And how do you classify to responding to hostility with submission?

Besides, Canada isn't even being hostile. A divorce is very different from abuse or harassment.

It is divorce in anticipation of a bout of domestic violence.

You don't reason. You remove the victim from the hands of the aggressor.

It will cost a lot of money, and the Canadians will suffer greatly. But the alternative is to join America, which Canadians have stated don't want to.

I am in the start up community in Canada. I can tell you that after the first threat from Trump every federal program to help tech start ups immediately pivoted to Asia and the EU. Before he started yapping, we were connected to Canadian representatives in the US, meeting about markets and opportunities. Now all programs are directed at forming partnerships elsewhere.

Simply eliminating a lot of those domestic trade barriers would create more economic wealth than what Canada would lose by ending trade with the U.S. completely.

Of course in practice it won’t be that easy and the finances don’t usually materialize that easily, but the point is Canada has options for growth that are fully under its control.

It's certainly not guaranteed, but taking an aggressive defensive stance is the ONLY possible way to stop having your lunch money stolen.

Also, calling this a bad move presumes that the US isn't going to fall much, much further than it is now, which is seeming quite plausible. When your dance partner is heading for a cliff, you need to stop dancing with them.

But didn't you get the order of events precisely wrong?

Isn't it America who threatened Canada (become a state of the US)? Isn't America who threatened Canada with extreme tariffs? Etc.

Don't fool yourself. The US of late has been making it perfectly clear that it's a threat to Canada regardless of what Canada does.

I think if America started at 0dark30 they would be done by lunch and home for supper.

Can you expand on this?

- tariffs on American goods - embargoes of American liquor - trade deals with China and other nations - travel to the US down substantially

Canada's world reputation comes from the progressivism in the 60's and 70s, which has largely disappeared or failed (ecological science, multiculturalism). The undercurrent of canadian politics is just as neo-liberal as the US, and we differentiate ourselves on a facade of social progressivism. Canadians confuse their dont-rock-the-boat attitude with actual solutions to social problems. meanwhile they have similar political schisms as the US, just look at the Ford politial dynasty. Canadian niceness is mostly good PR.

A clear indicator is that Canada has consistently underfunded their military as a show of deference to our powerful neighbour. This is why all the bluster of Canadian politicians "taking a stand" against the US is theatre. The truth is in the state of our military and economic allegiances, which are mainly with China and the US, nothing nice about that.

Don't know how old you are but if you are 40+ you should remember the NATO-Russia Founding Act, in 2000 Putin said he didn't see NATO as an enemy.

So this is bullshit, it's a narrative post-hoc'd into existence to justify the imperialist ambitions of Russia under Putin.

Why?

Norway, a founding member of NATO, has always shared a border with Russia. Before Finland and Sweden joined NATO, they'd already developed operational compatibility with NATO going back decades. NATO encroachment was an issue only insofar as it took away local targets for Russian expansion.

Bring Russia into NATO.

Putin desired NATO membership because then, any hostilities with another NATO member would become an intra-alliance conflict that NATO couldn't deal with. When Greece and Turkey fought over Cyprus, they were both in NATO, so neither side could invoke article 5 for help. Russia in NATO wouldn't prevent Russian wars, it would neutralize NATO.