Things I learned today: Canada is really pissed; the "White Horse Prophecy"; "Leprechaun economics". And an excellent rant!

Doom-scrolling through social media today, I learned some things:

First, its always better to be pissed off than pissed on!

This is what is happening across all of Canada right now!
🇨🇦😊 pic.twitter.com/VgtW7rJvVU

— JustMePam (@PamelaApostolo1) February 12, 2025

The internet brightens the day, every day.
pic.twitter.com/TKwcb8pRya

— Beefeater (@Beefeater_Fella) February 11, 2025

Canada‘s biggest aluminum-producing province with a surprising threat to the U.S.: You want to tariff us? Okay. Maybe we’ll add to it with a surtax. And sell that aluminum elsewhere. And you’ll see who needs whom. https://t.co/zTAqJ2CvQr

— Alexander Panetta (@Alex_Panetta) February 13, 2025

That sound you hear is Canada cutting off intelligence sharing with The US. https://t.co/Ik5mIS6Jlc

— Dean Blundell🇨🇦 (@ItsDeanBlundell) February 12, 2025

Next, did you know that the Mormon "White Horse Prophecy" may yet save America? 

 

Wikipedia explains what the White Horse prophecy is: 

...Smith had prophesied that the Mormons "will go to the Rocky Mountains and will be a great and mighty people established there, which I will call the White Horse of peace and safety." Smith added "I shall never go there" and predicted continued persecution by enemies of the church, and he reportedly said, "You will see the Constitution of the United States almost destroyed. It will hang like a thread as fine as a silk fiber.... I love the Constitution; it was made by the inspiration of God; and it will be preserved and saved by the efforts of the White Horse, and by the Red Horse who will combine in its defense." According to the diary, Smith also said that Mormons would send missionaries to "gather the honest in heart from among the Pale Horse, or people of the United States, to stand by the Constitution of the United States as it was given by the inspiration of God." 

Well, I guess it can't hurt....

Next, time to learn about "Leprechaun Economics" -- a term invented by Paul Krugman

The Emperor’s New Tariffs: Small, Ugly and Stupid

Trump is throwing a tantrum, but the damage will be real

...It's also becoming hard to avoid the sense that Trump has developed a particular animus against Canada. I don’t know why he started floating the idea of annexing our neighbor, but the fierce pushback from the Canadians themselves and the ridicule he has received at home seems to have made him even more obsessive on the topic. And this may in part explain his decision to make Canada the biggest target of his mini trade war.

Among other things, Trump keeps overstating the size of that bilateral trade imbalance. In a recent interview with Fox News he declared:

I think Canada would be much better off being a 51st state, because we lose $200 billion a year with Canada. And I'm not going to let that happen. It's too much. Why are we paying $200 billion a year essentially in subsidy to Canada? Now, if they're a 51st state, I don't mind doing it. Leaving aside the nonsensical nature of the argument, no, we don’t have a $200 billion a year deficit with Canada. Here are some actual trade deficits from 2024:

                 Source: Bureau of Economic Analysis

Our deficit with Canada is less than a third than Trump imagines; in fact, it’s smaller than our trade deficit with Ireland.

What? Ireland? Why do we run a huge deficit with the Emerald Isle? The answer is, we don’t. These are essentially fake numbers, caused by corporate tax avoidance: companies use artificially high or low prices in transactions between their subsidiaries to make it seem as if they’re earning most or all of their profits in Ireland, which has a low corporate tax rate. In this case, I suspect that a lot of the supposed trade imbalance comes from fictitiously high prices charged by the Irish subsidiaries of pharmaceutical companies. (Technology companies also shift profits to Ireland, but mainly by playing games with intellectual property.)

Which brings me to another way in which Trump’s policies have been hurting our economic future. Freezes and ideological purges have brought much of America’s biomedical research to a dead halt. This is, above all, a human tragedy. But it will also have major economic consequences. America’s biopharmaceutical sector, which ultimately depends on the research base Trump is destroying, is substantially bigger than steel and aluminum combined:

                 Source: Statista and Bureau of Economic Analysis

And in reality it’s even bigger than the official numbers say, because thanks to “leprechaun economics” (a term I invented!) tax shenanigans cause a substantial amount of value actually created in America to show up in the GDP of Ireland and other tax havens instead.

For the moment full-scale trade war is on hold. But Trump’s policies are going to make us poorer, in ways we’re only beginning to realize.

Finally, here's an excellent rant! 

I have never before seen a post with more than 300,000 "likes" - it must have just about broken the internet: