I wonder how much of it is Shwitter (yeah, Shit Twitter) feeding them all sorts of blatantly biased and overtly rosy image of tRump. The Japanese is excessively hooked on Shwitter after all, and they don’t typically follow US news too closely.

I’m adding this as a sub comment cause I think this would be extra points, but I guess it might be interesting for some, if they’ve never really read or thought about it.

But do first note that I’m no expert of governments or foreign trade relations. I’m just an observer.

You might be wondering if tariffs is the only way for governments to protect local industries, and you’re most probably thinking that that shouldn’t be the case. And you’re right. That said though, keep in mind that a tariff is a pretty simple tool for governments to use, and fairly good too: you fork out some money upfront to set up the tariff and all its supporting processes, and you get to earn money for the country. What actually happens is that you’ll tax any imports on the exporter, but what ends up happening is that exporters just add that to their cost and thus increase their prices, so it is typically like a tax on your own citizens. There are exporters who do just sort of eat that cost themselves, but that’s not common afaik.

Another option you could support a local industry is by providing subsidies, which can be done in a myriad of ways: materials, procurement, research, labour, etc, and you can even mix and match some of them. The problem here, though, is that the government has to fork out that money — that’s why it’s a subsidy. The Chinese government loves doing this for any industry that they deem strategic, and they can do so a lot more freely than most democratic countries, because, well, they just don’t have to worry about an election if people aren’t happy with where the investment went. Here in Canada though, people do get mad when subsidies are offered for industries that they don’t like, and that affects the polls.

You could also outright ban the import of certain products from certain countries, but that usually triggers very negative reactions from the affected countries, unless you have a clear law that literally bans the consumption or use of that product; people want to make money after all, and you’re literally making it impossible to do so. Examples of “okay” bans that most countries have over Canada are like cannabis, cause that’s deemed illegal in their country, and Canada doesn’t really have the desire to make those exports. It’s definitely a strong tool though, with potentially negative consequences.

Tariffs are used by countries very commonly and isn’t a Turnip original (yeah I spell his name however I’m feeling like).

The reason why tariffs are used is generally to protect a local industry, typically one that’s weak, either because they’ve fallen behind, or that it’s a new budding industry and fierce competition will just obliterate its chances of even growing.

Think of, say, our EV sector, which is essentially in its infancy. Sectors like these tend to have higher prices on their products because they’ve not reached a critical point and can enjoy the benefits of economies at scale, where they’ve can operate efficiently while mass producing their products; they’re still trying to figure out what works and works well, and so their stocks are limited, which usually means that their means of production is also not as efficient as an established company or sector. Now imagine if we don’t have tariffs against Chinese EVs, which is a mature Chinese industry at this point, and still enjoys massive government benefits to subsidize a lot of its production processes, i.e. their costs are low and they can sell their EVs for cheap. Imagine them just exporting a bunch of EVs to Canada. Without tariffs inflating their prices, most people would probably just buy Chinese EVs cause, well, that’s the economic thing to do individually in these unstable times. Our local EV companies would easily be beaten by cheaper Chinese rivals, especially when our own quality is not even close to competing with Chinese standards, i.e. they can’t make enough of revenue to cover their business operations and ongoing developments, and so the local industry would either die off because people may be discouraged to work in that sector, or it’ll take forever to grow.

If you look around what other sane countries are doing, you’ll see that a lot of them have some level of tariffs in various industries levied against enemies and allies alike, because, well, you, as the government, generally have an incentive to protect your local industries, or people would have a hard time finding jobs and earning money, and if they can’t do that for a long enough, you can kiss your government seat goodbye.

Sorry if my comment was vague (I didn’t find it vague when I commented).

I was merely lamenting the fact that the author states that trains, ferries, and buses as slower modes of transport as if it’s simply a fact and not just a lamentable general truth in Canada.

Slow travel — a movement which favours ferries, trains and buses over traditionally speedier modes of transportation and moments of pause over action-packed sightseeing — has been gaining steam as of late.

… *sigh

Hey @Davriellelouna@lemmy.world, that article’s paywalled, and TorStar seems to explicitly say that it’s Subscribers-only.

