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Originally Posted by Cowboy89
1. That Canada pay the cost of it's national defense, when Trump uses the $200Billion+ figure on the Trade deficit and many folks point out it's 'actually only $60Billion', the difference is he's including a made up number for the cost of continental defense or some approximation of what it 'should' contribute to NATO (he throw around 5% of GDP at some point in the past few weeks when speaking of NATO allies generally, Canada has long committed to 2% and is actually at 1.4%)
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When you factor in services, that $60 billion number shrinks even more to about $30 billion.
When you consider that the U.S. is a richer country with 10x the population of Canada, it's surprising that they are only $30 billion in the red. No one should expect a country with 1/10th the population to buy the same amount of stuff, especially energy.
If Trump is factoring in defense costs or other abstract costs, he should demonstrate where he gets those numbers. In theory, we count on the U.S. for defense, but we are also a target for hostile forces mainly because we are aligned with the U.S. and feed them resources. I also can't think of any time in history that the U.S. has defended Canada. The U.S. is the only NATO country to date that has ever invoked NATO Article 5 which Canada answered to. Canadians literally died defending America. It has yet to be shown that they would do the same. I mean, they probably would, but until then it is all talk. With Trump in power, I am not 100% sure they would.