you (there’s film of this, somebody had a home – movie camera, and the N.V. government released it, though it’s grainy and McCain’s face is hard to see). The crowd pulled him out and then just about killed him. U.S. bomber pilots were especially hated, for obvious reasons. McCain got bayoneted in the groin; a soldier broke his shoulder apart with a rifle butt. Plus by this time his right knee was bent 90-degrees to the side with the bone sticking out. Try to imagine this. He finally got tossed on a jeep and taken five blocks to the infamous Hoa Lo prison – a.k.a. the “Hanoi Hilton,” of much movie fame – where they made him beg a week for a doctor and finally set a couple of the fractures without anesthetic and let two other fractures and the groin wound (imagine: groin wound) stay like they were. Then they threw him in a cell. Try for a moment to feel this. All the media profiles talk about how McCain still can’t lift his arms over his head to comb his hair, which is true. But try to imagine it at the time, yourself in his place, because it’s important. Think about how diametrically opposed to your own self-interest getting knifed in the balls and having fractures set without painkiller would be, and then about getting thrown in a cell to just lie there and hurt, which is what happened. He was delirious with pain for weeks, and his weight dropped to 100 pounds, and the other POWs were sure he would die; and then after a few months like that after his bones mostly knitted and he could sort of stand up they brought him in to the prison commandant’s office and offered to let him go. This is true. They said he could just leave. They had found out that McCain’s father was one of the top-ranking naval officers in the U.S. Armed Forces (which is true – both his father and grandfather were admirals), and the North Vietnamese wanted the PR coup of mercifully releasing his son, the baby-killer. McCain, 100 pounds and barely able to stand, refused, The U.S. military’s Code of Conduct for Prisoners of War apparently said that POWs had to be released in the order they were captured, and there were others who’d been in Hoa Lo a long time, and McCain refused to violate the Code. The commandant, not pleased, right there in the office had guards break his ribs, rebreak his arm, knock his teeth out. McCain still refused to leave without the other POWs. And so then he spent four more years in Hoa Lo like this, much of the time in solitary, in the dark, in a closet-sized box called a “punishment cell.” Maybe you’ve heard all this before; it’s been in umpteen different media profiles of McCain. But try to imagine that moment between getting offered early release and turning it down.

And according to trump he is not a hero. Thump had the white hose flag raised after a couple of days. Then lowered it to half mast again after some veterans organizations gave him shit.

Honestly I was not a big fan of McCain as a politician. He voted against MLK Day and giving Sarah Palin a platform.

A draft dodger claiming that a POW is not a war hero, esp when this POW refused to leverage his family / military ties for an earlier release. I think the draft dodger can fxxking go to hell.

It is disgusting that this draft dodger is also the Commander in Chief now. I know if I were a US soldier in any capacity, I'd be thoroughly disgusted about that. FailFish

McCain definitely had issues... ironically, the biggest hero America has ever known (my opinion) is the result of immigration (hah!) because he's a Japanese guy!!... you guys know the HNL Daniel K. Inouye airport on Oahu? Did you ever look up who he was and what his history is?

You can't invent a bigger American war hero than this guy... it's an incredible read, one of the toughest bastards that ever lived. Picture this man... and then picture Trump in your head... Trump's an absolute embarrassment to humanity in comparison to a guy like Inouye:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel...1%E2%80%931947)

^Yup was in Hawaii when he passed away, the guy was a legend there. His WWII battle story is freaking amazing. If it was a fictional Hollywood movie it would be dismissed as "unrealistic".

The problem is that WTO has very little exit clause unless the member chooses to do so.

US, or at least the Trump administration has clearly shown its frustration with WTO when it comes to dealing with China. And EU, at least major members like Germany, England and France are showing some allegiance to US ideologies (you can see how fast Germany reached a framework deal with US on automobile sector).

Hence, I think the rumor of US starting a new alliance between countries with common values is not without ground. Should it really pull the trigger, WTO will have little incentives for major economies like JP, EU or even Australia to stick with WTO if US is indeed pulling out of it.

I'm just worried about Trudeau being too stubborn to stick with the wrong side. Our economy is far too dependent on the US to go against it. It's not about any US supremacy or anything, it's just a realistic view of our economy. I'd love Canada to diversify its dependence on US, but realistically speaking, it's going to be hard, if not impossible, to go the other direction.

I take a different view on the WTO issue. While the US might pull out (under Trump), I am very skeptical that Japan, EU, and Australia / New Zealand will leave as well. EU member countries have started showing signs of caution in their dealings with China, most notably when it comes to Chinese money further buying up their resources and businesses. But the fact remains that much has already been bought up, and businesses (eg. Mercedes) have continued to show a tremendous apetite to woo the Chinese market. Britain, the ever pragmatic country in Europe, will not hesitate engage China if there is money to be made. Brexit will almost certainly strike a heavy financial blow to UK, so I suspect they wouldn't easily reduce their dealings with China if China can continue to serve as a stable source of revenue.

Australia and New Zealand are pretty much two partially annexed oversea Chinese states now. The level of Chinese inflitration / penetration throughout the countries is unreal. In Australia at least, there are factions that are trying to resist the growing Chinese influence, but it is difficult to tell what will happen.

To me, all of that means even if the US leaves the WTO and starts something new, other countries may join the new body without leaving WTO. For all of its rights and wrongs, it isn't Iran, and Trump / US can't threaten to severe all business dealings with a country if that said country continues to engage in business activities with China. So what good does it do for the US if they simply exclude China from trading with them? IMO, they (the US) can leverage the threat of excluding China better than they can actually kicking China out.

And here we go.

https://www.bloomberg.com/amp/news/a...don-t-shape-up

He is just worried about the mid terms from what I have read. He wants a deal before they happen.

Didn't agree with a lot of McCain's politics or views, but I think he was a great guy overall and a patriot who put the good of his country above himself. Especially enduring the pain and torture that he did for the sake of upholding the values he thought were important. I think this clip below highlights the kind of person McCain was.


Personally I could never see Trump doing a thing like that...

Trump would have agreed with her.

He's taking a lot of flack for that clip from ultra-lefties for saying "He's not Arab, he's a decent man" which they say implies arabs aren't decent men/people.......... smh, can't say anything in public anymore without someone trying to construe it.

Also from ultra-AzN priders (is that still a thing?) who admonish him for referring to his captors as "gooks" but overlook the fact that he was instrumental in re-establishing ties with Vietnam in the 90s. :squint:

btw what happened to the :crazy: emoji?

Well... aren't we off to yet another excellent start on NAFTA talks today?

https://www.thestar.com/news/world/2...th-canada.html

Fuck you, Trump. That is all I have to say. FUCK YOU!

I like how he's proud of the Impala :pokerface:

IMO the Impala is decent ammunition for Trump because it is mostly a fleet special, so normal (US) people won't be buying it, and thus wouldn't really be affected much even if it were to get slapped wiht hefty tariffs. On the other hand, the non-sale of Impala would likely cause production to be halted, and that would deal a heavy blow to those at the GM factory in Oshawa.

But really, when one party is entering the negotiations in bad faith, what point is there in continuing to talk?

maybe instead of virtue signalling after g7, trudeau should have kept his yap shut and tried to work out a deal.
oh well, his popularity spiked for like 2 days so it was well worth it.

Maybe trump should not be so sensitive.

maybe we'll just watch our economy tank.

He's acting like a baby. I think he needs a safe zone where his feeling won't get hurt.

And watch what happens next time they need our help.