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EU chief opens door for Canada to become 'associate member'

693 points · 905 comments · hackernj

  1. noir_lord · · focus · HN ↗
    Good, if the middle power democracies don't align/work together they are going to get torn apart in the struggle between the US and China.
    1. krona · · focus · HN ↗
      70% of Canadian exports are to the US. 6% to the EU. Why would e.g. Poland want to enter a trade war with the US on Canada's behalf?
      1. ajuc · · focus · HN ↗
        Polish export to US is about 3% of its total export and import - about 5% of Poland's total import. Not much to lose, honestly. We trade more with Czech Republic.

        Polish export to EU is 74% of its total export and import is about 60% of its total import.

        Economically - whatever's good for EU is good for Poland and US barely matters.

        1. graemep · · focus · HN ↗
          What about the importance of that trade. The US exports a lot of critical things that cannot be supplied from elsewhere. Everyone is heavily reliant on American technology.
          1. krzyk · · focus · HN ↗
            Like what specifically?
            1. graemep · · focus · HN ↗
              The hardware is produced in Asia but American controlled. its still a dependency on being supplied by American companies.

              "Only services" covers a lot of critically important things. Just AWS could turn off a huge chunk of European economies.

              1. krzyk · · focus · HN ↗
                Yes, but services are easier to replace than hardware. And control is something you have, and then you don't have if the country in which you operate decides otherwise (or US presidents throws another tantrum).

                Companies use AWS because it is there and others used it, so they got ball rolling. It doesn't mean one couldn't replace it with another service, most probably more pricey one. If there would be some kind of war, then one doesn't need to have servers in US, and European ones are right there.

                You can't easily replace e.g. lithium or other metals.

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