There’s no reason that a Canadian app store would have to confine itself to Canadian software authors, either. Canadian app stores could offer 5% commissions on sales to US and global software authors, and provide jailbreaking kits that allows device owners all around the world to install the Canadian app stores where software authors don’t get ripped off by American Big Tech companies.
Canadian companies like Honeybee already make “front-ends” for John Deere tractors – these are the components that turn a tractor into a plow, or a thresher, or another piece of heavy agricultural equipment. Honeybee struggles constantly to get its products to interface with Deere tractors, because Deere uses digital locks to block its products:
Canada could produce jailbreaking kits for John Deere tractors, too – not just for Honeybee. Every ag-tech company in the world would benefit from commercially available, professionally supported John Deere jailbreaking kits. So would farmers, because these kits would restore farmers’ Right to Repair their own tractors:
This is the ultimate “break glass in case of fire” situation. US elites make a ton of their money from IP, and breaking it would hurt them extremely. It’s something I thought Russia could do in the face of American sanctions, but why not Canada? If the US won’t keep its deals with us, any deals we have with it are ours to break.
And Doctorow’s right that this is the perfect retaliation: any sort of exit-tariffs or retaliatory tariffs hurt Canada too. This just hurts the US, and hurts the decision makers, not ordinary people. Heck, many of them might benefit.
To make this really work, and make sure the population backs it, share half the profits with Canadians: just split them evenly.
If the US wants Canada to not be its good ally, then why not become a semi-neutral country? We can sell to the US and China and Europe, and become a data haven.
The other, less fun, but very devastating thing to do is to cut off raw crude. US refineries are reliant on Canadian crude oil, and by about a month after Canada doing so there would be absolute shortages of gasoline in half of America. Not “the price is high”, but “we don’t have it.” Canada can handle this for a few months. Just cover the company losses and insist they keep paying workers until we say otherwise.
Finally, and obviously, all countries being hit my Trump tariffs should get together, support each other and work to hurt the US and Trump as much as possible. Trump’s handed us allies, we should use them.
someofparts
I am the only person I know in real life who has protected myself from being car-dependent. In fact, people in this place protect themselves from the rabble in the city by moving to remote locales where even a trip to the supermarket is a forty-mile round trip. And that is forty miles in a gas-guzzling SUV or big truck.
I hate to say it, but in the face of a shock like that, Trump might be able to persuade my foolish, foolish, fascist, fascist fellow citizens to launch some kind of invasion of you guys, Ian. I used to think I would spend my sunset years in a double-wide, but who knows, maybe instead I will spend them in an internment camp for reading this website.
KT Chong
The UK had always been hostile and unfriendly towards China. Yet, last week when UK Chancellor Rachel Reeves went to China to ask for a bailout for the sinking UK economy, China was willing to give £600 million to the UK. Obviously China asked for something in return for the money. My guess is: China wanted the UK to open its market for Chinese EVs.
Canada is welcomed to do the same and use China to leverage against Trump; and Canadians will benefit from Chinese EVs that are superior and more affordable than cars by America, Japan and Germany.
Oakchair
Just break the IP laws
—–
Without government enforcing monopolies causing products to cost several 1,000% our society would collapse into communism. Bread lines, Pravda, homelessness, ugly hats, comrade. The Creators need more of the useless eaters wealth or they wont create. And the useless eaters need less money so they don’t procreate.
david lamy
Jailbreaking the DMCA also helps us hostages that reside in the USA.
Shutting down the tar sands pipelines helps the whole damn globe too. I hope this happens because this is the drastic beginning that leads to the net zero emissions goals.
Imagine Trump, the asshole, unintentionally becoming an environmentalist.
If the tar sands delivery do cease Trump will bluster. My advice to Canadians is to hang tough. Trump does not read history and is doomed to repeat a previous unsuccessful invasion.
john prester
Half of Los Angeles burnt down. No BC lumber – no rebuilding…
Soredemos
How do these scenarios not just end with Canada actually getting annexed?
And in that case, and I know Welsh is all rah rah patriotic Canadian and thinks a robust insurgency will develope, but watch as it doesn’t and Canadians just submit to being made Americans, though they’ll grumble a bunch and have genuine outrage over the shittification of their healthcare. The French Canadians might do something, it’d just give them an excuse.
Purple Library Guy
Um, isn’t the US reliant on Canadian crude oil to feed the refineries that make the gasoline and diesel . . . that we then buy back from the Americans? Does Canada have refineries of our own? I’m just saying, I can see some potential consequences here. (Also, we should have built refineries of our own, with a Crown corporation if necessary)
Cory Doctorow’s idea is a cool one. And I definitely agree that if we’re going to do retaliations, it should ideally be ones that hurt them, but don’t hurt us. One way is to change the game . . . everyone’s thinking oh, they’re doing tariffs, hurting us economically, so we have to do that kind of thing back. But why? One key thing Canada provides to the United States is a close political/military ally. But people threatening tariffs for no reason and talking about annexing your country clearly are NOT your ally.
So, for instance, thinking of tariffs . . . why not start by dropping those tariffs against Chinese cars? Tell the Americans “OK, look, the Chinese make better and cheaper cars than you do and they’re mostly electric, which is the kind we’re looking for to do our energy transition but which your companies are increasingly balking at supplying. So the only reason we bought your stuff is ’cause we were friends lending a hand with your trade war. But we’re apparently not friends, and we can’t really get into trade wars with you and the Chinese at the same time, so.”
Moving on, “You keep bugging us to increase our military spending. Well, I’m starting to see the need for that actually. So we’ll be doing some. But, we won’t be buying your shit. We’re going to shift to a strict ‘buy no American arms’ policy; F-35 buh-bye, we’ll get something Russian maybe. Plus we’ll buy stacks and stacks of Chinese drones, which would probably come in handy if someone with masses of tanks and infantry fighting vehicles invaded us.”
