Comment by YZF | Hacker News Reader

Comment by YZF | Hacker News Reader

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I'm Canadian. (Full disclosure: an immigrant, like many others here)

Are 30%-40% of Americans really cheering for shredding of the friendship with Canada? Is that supported by some specific survey or are we just looking at approval ratings or some proxy?

Isn't this more or less normal for the USA in the broader perspective? Certainly had some very weird presidents in the past? We had things like: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cascadia_movement

I feel like we're just not living in normal times. The lack of normalcy is social media, conspiracy theories, politics. This isn't simply a US-Canada relationship question and "return to normalcy" isn't really just about "how do we ensure a certain level of quality of leadership". I'm not even sure what's normal any more ;)

https://leger360.com/in-the-news-canada-us-trade-war-canadia...

https://leger360.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/OMNI_tradewa...

"Our latest survey finds that 41% of Canadians now consider the United States an enemy country, up 15 points from June 2025. At the same time, 64% say their impression of the United States would change if Donald Trump were no longer president."

I find this insane. Also the weighting towards 55+, male, Quebec, is interesting. It says something about how humans are easy to influence IMO. Not exactly a surprise I guess looking at humanity as a whole but something I would have hoped we had some immunity to in free western societies.

No, most Americans would be surprised to learn that Canadians consider the US an enemy.

US foreign policy has been pretty consistent since the end of world war 2. Whatever you may think of what is going on, it is a significant departure from traditional us policy.

However if you like at 19th century history America has always coveted Canada.

In fact the very foundation of Canada is a response to the US threat.

And if you go to the 18th century we were both owned by Britian. idk what the point is of going that far back. The point is that America was pursuing one policy for about 80 years and now is pursuing a different policy. As a result everyone is re-evaluating the relationship in light of this.

I fact checked with AI as one does these days and at least the AGI supports you with the first Trump admin being what it identifies as a real change in policy since WW-II: "In 2018, the Trump administration used Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962—a rarely used Cold War-era law—to declare Canadian steel and aluminum a "national security threat" to the United States. These tariffs were not applied because Canadian steel companies were breaking dumping laws. They were deployed as broad, sweeping coercion to force Canada to the table to renegotiate the entire NAFTA agreement under threat of economic damage."

So yes. I agree there is an actual change vs. the post WW-II trajectory. At least in the public sphere. I don't know what used to happen behind closed doors. AI here says a lot of power struggles have happened (some specific examples but I'll spare you) but not in public. But argues that the shifting of those into the public sphere is a real change. And I agree with the AI overlords.

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