[Renegade 13]

Hunpecked said:
Renegade 13: "And since the American economy is in the crapper unlike ours, guess who's going to be hurt the most from all the tariff's flying around?"

From the CIA Factbook, 2005 figures:

GDP per Capita: US $41,800, Canada $32,900
GDP growth: US 3.5%, Canada 2.9%
Unemployment: US 5.1%, Canada 6.8%

As of February 2006 US unemployment was listed as 4.8%. These are limited statistics, of course, but it's pretty clear that neither economy is "in the crapper". Both the US and Canada have modern, robust, and growing economies that are closely tied to each other by our common border. Indeed, each country is the other's biggest trading partner.

True, but the state of an economy can not be measured by unemployment alone. For example:

Wikipedia says:
When a common measure is used, such as that of the Luxembourg Income Study, the United States has relatively higher rates [of poverty]. The LIS reports that Canada has a poverty rate of 15.4% and the United States 18.7%.[9] In both countries those most affected by poverty include single-parent families and single elderly people.

There's another couple huge economic differences. The US runs a trade deficit to Canada, Asia and Europe. Canada has a trade deficit to Asia and Europe as well, but a huge surplus to the US ($100 Billion per year), resulting in an overall trade surplus of $17 Billion/yr.

Also if you take a look at the governmental deficits...The US runs a huge annual deficit. If you look at this site -> www.brillig.com/debt_clock , you'll see that the US debt is currently getting close to $8.4 Trillion USD, with the annual deficit sitting at (in 2004) $477 Billion. ( http://www.cnn.com/2004/US/01/26/budget.deficits.ap/ )

This works out to each citizen's share of the debt being almost $28,000. In contrast, Canada's debt is roughly $800 Billion CDN or about $688 Billion USD. Works out to ~$21,500 USD per Canadian. A lot less than in the States, and we're actually paying down the debt not increasing it by almost half a trillion per year!