Grab 'Em By the Beaver

I know I covered the US - Canada trade tussle a few days ago, and I promise no more unless Trump renames Crown Royal Whiskey.

But I wanted to touch on a couple of things that jumped out at me. As I pulled out for a 10,000-foot look at the issue, one thing has been lost in all the details of dairy limitations and the price of hockey sticks.

How do you have trade parity with a country and economy that are so much smaller than ours?

The population of Canada is roughly 1/6th of ours. The Canadian economy in Gross Domestic Product terms is $2.3 trillion. Ours is $30 trillion.

Expecting a smaller country and much smaller population to buy as much of our stuff as we do of theirs is nuts. Especially if they have something we want and have the wherewithal to buy. If anything, it's a tribute to the buying power of this country, not some Machiavellian scheme to "rip us off."

I have a trade deficit with Walmart since they haven't bought a thing from me. I even give them back their plastic bags. Am I being ripped off?

Here is a breakdown of our trade partners and how much more we buy than sell to them...

We have twice as large a trade deficit with Ireland!

This is the product of a deal fashioned by these very guys in Trump's first term. If they didn't like it, why did they sign it? Irony is dead because the President took it out to the middle of 5th Avenue and shot it.

It has become painfully obvious that the guy who went bankrupt 6 times just doesn't understand how business works.

Add in this childish fixation with creating A-I cartoons or fake films to troll political opponents and what should be serious international negotiations turn into a scene out of "Mean Girls."

The UK is lucky we have a surplus with them or he might change the language from "English" to "American." Take that, Charles!

And now our Defense Secretary has decided it's a good idea, and befitting the office, to post a photo trolling the entire Canadian armed forces.

Oh, and Whiskey Pete wants to be President, it's rumored. And of course, Trump has added to the Constitutional requirements for the Oval Office, "35 years old, native born, good with AI, and experienced internet troll." There's an executive order on that coming soon.

The big beneficiary of our Idiocracy is China. The Chinese GDP is 2/3 the size of ours, but its buying power is greater because its goods and cost of living are cheaper.

While we drain our military stockpiles in Iran, China builds cars and now basically controls the EV market.

We pay companies not to build solar or wind projects because Trump thinks it's the 1940's, yet China is the world's largest investor in renewable energy, committing over $625 billion annually and driving more than 90% of its recent domestic economic investment growth through green tech.

China accounts for roughly 31% of global clean energy investment. They achieved their 2030 wind and solar capacity target of 1,200 GW six years early, in 2024, installing more solar panels and wind turbines than the rest of the world combined.

Clean energy manufacturing, infrastructure, and exports generated trillions of yuan, accounting for over 11% of China's gross domestic product.

But we have clean coal, right?

Look, while this clown car of an administration is busy insulting our allies, our enemies are eating our lunch. While we're worried about what Kristen Welker said on NBC, longtime friends to the north are literally saying "kiss my ass."

Again, to paraphrase the great Brian Cox in the TV series "Succession"...

"These are not serious people."