Lake Ontario is not named after the province

Truth Detector said:
Is there a point here.
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Sort of.

What Brad gets right​


The bilateral relationship is huge and integrated. 2025 goods trade was about $715 billion; goods-plus-services about $872 billion. The U.S. goods deficit with Canada was $48.3 billion; the U.S. services surplus was $27.7 billion. Net goods-and-services deficit was therefore much smaller than the goods-only number.


Canada is a critical energy supplier: a large share of U.S. crude imports, almost all pipeline natural-gas imports, and a big slice of NGLs and refined products. Americans buy that energy because it is next door, already piped into U.S. refiners built for heavy crude, and usually cheaper than the alternatives. That is comparative advantage, not theft.


Canada is also more export-dependent on the U.S. than the reverse. Roughly three-quarters of Canadian merchandise exports go south. That is leverage the U.S. already has, which is why tariff fights hurt Canada faster than they hurt the United States.


None of that is new, and none of it was denied. The earlier write-up said explicitly that trade balances alone do not prove “mooching,” that cheap Canadian energy and consumer gains are real, and that Canada remains the top destination for U.S. goods.


What it does not refute​


The original claim was not “Canada sells us oil, therefore Canada is ripping us off.” It was that Canada keeps high, politically protected walls around specific sectors while enjoying open access to the U.S. market and the U.S. security umbrella.


Those walls are still there:


  • Dairy. Supply management plus 200–300% over-quota tariffs. U.S. tariff-free access is a few percent of the Canadian market. The July 2026 proclamations cited Canada giving EU cheese better TRQ treatment under CETA than U.S. cheese under USMCA (retailers eligible in one system, blocked in the other). That is a discrimination claim, not a deficit claim.
  • Softwood lumber. Multi-decade subsidy/CVD fight over Crown-land stumpage. Duties were raised again in 2025. Energy math does not settle it.
  • Autos and alcohol. The 22% drop in U.S. vehicle exports to Canada in the cited window, plus provincial liquor-board pullbacks of U.S. product, were the other two justifications for the Section 338 list. Voluntary purchase of Canadian cars does not answer why U.S. cars faced extra friction going the other way.

“Outside energy the U.S. runs a surplus” is a useful decomposition, not a rebuttal. The protected sectors are small relative to oil, which is exactly why Ottawa can keep them: the pain of opening dairy or changing lumber rules is concentrated and political; the benefit of selling energy into the U.S. is large and diffuse. That is how sectoral protectionism works.


“We could just stop buying” is true in theory and false as policy. Midwest and Gulf refiners are configured for Canadian heavy barrels. Replacing them with lighter seaborne crude is slower, costlier, and sometimes worse for those plants. Dependence can be two-way even when one country is smaller.


What the post ignores​


The original opinion was Canada and Europe. Brad’s reply is Canada-only. The EU goods surplus with the U.S. is several times larger than Canada’s, and the long-standing list—auto tariff gap, ag NTBs, digital taxes, CAP, VAT border adjustment—was not addressed at all.


Defense burden-sharing was also left out. That was part of the narrower “free-riding” frame: market access plus the U.S. security umbrella while allies protect sensitive industries and, for years, undershot NATO spending targets.


Bottom line​


Brad shows that the headline deficit is a weak way to describe U.S.–Canada trade. Agreed. That was already in the first answer.


He does not show that Canadian dairy TRQs, lumber stumpage, auto/alcohol restrictions, or the EU goods-side barriers are imaginary. Those are the practices the “mooched off of us on trade” line is actually pointing at. Energy interdependence and a services surplus explain why the overall relationship is valuable. They do not erase the sectoral fights that produced the current tariff round.
 
Jarod said:
NOTICE: I just signed an order changing the name of Mar-A-Lago, to Fuck-Head-Village. I have as much authority to change names as the POTUS.
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43 U.S.C. §§ 364–364f (the 1947 law that created the Board on Geographic Names and gave the Secretary of the Interior conjoint authority with the Board). Jewell used a Secretarial Order because the Board had sat on Alaska’s 1975 petition for decades.

The Great Satan Trump’s 27 August 2026 executive order directs the current Secretary, “in coordination with the Board on Geographic Names and consistent with 43 U.S.C. 364 through 364f,” to update the Geographic Names Information System within 30 days.

