r/politics • u/sweatycat New York • 1d ago

California to Negotiate Trade With Other Countries to Bypass Trump Tariffs

https://www.newsweek.com/california-newsom-trade-trump-tariffs-2055414
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u/F3z345W6AY4FGowrGcHt 1d ago

As a Canadian, I officially invite California to join us. 🇨🇦

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u/FaceDeer 1d ago

Absolutely not. California's population is roughly equal to Canada's and is culturally quite dissimilar to us, it would destroy Canada.

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u/DivineRage002 1d ago

Can you elaborate? I'm not saying you're wrong I'm just trying to understand why it would be a problem

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u/FaceDeer 1d ago

Canada has a population of 40 million, California's population is 39 million. Canada's GDP is $2 trillion, California's is $4 trillion. It's not really a question of "California joining Canada", it's just as much a question of "Canada joining California."

Donald Trump got 40% of the popular vote in California in 2024. It's got substantial dark-red areas. Even in the blue areas there are plenty of Trump supporters. We don't want that injected into Canada's politics. Even your Democrats are on the right end of Canada's Overton window.

What would Californians think about giving up their second amendment right to bear arms? How do we stop the flood of illegal guns from California into Canada? Have Californians been polled on what they think about having King Charles as their head of state? Bilingual French/English for product labelling and government services? Switching over all signage to metric? Elections where you don't get to vote for prime minister, or judges, or any of the innumerable other little things that end up on American ballots for whatever reason? No more American presidents on their money? No more pledge of allegiance every morning at the beginning of school, no more Stars and Stripes. Border checkpoints whenever they want to drive to another state in their former country (which they'd have to do to get to the rest of Canada, too). A whole new regulatory regime for their agriculture and industries and whatnot.

There are lots of things about being Canadian that the people advocating for California joining Canada probably haven't thought about. They'll have to yield on all of those. I don't think they will.

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u/DivineRage002 1d ago

Solid answer! Thanks!

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u/Crimson_Caelum 8h ago edited 7h ago

The biggest issue culturally would be you’d basically add another Quebec. 28% of Californians speak Spanish as their first language, 22% of Canadians have French as their first language. 10 million primary Spanish speakers vs 7.1 million primary French speakers in Canada. If this union happened Canada would no longer be anglophone vs francophone. French would be knocked down to #3

This is made worse by the fact that in Canada there is already 1.3 million primary Spanish speakers but in California there’s apparently only 127k primary French speakers. So you can bump the numbers up to 11.2. This new country would be 11% Spanish speaking and 8% French speaking.

That being said we actually do have boarder checkpoints between states but it’s to check for fruit lol