Mind putting a summary or share some quotes, if that’s allowed?

I know where I’m looking for these next. Thanks for sharing!

I’ve asked before and nobody showed me a single news source that says that, nor could I find anything that points to it being protected thanks to the tax being cut, other than Trumpet being muppet about not being able to export US dairy and poultry to Canada with impunity.

Could somebody please share a reliable source with us here?

Otherwise, could we let this argument die? The US is mad about Canada keeping an import control that’s been in effect since tRump 1.0 and is very limited in scope, and we sacrificed a tax that was supposed to earn the government money on June 30th, 2025, which is its supposed first collection, just to have Mump continue complaining about the import control? We got nothing out of this.

Optics. He can claim to be a victim of “Canadian oppressors” and try to convince more people that there are “Canadian oppressors”.

While it’s true there’s a lot of that, AWS just dominates the cloud, and many of our own tech companies here in Canada use AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud, not because they’re cheap, but because they have good uptime guarantees, security guarantees, easily allow you to deploy worldwide and provide fast access to customers almost everywhere (especially major markets like the EU and Asia), and provides companies access to a large talent pool who know how to use these systems. You’d be hard-pressed, as a business owner and/or CTO, to use other options and handle all those downsides yourself, slowing down your ability to do business. The only other potential non-US alternative here is probably Alibaba, but they’re not even close to being considered competition internationally.

Aside from Apple, the big tech companies down south are big and hard to displace not because of what most people know them for, but because of this large arm of software infrastructure that basically serves as the literal backbone of the consumer-side of the Internet.

And for those who think that we can just build that infrastructure ourselves, take note that these companies have been doing this for at least a decade, and spent billions and probably trillions doing this in the US and abroad. AWS itself claims that between 2011 and 2022, it invested $108.9 billion in USD, just within the US alone, and they have data centres in many parts of the world. Not discouraging anyone, but you have to think about where that kind of money has to come from.

Thanks for sharing that comment.

I found this section of Shaun’s comment to be particularly reflecting of the way North American investors treat their businesses.

とくに近年の外資系企業では大規模な投資に対して短期間での成果を求める傾向が強まり、十分な時間をかける前に株主の期待に応えるための方向転換が行われる場面も少なくありません。今回の報道もそうした構造の中で起きた出来事だと受け止めています。

For those who need a translation:

In recent years, particularly, when it comes to companies that rely on foreign investment, there’s been an increasing expectation that large scale investments will be met with quick results in the short-term. And it has become commonplace that before enough time can be spent on a project, these companies opt to switch directions in order to satisfy investor demands. That the events this time is yet another such example, is what we’re taking of this situation.

The later paragraphs lament the lost opportunities and wasted efforts that employees have to witness and go through, and how customers are disappointed that something that they’ve looked forward to failed to materialize.

Working in a company with a strong venture capitalist voice from above, I feel this. People in the company are trying really hard to create features and address problems for our customers, to make a really good product, and fortunately we do have a really good product. But the constant “you have to do this (because it increases your company value, but I won’t say that part out loud),” just to catch a hype, even when it doesn’t make sense, forces us to have to spend resources to essentially placate the investor, thus stretching us thin.

These people have no idea why businesses are successful, and they don’t really care. All they’re doing is to spray and pray, and hope that one of their investments will become the next Stripe, the next Spotify, the next Netflix, etc, and they would’ve made much more than what they’ve lost from businesses who can’t keep the engine burning.

You missed an important word for the part about traffic

… can sit in traffic for 30 seconds less than before (temporarily) …

I wouldn’t be surprised if there’d be a slight recovery in tourists at all, especially if the negotiations appear to be somewhat smooth.

This chat with my colleagues about the situation down south and what they’ve been doing with regards to the state just sort of revealed to me that while there are people like us on Lemmy that are repulsed by what’s happening there, there are also people who have closer ties to the US or have frequented the US who try to find ways to tell themselves that they themselves should be fine crossing the border, as long as they get rid of things on themselves that would upset the orange down south. For those with family, I get it. But for those who’re still doing it for leisure, it’s rather clear from the way they’re putting it that they prioritize their own lifestyle over politics, which, tbf, we all have different lines that we draw on that.

Sorry for making a comment that seems impossible to reply to, but I just needed to get that off my chest.

Oh he knew. But he’s also the kind of person who would know how to put up an image when he needs to, and I’m sure he knows how to not prod at tigers (even if it’s just a kitten pretending to be one). There’s some sliminess in him and he knows how to slither his way around things that are potentially dangerous to get what he wants, though at least he doesn’t go around hurting other people.

I have a colleague who said he feels fine going down there for whatever cause he thinks he’ll pass with just how white he looks 🤷 Some people…

Maybe just like how we won’t have their bike infrastructure there (at least in the short term), we won’t have their Fairphones :’( (at least in the short term… I hope)

I’m gonna need some citations or sources for that.

AFAIK, the service tax was not “put in place ages ago”. It was put in force in June 2024, literally last year, and the first payments were expected literally yesterday, on June 30th, 2025. It’s retroactive, but still only goes back to 2022, which isn’t “ages ago”. Source

And what’s this wheat market steal you’re talking about?

This is a very hand-wavy way of discerning distros, but they basically differ by 3 things:

1. the set of the defaults they ship with when installed,
2. the system packages that they distribute through their official package manager hosted on their own package repositories, and
3. the package manager, which encompasses the distro’s release strategy.

Major distros generally manage how a package gets built on their distros, in a way that’s compatible with the rest of their package repository, while smaller players may choose to directly use one of the repositories from the major distros, go their own route, or do something in between, i.e. repackage some of the packages from the upstream repositories. Typically, the smaller distros re-use large parts of a larger distro and give a sort of flavour to the larger distro. In the Linux community, these larger distros end up being called “bases”, and many smaller distros are generally “based on” some larger distro.

Manjaro is based on Archlinux, which, incidentally, is also what the newer SteamOS is based on (SteamOS used to be Ubuntu-based). Whether Manjaro actually provides benefits remains to be seen, cause their reputation has been really bad for several years because of how they’ve soured their relationship with a really supportive community earlier on in their life, and badly handled the distribution and communications of several critical packages. I haven’t followed their news in a while, but if they stroke a deal with the company to work together and ship essentially proprietary software or drivers, you can certainly expect some advantage, at least earlier on, but experience tells us that these usually don’t end up well in the long term.

As far as the handheld market goes, you aren’t wrong: every company and their mother that has a potential to get into this market is now ogling at the chance to gain that market share after seeing the success of the Switch and Deck. Many see the Deck as an underpowered machine and believe that they can offer better specs at lower prices (particularly large companies as they typically already have the benefit of economics of scale). AFAIK the Deck has been unbeatable in terms of market share, but that might be outdated info from several months ago.

Fuck this imperialistic, purely exploitative, and victim-seeking, almost Nazi take.

1. First Nations are part of Canada and they have a say in this country’s future.
2. Prosperity and resource utilization do not have to be achieved by closing the door on discussions that need to be had.
3. This bill is blatantly and clearly undemocratic, and is a threat that can throw this country into the similar shit show that we see down south. If you’re happy to see it passed, I don’t know what to say about you.

I’m hoping this is just your bad take and not trying to parrot some shit rhetoric that’s been coming out of certain talk figures and some less reputable users around here.

That comment is just my opinion (hence the “imo”), cause most of the reviews will just say that the story is meh without explaining why it’s meh. People aren’t pissed about the contradiction between the gameplay loop and the story.

And imo it’s perfectly fine if you’re viewing it through the lens of “it’s just a game in a fictional setting that happens to have a relatable message,” or simply an “idk is there even a story?” Most people play MH, and honestly just a lot of games, with that mindset, so just cause people never really cared over all the old titles, it doesn’t mean that it’s acceptable: it’s just ignored. Now, I don’t really take issue with that (I’m typically a bit of a lore buff) or the contradiction itself: it’s fictional, do what you want, even if it doesn’t make sense or even contradictory; but I do wonder what Capcom’s intention is, spending all that money and time to create some kind of story. I mean, there are so many other settings they could choose, but they went with this.