The Wire - February 3, 2025

//The Wire//2300Z February 3, 2025//
//ROUTINE//
//BLUF: TRADE DISPUTES CONTINUE IN NORTH AMERICA. COUNTER-ICE PROTESTS BECOME MORE COMMON THROUGHOUT THE USA.//

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-International Events-

North America: Over the weekend, the two-front trade dispute between the United States, Canada, and Mexico has become more substantial as both Canada and Mexico have announced retaliatory tariffs on imported American goods. In Mexico, following diplomatic discussions, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum has agreed to deploy approximately 10,000 troops to the border with the United States.

AC: If this deployment actually comes to fruition, this will be an absolutely massive effort on the part of Mexico. Right now, the United States has had around 10,000 soldiers deployed to the border region for many years. Of course, this number has fluctuated over the years, but generally speaking it's been a logistical nightmare for the U.S. military. In Mexico, committing 10,000 troops to a border security mission would be completely unheard of. Nevertheless, the agreement has been made, and time will tell if it will hold. Perhaps to sweeten the deal, this morning Mexican authorities captured El Mando Ricky, one of the leaders of the CDN Cartel in Nuevo Laredo. A significant skirmish was reported during this raid, causing the U.S. Consulate to issue a shelter-in-place warning for all Americans in the city.

Greece: Over the past few days the region has been host to substantial seismic activity, with over 200 earthquakes being reported throughout the nation. So far the damage has been minimal, as the earthquakes have been comparatively small, however the increased activity is raising concerns that a larger earthquake may be imminent. Most of the earthquakes have clustered around Santorini, a major volcano. Notably, the earthquakes that have been reported are tectonic and not volcanic in nature, but the risk of a larger event remains elevated nonetheless as the magnitude of these earthquakes has been increasing.

-HomeFront-

USA: Counter-ICE resistance movements continue to take form, with several protest actions and demonstrations taking place over the weekend. In California, protesters shut down several major highways, and have continued sporadic demonstrations throughout the day. AC: In California, the single greatest method for ensuring that the entire population hates you and your protest movement, is to block traffic. Either way, the demonstrations have continued throughout the state.

Washington D.C. - Since President Trump's inauguration (and thus the creation of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE)), many items of note have come to light regarding corruption, inefficiency, money laundering, and so on. For instance, USAID (the main agency responsible for the distribution of financial aid to foreign nations) has largely been shut down and their duties delegated to the State Department.

AC: While the exact reasons for this have not entirely been made public yet, from the outside looking in, it appears as though USAID was largely serving as mostly a money laundering platform, which was automatically issuing payments, even to known terror groups (which is not a new problem, this has been going on publicly for years).

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Analyst Comments: Purely based on very simple import/export data, there is zero chance that the trade war between the United States and Canada will turn in Canada's favor. Roughly 20% of Canada's entire GDP comes from trade with the United States...but less than 0.02% of America's GDP comes from Canadian trade. Furthermore, Canada's efforts to somehow pushback against the United States are largely grounded in something other than logic, almost entirely due to Canada's own domestic actions over the past few years. For instance, specifically and deliberately due to government pressure, the Energy East Pipeline project was canceled...in favor of using existing American pipelines. This means that, for the most part, Canada can't even transport their own petroleum from one side of the country to the other, without sending a substantial portion of it through the United States first. Canada does not publish specific statistics to determine exactly how much Canadian oil relies on being transported via American pipelines, but some estimates claim it could be as high as 20%. Conversely, the United States only gets about 3% of our oil from Alaska (that would thus require Canadian pipelines to move about due to the separation of geography).
In any case, somewhat ironically, Canadian politicians have clearly not learned the very recent (and also somewhat timeless) lessons of it generally being ill-advised to try to strongarm an adversary that you literally rely upon for a significant portion of your own domestic energy needs.

At the southern border, the tensions between Mexico and the United States are slightly more understandable. Despite President Sheinbaum rather comically denying any alliances with criminal organizations, Mexico is the textbook definition of a narco-state. Even though roughly 80% of Mexico's GDP is reliant on trade with the United States, Mexico does have an ace up their sleeve that Canada doesn't have...decades of Cartels embedded throughout the continent, which has contributed to the largest narcotics trade infrastructure the world has ever seen. Placing a 25% tariff on Mexican trade would, after a couple of days, ordinarily cripple any other nation with a similar economy. However, since all economic data in Mexico is suspect at best (and a huge chunk of which is probably cover-operations for illegal narcotics trade), only time will tell how Mexico is able to weather the economic storm ahead.

Analyst: S2A1
Research: https://publish.obsidian.md/s2underground
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