One week in office and Obama is already pissing off us Canucks, and that's even before he visits and tells us ' what it is, bro!.'

US Government is set to pass a couple of bills that put conditions on the bailout.. Buy American with the cash from Uncle Sam or get lost...or something like that..

see that a Senator or Congressman or two are even saying that anyone getting a handout can only buy American-made stuff and then they go and ruin the joke by saying that companies have to buy only American-made computers and such..one teensy problemo.. there are no American-made computers.. every one is made' offshore' or has so many parts made in third world sweat shops that to find any company with Made in USA parts at all will be a lost cause....

guess it sounded good at the time...

Still, one good thing about the US-made Depression/Recession, its bringing China to its knees.. Hell, the number of Government officials skimming millions to gamble in Macao has dropped to the point that the 'special interest area' of China is nearly empty and construction of new casinos [ mostly by American Las Vegas consortiums hoping to reap cheap profits overseas when Americans cut back on tossing good money after bad on the craps/roulette/poker games ] has ground to a halt leaving the local economy in the toilet..

Sometimes it is good to be without 'financial encumbrance ' [ i.e. poor ] Only bad move I made was not to buy stock in McDonalds..more folks tanking up on Big Macs as they downsize from Filet...

I doubt if it will ever happen because of the G-20 or whatever the number has gotten too but most of the now generation in the US don't remember all of the large American Steel company's being shut down and many people being forced to retire early with lower retirement and Aisain companies took over.As far as the Canucks they were the first to subadise taxes on fuel sending oilfield search drillers south of the border an enabled them to under bid small American people out of buissnes.Also I remember the Softwood act that sent small US sawmills out of bussiness then when the US started to bitch the Canadians said well hell we will sell to China so I don't have any love lost north of the border.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: SULLY1,

I blame experimental liberal twits for all of this junk.

Steel made in Canada appears good enough to protect soldiers in Iraq, but not to hold up bridges and buildings. Canadian steel plate has been shipped to the US market for several years to protect military vehicles from roadside bombs..

Under the proposed new US 'buy American' rules all sorts of US customers, including the military will be prevented from getting the stuff.

Canajan steelmakers exported $ 6 billion in product to the US, a good chunk of it for use in making cars, only a tiny amount went to use in buildings and bridges...and Canajan producers buy a hell of a lot of US steel mill production and raw materials that get turned into beams and other structural steel..One Canadian company is just finishing the new deck on the Triboro Bridge in N'Yawk. 60-70 % of the steel used in that project was purchased from US suppliers..

the company on that project had sales of $ 40-50 million with about 50% of the business in the US. the value of work done by Canadian companies in the US is about $500 million per year..that's a hello f a lot of American jobs for US Subcontractors...

Now Obama [ I had to get to him eventually ] rose to the top , in part, with a promise to mend fences with US allies and Canada is the largest partner to the US in terms of trade and commerce..so... he could veto the contentious parts of the bill..but...that would be mighty risky politics and he'd face a hell of a lot of flack from 'constituents' for putting the concerns of ferriners ahead of' jobless' uhmerrikans ...


He's gonna have to call in quite a few favours to water down or eliminate these provisions, if he even can...

another bug in the soup is, of course, all those World Trade Agreements that the US is party to. which explicitly prohibit governments from attempting to block domestic companies from buying imported goods [ I'd love to see them apply that to Walmart so it can't buy cheap China made TV's and such oh, like Sony, Sanyo, Toshiba, LG, ..hell everyone ]

Obama won't want to start a major trade war so early in his presidency..so the pulling of the plug on the protectionist policy provisions is going to cost him a ton of political 'good will' capital...he's got a lot of it, but using it so early in the game is going to be a mark against him and he may need it more later...

gonna tarnish that leadership image real bad around the world if he dumps on Canada and the EU over cutting them out of selling stuff into the US and make it really hard for other countries to not bring in their own 'don't by US stuff' rules in retaliation..

1930's All Over Again...????


just sayn' that's all...

We are too tied to Canada to let that happen. Since the governor of my state is orginally from Ontario, I doubt that my state will stop trade because there are too many ties.

I remember drinking with one of our suppliers from the land of Labatts, and we had a good trade relationship.