Americas culture bends a knee to china for money. What's that say about americas cultural might?
This isn't really the own you think it is. Every company that wants to do business in China has to do that. It makes for selection bias - the only companies that will be in China are ones that will bend a knee and you see a large number of American companies doing that because American culture is in high demand. I might not agree with how often they capitulate but it wouldn't be there at all if they didn't, and for the most part the demands are rather small and are just normal censorship crap (like half of Europe and swastikas, but blood or Japanese/Taiwanese flags instead).
Besides, it's really a monumental feat that American culture has penetrated so deep into China now, famously one of the hardest markets to get into. Before 2010 it was only the most cursory stuff but now everybody follows basketball, listens to American music, plays American games, and watches American movies and TV (Friends is ridiculously popular in China and used as a language-learning tool), all while China has tried to enforce Han culture on everyone and make everyone speak Standard Mandarin to forge a Han Juche state. Books are hard because the CCP runs a positive censorship regime - only the books they approve of in full can be printed. The only other countries that have had a recent cultural impact in China are SK and Japan, and really only for music and comics.
Sure sounds like we've got our own culture to me!
Hey, you've got "A Handmaid's Tale," the Canadian story about living in TRUMP'S AMERICA and implicitly looking down on religious Americans, now finally becoming popular as an American show. It's almost the distillation of the Canadian attitude.
You need to look at the bigger picture, of course manufacturing is going to be relatively stable in these years because there's nothing left to export to China. The decline in Canadian industry started in 1984 with Brian Mulroney, looking at the 2000s is meaningless because the economy has totally transitioned since then.
You're not paying attention. There was no real, long term decline. The 2000s have been manufacturing highs for Canada and the US both; the people who claim otherwise are lying to you and trying to appeal to low-information voters upset about their jobs moving to China rather than the reality of being replaced by machines. There will always be things to export to China: comparative advantage is an introductory economics topic and you should learn it if you really want to pontificate on economies.
I don't if you know what a trade deficit is and why it's important. The US has a massive trade deficit with China but the US isn't paying China with money directly, they are paying the trade deficit with productive wealth (i.e. land, debt, stocks, and other various things). Smart Americans want to reduce the trade deficit with China because they know that China could come to the table one day and threaten to do serious damage to American companies.
It's not debt, not in any real sense. US debt doesn't change at all when something is bought or sold (besides the slight decrease from taxes, obviously, but it's unimportant). The fact that it's now held by Chinese companies and people also doesn't really matter: China can't run on US banks because of modern banking protections against both runs and currency dumps and the fact that China would cripple itself, as they'd need to sell US dollars at less than market price, losing ridiculous amounts of money. That also ignores the fact that China would need to confiscate all that money from companies in order to even try. Without confiscating it, which is politically infeasible in China as party members rely on their US investments for growth rather than the clout of Chinese investments, they'd need to buy it all at increased prices. It would be ludicrously expensive and would waste way too much money.
As a proportion Canada owns more productive wealth in the US than the US does Canada. I understand that this doesn't necessarily make the US reliant on Canada, however it is a bargaining chip.
All that means is that the US is a more attractive place to invest for Canadians than Canada is for Americans, which makes sense and doesn't imply that either is bad in any way. It's just a reality that there's a premium on corporations existing in Canada relative to the US and that the US possesses the most lucrative investment possibilities due to high individual productiveness, relative ease of investment, USD primacy, and the extreme high tech concentrations in the US. It's also not a bargaining chip: Canada can't and won't suddenly declare all Canadian investments in the US to be over, because those are primarily held by corporations and individuals and not Canada itself.
41% of Canadian GDP being reliant on America isn't particularly relevant when you consider how much of the economy is just smoke and mirrors. How much of that is real and how much is fake? the numbers are so inflated that you may as well not even take them into consideration. And once again, this whole "reliance" thing isn't real, the US isn't reliant on any country in practical terms and neither is Canada.
What is fake about it? GDP actually
undercounts economic activity because it ignores cashless activity (less important for GDP relative to other countries since it's largely internal) and online/service/internet activity (much more important). Wikipedia, for all its faults, has been a powerful economic boon to the world but isn't counted at all. All the free internet content, much of which is either sourced from the US, isn't measured. Besides, if it
were fake that would be
more of an issue for your argument. Trade numbers are extremely reliable due to the way importation works. If real GDP were lower than it is, trade as a % of GDP would go
up, not down. Also,
you were the person who brought up "reliance."
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