Life on the Bookcase

This is what they did to a Canadian

A Quebec man says he is outraged after the U.S. Coast Guard accused him of fishing in American waters and then arrested him before putting him in a jail cell for nearly two hours.

Edouard Lallemand, 60, said he nearly drowned during the ordeal last Sunday afternoon after the Coast Guard’s boat “pushed” his boat, causing it to capsize.

Days after the incident, he’s still shaken up.

People aren't traveling to the US. Even Forbes is reporting a 29 billion dollar loss to your tourism industry for this year. And literally everyone outside of the US is like "yeah of course that tracks, I keep reading news stories about citizens from my country being detained when they go there".

(to say nothing of the incredible anger amongst Canadians for the annexation threats and tariffs attempting to create economic pressure to capitulate to the orange one's bullshit, let alone stories like what happened to the man in the story linked above. We are NOT taking our tourism dollars south anytime soon)

Most foreign postal services have paused shipping of packages under $800 to the USA. You will hear that it’s “because of tariffs,” but that’s not exactly true.

It’s because the US:

Has not given anyone a way to pay those tariffs and

Has not been clear on what will ACTUALLY have to be paid. (The country’s tariff has been floated, but a US$80 flat fee has also been floated.

Many countries require people to pay tariffs when they receive a package. That’s fine. But you have to give people a way to pay the damn tariff. And there isn’t a way to do so. Apparently there isn’t even a PLAN for a way to do so.