The Imperial Presidency, Part 2

[robkelk]

renamings...

Trump signs order to rename Lake Ontario as 'Lake America'

Carney pushes back on move, says Canadians will call it Lake Ontario 'now and always'

The international border divides the lake in a way that makes the USA the minority holder, so there's some question as to whether he can do that internationally.


It's finally time to rename Ottawa's Trump Avenue, councillor says

The Central Park neighbourhood has several streets with New York City-themed names such as Staten Way and Grammercy Park.

People who actually live there get to vote on any name change. It affects them the most, after all.


As long as people are making name changes all around, I'm calling a particular famous workplace the "Oval Playpen" from now on. Nobody can stop me making the rename.

[Labster]

As New York's governor Kathy Hochul pointed out, the new mnemonic to remember the lakes is:

S uperior
H uron
A merica
M ichigan
E rie

So now when our kids are trying to learn the lakes, they can feel SHAME, too.  Okay, there's one more word in there, AHEMS.  As in, "Ahem, ahem.  Nice economy you got there, it would be a shame if something happened to it."  Since Trump doesn't have shame in his vocabulary (but there is a picture of him in the DSM under 'narcissism'), I imagine we'll be going with the second version.

Vox published a recent article about the roots of the trade war.  Essentially asking: which constituencies actually wanted the trade war with Canada.  It may surprise you to learn that the answer to that is "basically no one".  No one in the U.S.A. seems to actually want this.  There are lots of folks who want a trade war with China, in hopes of onshoring manufacturing, but against Canada, no one actually thinks it's a good idea.  So it has to come from Trump himself.

So, what's this all about, then?  Certainly, the shambolic negotiation of our administration had a little to do with it.  When the word omnishambles was coined to describe the implementation of Brexit, I don't think they truly saw the depths of shambolism that we now see in the U.S., in which every portion of the national government seems to be ineffective at everything.  But I suspect that the negotiations were set up to fail.  The pill was always going to be too bitter to swallow at the end.

Had Canada accepted the agreement, they would essentially have handed trade authority over their nation to Washington, with a clause that Trump could raise tariffs later after the agreement anyway.  Such an agreement was an unacceptable loss of sovereignty to Ottawa, and for good reason.

What we're left with is loss of sovereignty for Canada is the end goal here.  They could have taken the easy way out, and voluntarily reduced their autonomy, but barring that: begun, the trade wars have.  Trump has always been clear about one thing: if Canada joins the United States, the state of Canada will have no tariffs with the other states.  (With the rest of the world, of course there will be tariffs, but who cares about that?)  That's the way to end the trade war, and likely the only way with the current status.  If Democrats are allowed to take office next January, maybe it changes that way.  But barring that, Canada will need to submit to the U.S. in one way or another, becoming a protectorate, or a puppet, or joining as an actual state.

After all, Trump changed the map to Lake America with a Sharpie.  That's permanent. Can't be undone.  Renaming a lake isn't something you do to win a trade war, but it is something you do if want to wipe a country off the map. Allegiance or death, that's the choice.