“Oh, but if we buy arms from places like that it will be hard to integrate our forces with NATO? Yeah, about that . . . NATO is your military alliance, and you are talking about annexing us. Clearly not something an ally would be talking about, so obviously we shouldn’t be in a military alliance with you. I know some say, but the NATO charter doesn’t allow members to attack each other . . . but you clearly see that as just a piece of paper, so it’s not much reassurance. So, if you’re going to do those tariffs and yack about taking us over, I think we need to be out of your alliance. I’ll talk to Denmark . . . they might think the same. Wonder how small NATO will get if you keep fucking around?”
Long story short, policy levers, to do or threaten to do:
–Leaving the US trade war on China, replacing imports from the US with imports from other places
–Ceasing to buy US arms. This seems small, but arms manufacturers are very politically powerful in the US.
–Leaving US-bossed organizations such as NATO, the OAS, Five Eyes etc.
Other possibilities might include nationalizing strategic US-owned firms in Canada. What if Canada owned Canada’s oil, got all the profits, and could decide how to wind it down and shut down its lobbying and alt-right-promotion activities? What if Canada grabbed a pharmaceutical company or two so we could do our own medicines for cheap, to better do national pharmacare? (this could go well with Cory Doctorow’s intellectual property stuff) What if Canada were to nationalize some American-owned Canadian media, and put a bit of a curb on foreign propaganda? Less significantly, what if Canada owned the bloody Hudson’s Bay Company? That’s OUR evil colonial heritage and the yanks have no business owning it.
And it’d be hard for the Americans to do tit-for-tat on that because huge chunks of our economy are American-owned branch plants but we don’t own much American stuff. I mean, I’m sure rich Canadians own plenty of stock in American firms and such, but the relative economy sizes mean our holdings don’t add up to much control. So there’s nothing to take away. At worst, they steal the stock and some rich Canadians get less rich, reducing the wealth of Canadian plutocrats. No, please, brer Bear, don’t throw me in that briar patch!
There are lots of possibilities. We don’t have to be hypnotized by tariffs.
NR
I fail to see how £600 million over five years (amounting to £120 million per year) is supposed to bail out the UK’s economy, or even make an appreciable impact. The UK’s GDP is over £2 trillion, £120 million is not even one-onethousandth of one percent of that.
Maybe they’ll make more deals in the future, but as of right now, the amount of money is insignificant.
Mary Bennet
Purple Library Guy, there is also the Greenland Thing. That island is not far from Baffin, remind me how wide is the strait between?, and I believe geographers consider it a part of Canada. Denmark might be amenable to some kind of win/alliance with Canada, famously known to be a respecter of treaties. Trump would not be able to spin that is any kind of win at all, thereby damaging his standing with at least some of his following.
My thanks to everyone for their answers about good works last week. I think good work, that is doing necessary and useful things well is a necessary part of what holds human societies together.
Mark Level
I am unsurprised to find the best-informed, funniest and most prescient take on the Donald’s efforts for “Monroe Doctrine 2.0” musings by the brilliant journalist Pepe Escobar. He really gets to the nub of the “strategy”, such as it is– Link is here:
https://strategic-culture.su/news/2025/01/14/im-gonna-maga-you-baby/
It looks like something from the Marx Brothers “Duck Soup”. Then again, is it worse than the Biden slop?– just watched Joe going out of office warning about “The Military-Industrial Complex” and runaway “economic inequality” and declaring we now live in an “oligarchy”!! 4 years in power, and he did literally nothing on either of these (but hugely ramp of the MIC in Ukraine and Gaza, Lebanon, etc. while throwing in the towel on Afghanistan.) Theater of the Absurd all the way at the top. We aren’t just ruled by Monsters, but by mentally deranged monsters.
john prester
Hey Purple Library Guy – I like your thinking. In the same vein: how about Canada applies to become a member of BRICS? I can see the heads exploding in DC now…
KT Chong
1. No, £600 million is not enough to save the UK economy, but (a) the UK is in such a dire situation that even that would help, and (b) no other country – not even the US – can and is willing to give that amount of money to the UK.
2. The £600 million is just a “down payment”.
Chinese investment of £600 million in UK ‘a start’, says Cabinet minister:
https://uk.news.yahoo.com/chinese-investment-600-million-uk-115147957.html
As Chinese, I would NOT trust the UK. Brits and Englishmen have the reputation of being backstabbers, double-dealers and double-crossers. I would release the money a little at a time to the UK just to keep ’em on a tight leash (so they can’t just take all the money and then immediately turn around and turn on Chinese.)
KT Chong
That’s how Chinese feel about Brits, and there are good reasons for it, (like, history and past experiences.) Obviously we are not going to tell that in their face.
mago
Interesting comments here. Lots of passion and insight.
I read Doctorow’s Pluralistic piece a couple of days and was thinking, yeah, right screw the bastards, hit ‘em where it hurts.
And then in the same mental breath: good ideas, not gonna happen.
The power players and policy makers suck from the same teat and eat from the same slop troughs.
What’s a poor boy to do?
A poor boy? The doo doo’s deep enough for me and you with enough left over to swamp and suffocate our knowable world.
Not enough to put out the fires, though.
Ah, well. I’d sigh were I given to sighing.
NR
I’m just not seeing how an amount of money that amounts to less than one-onethousandth of one percent of the UK’s GDP buys China any influence over the UK. Obviously if they invest more, they’ll get more influence, but until they do, I don’t think this makes much of an impact. The numbers just don’t add up.
Paul
Depends where the money ends up