That is the same federal-usage database and the same statutory hook. An EO telling a cabinet secretary to exercise an authority Congress already gave that secretary is ordinary executive practice; it is how the Gulf of America change was done in 2025 as well.

Now, cite your enabling authority, Brad.

:rofl2:
 
Jarod said:
Canada sells the United States a lot of things the United States actually needs—especially energy and raw materials—and then spends a huge amount of that money buying American goods and services.

In 2025, the U.S. bought $381.9 billion in Canadian goods and sold Canada $333.6 billion in goods, producing a U.S. goods deficit of about $48.3 billion. That sounds large until you put it into context. The two countries conducted roughly $715 billion in goods trade and $872 billion in goods and services trade in 2025. That's an enormous integrated economy, not a situation where Canada is simply "selling to America and taking American money."

services​

The U.S. actually runs a $27.7 billion services surplus with Canada.
Americans sold Canadians $92.3 billion in services in 2025 while Canadians sold Americans $64.5 billion.
This is actually a goods surplus. The United States has a services surplus. Look at the entire trading relationship.
That's a much more sophisticated way of looking at it.

Energy

Canada is extraordinarily important to the U.S. energy system. In 2025, Canada supplied:
  • 63.4% of U.S. crude-oil imports
  • almost 100% of U.S. natural-gas imports
  • 24.9% of refined petroleum-product imports
  • 97.9% of U.S. NGL imports
Canada exported $157.5 billion worth of crude oil, refined petroleum products, natural gas and natural-gas liquids to the United States in 2025.
"We're not being ripped off because Canada sells us oil. We're buying a commodity we want from the largest foreign supplier sitting directly next door." Canadian oil doesn't have to travel halfway around the world. It moves through an integrated North American pipeline and refining system.

Dependence

Canada is more dependent on the United States than the United States is on Canada. In 2025, 71.7% of Canada's merchandise exports went to the United States. Meanwhile, Canada accounted for roughly 14% of total U.S. goods exports and imports combined. That's an enormous asymmetry. If Canada were deliberately "taking advantage" of America through trade, you'd expect the smaller country to have tremendous leverage over the larger one.

In reality, Canada has an enormous economic incentive to maintain access to the American market.

And the recent tariff fight demonstrates that vulnerability.

"What exactly is Canada doing to the United States that we couldn't simply stop buying?"

Canada isn't forcing Americans to purchase Canadian products.
Americans voluntarily purchase:
  • Canadian oil
  • natural gas
  • electricity
  • automobiles and parts
  • lumber
  • metals
  • agricultural products
  • minerals
because American businesses and consumers find those products useful or competitive.
That's what trade is.

A trade deficit doesn't automatically mean the other country is "winning."

Canada buys an enormous amount from us​

Canadian consumers and businesses buy:
  • American machinery
  • computers and electronics
  • automobiles
  • aircraft
  • chemicals
  • pharmaceuticals
  • agricultural products
  • financial services
  • travel and tourism
  • professional services
  • entertainment and intellectual property
And the U.S. services surplus demonstrates that Americans are extremely successful at selling higher-value services to Canada.
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Try to imagine, if you can, Canada stopping the billions in sales to the US. What do you think will happen halfwit? ;)
 
Truth Detector said:
Try to imagine, if you can, Canada stopping the billions in sales to the US. What do you think will happen halfwit?
Click to expand...


Does Brad know that Canada's total GDP is exceeded by:

  • California: ~$4.25 trillion
  • Texas: ~$2.90 trillion
  • New York: ~$2.47 trillion
  • Florida: ~$1.84 trillion
  • Illinois: ~$1.20 trillion
  • Pennsylvania: ~$1.06 trillion

:rofl2:
 
Diogenes said:
Does Brad know that Canada's total GDP is exceeded by:

  • California: ~$4.25 trillion
  • Texas: ~$2.90 trillion
  • New York: ~$2.47 trillion
  • Florida: ~$1.84 trillion
  • Illinois: ~$1.20 trillion
  • Pennsylvania: ~$1.06 trillion

:rofl2:
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No, Brad doesn't know much of anything as evidenced by all his moronic threads and posts. ;)
 
The whole idea of renaming things is stupid and wasteful. It is a distraction. It is nearly meaningless except for the waste of money and energy. Trump is good at creating a fog.
 
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