Whenever people talk about tariffs on Canadian goods I just remind them of the last time that happened. We slapped 'em back with similar tariffs and suddenly the US tariffs were lifted. https://www.canada.ca/en/department-finance/programs/interna... Not sure why buddy even talks about this because we have no problem doing the same thing.

> According to Deepseek, the tariffs could shave as “little” as 1.7% or as much as 8% off of Canada’s GDP, with the baseline estimate around 4%. That’s roughly in line with the Bank of Canada’s projection.

The BoC estimates 6%. I guess it is accurate to say the 1.7% - 8% estimated by Deepseek is “roughly in line”, but it is such a large range as to be pretty useless. Though, if you look at the BoC’s ToTEM model for GDP, it is pretty useless as well, relying on shaky assumptions like a regression to the mean over 6 quarters, which isn’t accurate when it matters most.

Nothing made me feel as dumb as reading its chain of thought. It made it click for me how hopeless we will be soon, once we cannot comprehend even the reasoning for some things.

Same question but for Mexico:

"The model predicts a 15.5% GDP contraction under simplified assumptions. Real-world impacts would likely be milder due to exchange rate adjustments, policy responses, and import reductions. This highlights the sensitivity of trade-dependent economies to tariffs and the importance of holistic economic modeling."

And what about the impact on employment?:

"A 15.5% GDP contraction could lead to 8–12 million job losses in Mexico, disproportionately hitting export manufacturing and informal workers. Unemployment rates could surge to 25–30% (including underemployment), with long-term scarring effects on labor productivity and social stability. However, aggressive fiscal/monetary policy, peso depreciation (boosting export competitiveness), and diversification to non-U.S. markets (e.g., EU, Asia) could soften the blow."

Why on earth did I just read a blog post where it said - "hey, here's what some AI thought about the whole thing?"

No human analysis whatsoever. SMH. We're in a precarious spot here folks!

This should be not just flagged but the entire blog blacklisted from HN. For fuck's sake, there's literally no value in a post that's nothing but "here's what some AI said about it."

Would be interesting to get an AI take on the other side, what is the most likely range that the US stands to gain from this action?

After that, why don’t we just have these two AIs game theory it out with each other? They seem to have a more objective and holistic incentive structure than former TV celebrities and career politicians.

All this says is that a LLM model can roughly reproduce the model & results that a human did; they can both produce logical sounding bullshit about a incredibly rare event for which they don't really know the answer. Logical reasoning for the actions of an unpredictable idiot would be laughable if it was not so serious.