The Commonwealth is booming – it's time to embrace free trade with the Anglosphere

White_Unifier said:

So what? If we say that it's not worth developing trade relations with a country unless it's our main trading partner, then we might as well trade only with the US and close our borders to the rest.

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The countries you are courting all have the products Canada is (could) offer. We export raw materials and import finished products.
We can open them up but how do you force people to come to you. Why would they when we let Venezuelans starve to death because the US and the IMF are pissed at them. Why would anybody want to deal with Canada, a two faced nation.

MHz said:

The countries you are courting all have the products Canada is (could) offer. We export raw materials and import finished products.
We can open them up but how do you force people to come to you. Why would they when we let Venezuelans starve to death because the US and the IMF are pissed at them. Why would anybody want to deal with Canada, a two faced nation.

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But if the other country could produce those products more efficiently than Canada could, it would then make economic sense for Canada to let them do what they do best and Canada do what it does best.

Let's learn from Mussolini's battle for wheat. Before he came to power, Italy produced all kinds of agricultural products for export and then imported wheat simply because that worked more efficiently.

Mussolini decided that Italy had to become more self-sufficient and so enacted policies to increase wheat production. Though he succeeded, Italy actually became poorer for it because it couldn't produce the wheat as efficiently as other countries did and since it had to shift resources towards wheat, its production and exportation of products that it could produce more efficiently declined. If Coldstream were PM, he'd probably make the same mistake as Mussolini did if I know him as well as I think I do.

Blackleaf said:

Australia is Canada's 18th-largest trading partner.

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Already covered.

Blackleaf said:

Yes, it does.
No, it's because most of them were once part of the British Empire.

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No, it's because they embraced free trade among other things. Hong Kong and Singapore have among the most open borders in the world and on a per capita basis, they make even the UK seem like a third-world backwater.

White_Unifier said:

But if the other country could produce those products more efficiently than Canada could, it would then make economic sense for Canada to let them do what they do best and Canada do what it does best.

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Memo update, the people we are trying to hit up to buy our products already have suppliers. We only hit up countries that are not under some sort of US trade sanctions.

If we are going to make money we will import what the US has sanctions on and sell it to the US a a Canadian product.

Reality check, the global stock market has one corporation that owns more than all the rest combined.


Oil from Venezuela is cheaper than from the KSA, we import from the KSA as they buy weapons from us that we buy from NATO partners. You do get the part where we cannot sell food to a nation with starving people in it because we are apart of NATO right. NATO is at war with China so why would China make a NATO member richer??

The bottom 300 miles of Canada belongs to the US, always has and always will. The border was put there or no settlers could have been convinced to move her and kill all the original owners.
30M people since 1500AD while the US is 300+M who is the boss? Our only prospect is to the south, Central America and south but we aren't allowed to as that is designated as US controlled and if they wanted to the place could be thriving it would be. They are kept that way as an example of what revolt will bring and the less poor people there are the more coins for the Merchants pockets.


Capitalism is the only cloud with no silver lining.

comparing hong kong or singapore to canada is ridiculous.

Bahrain is a better place to use as the model. Not sure if the troops are ready to use tanks on taxpayers yet.

Hoid said:

comparing hong kong or singapore to canada is ridiculous.

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What advantage does Hong Kong which has practically no natural resources whatsoever have over Canada other than maybe more sun for solar panels (but little space in which to park them) and... good policy.

how do you compare a place with no natural resources to a place that has them?

there is literally nothing to compare between the two countries so why are you trying to do it?

They are a gateway to all the products 'made in China'. Due to the past that is as close as 'the West' is allowed to get to the mainland. NK is the 'break-away State' that would go to war with the US 'before China became involved'. Once the US Navy leaves both SK and NK will be protected by China and become the new port as volume will increase that much. Iron ingots and NG will allow them to build the delivery ships 'in-house'.

If we don't deliver the same goods to South America that Africa has access to via China and India they will do it rather than SA are left out.

Hoid said:

how do you compare a place with no natural resources to a place that has them?
there is literally nothing to compare between the two countries so why are you trying to do it?

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Wouldn't a country with access to resources even enjoy an advantage over one that doesn't? In other words, if Canada adopted a policy parallel to Hong Kong's or Singapore's, Canada should easily outperform them. Given how they are outperforming us in spite of our advantage should embarrass us.

Hoid said:

how do you compare a place with no natural resources to a place that has them?

there is literally nothing to compare between the two countries so why are you trying to do it?

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Think of it as China's version of Amazon shopping. When it says 'China' it has been purchased in that location and the warehouse is elsewhere in China.

White_Unifier said:

Wouldn't a country with access to resources even enjoy an advantage over one that doesn't? In other words, if Canada adopted a policy parallel to Hong Kong's or Singapore's, Canada should easily outperform them. Given how they are outperforming us in spite of our advantage should embarrass us.

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there is no comparison social/economically/geographically/politically or in any way between Canada and Hong Kong or Singapore.

there is no logical basis to believe that something that works in one would work in the other.

your conjecture is ridiculous

Hoid said:

there is no comparison social/economically/geographically/politically or in any way between Canada and Hong Kong or Singapore.
there is no logical basis to believe that something that works in one would work in the other.
your conjecture is ridiculous

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Fifty years ago, both Hong Kong and Singapore were much poorer than Canada on a per capita basis. Now they're both much wealthier and with few resources to speak of to boot. We most certainly can learn from their example.

nothing they do applies to us. nothing we do applies to them.

apples and oranges

Hoid said:

nothing they do applies to us. nothing we do applies to them.
apples and oranges

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I never said our situations are identical, but we can still learn from them. After all, they still eat, sleep and shit like the rest of us. The basic laws of economics still stand. We can still observe that countries with more open borders tend to prosper more whereas more protectionist ones tend to stagnate more.

Many countries are richer than Hong Kong and Singapore.

Why not look at those?

Hoid said:

Many countries are richer than Hong Kong and Singapore.
Why not look at those?

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With regards to wealth per capita, the International Monetary Fund ranks Singapore fourth; the World Bank, third, and the Central Intelligence Agency, fifth.

The International Monetary Fund ranks Hong Kong tenth if it were an independent state; The World Bank, tenth; and the CIA,twelvth.

sure some states are wealthier, but generally either because they have oil resources (Qatar), they exploit the gambling industry (Macao), or have more land resources (Luxemburg).

Might there be a better model than Hong Kong and Singapore? We can always debate it, but they certainly rank high up there. Canada ranks 22nd, 22nd, and 25th respectively, and that's in spite of our natural resources, land resources, and legal gambling industry.

Hong Kong and Singapore both allow gambling, but regulate it far more strictly through self-exclusion rules than Canada or Macao do for example.