If Canada was up for it, would you be for or against a US Dollar-based EU analogue between the two countries?

46 comments

1. Why?

2. Why, so Canadians can pretend their version of the currency is the better version while ignoring the fact that they’re the same as ours?

3. Sure, but Canada would never go for it.

4. I’m not an economist so I don’t really know how the macro scale impacts of that would shake out…

   But in general, I personally don’t see an issue with it

5. I doubt it, the US likes to control its own monetary policy and you can’t do that when sharing that currency with someone else

6. I don’t really see a reason for this.

7. You mean, establish our own Euro currency?

   I have no idea how stuff works. Also I dunno if the globe would like us messing around with the dollar in big ways.

   As it is our USA based credit cards work well in Canada. Visiting is pretty seamless, though I have never purchased weed with a credit card. It’s the only thing we get cash for when we’re up there. We haven’t been since their legalization was very new.

8. Does it mean we can get money manufactured like Canada’s?

9. What? If you make me go research European events I’m already out

10. What a looney idea.

11. We already have one. Its called the US Dollar.

12. I’m biased as I have lived in Canada and I married a Canadian – I love the way things are because my US dollars have so much buying power in Canada 🙂 sharing a currency would deprive me of that

13. For. I’m all for more cooperation and collaboration between countries (within limits). Of course I’m no economist, so idk many of the pros vs cons

14. No thanks

15. How would this benefit us?

16. I go further, include all of the Americas into an EU like union.

17. Absolutely against

18. I’m not that familiar with US or Canadian monetary policy to have an informed opinion

19. No, I like crossing the border and essentially getting a discount lol

20. Most Canadian places already tale US dollars ans alot of the residents prefer to be paid in it because if the exchange advantage.

21. Downside: both countries now have to cooperate and jump through extra hoops to regulate their own currencies

    Upside: ???

22. Fuck Canada

23. Against. We gain nothing by doing it.

24. If there was a logical reason to do so but there really isn’t one. Europe is much smaller and easier to transit between countries so I see why it was beneficial for them. I feel like unless you’re close to the border you’re not interacting with the other country that much, and this would just be a complicated change with no added benefit. Do you have a reason you would want this to happen?

25. No reason for it. It works in Europe because travel is easier between the smaller countries, so swapping currencies is a hassle. Even under something like NAFTA (I know it affected import/export tarrifs, but it’s the closest thing we’ve had to a EU and it’s still VERY far off from it) almost no one was crossing the borders often enough that having a common currency would be remotely worth it.

26. If we could rid the nation of Florida and Texas, possibly

27. Low upside and huge downside issues, mostly for Canada.

28. only if the US gets to control it, the eurozone financial crisis has shown pretty convincingly the risks of not being sovereign over your own currency. Or in other words, no.

29. I’m no economist, but I like reading about it and listening to economics podcasts. And based on that knowledge, I wouldn’t want it, but I’m open to arguments that would convince me I should.

    The big advantage to the Euro is that the countries can trade with each other without having to constantly convert currencies. The big disadvantages? None of these countries control their own currency, which means that when things go wrong (and they always do), they have to rely on every country in the Eurozone to help. The Greek debt crisis, which had a very real chance of destroying the entire Euro, was a consequence of a shared currency giving Greece, a poor country, the ability to borrow money in a currency backed by really big economies like Germany, France, and the UK. They got into deeper debt than they could have on their own merits, and their options for getting out of that debt were severely limited because solutions like printing money were completely unavailable.

    In Europe, the benefit to having a shared currency is absolutely huge. They used to have a couple dozen, plus the US dollar was (and largely still is) the main standard for international trade, so European countries doing business with each other would have at least two and often three currencies involved. So even with the drawbacks of losing a great deal of control, the single currency is worthwhile.

    In North America? Canada would be the Greece in this situation, in a position to suddenly trade on the US’s wealth while the US bore the most risk. It’s a *lot* more prosperous and less corrupt than Greece, but the US is a lot richer with a much larger industrial base than Germany. I can see lots of benefit to Canada (as well as significant drawbacks), but I’m not sure if there would be any benefit to the US. The US dollar is already the standard for international trade, so the most currencies involved is two, and the US dollar is a lot stronger than the Canadian.

30. No. The USD is already the world standard for money. There is no reason to make a deal with Canada.

31. I wouldn’t really care. But wouldn’t this drive up prices in Canada? I mean their housing market is already bad, this would make it worse

32. We keep getting questions similar to this and… Canada is *not* up for it. Not remotely. They have elaborate measures, from CanCon to immigration policies and a lot in between, to prevent the US simply overwhelming them with numbers.

33. What’s the point? There’s no real economic reason for this.

34. The US has a population of around 330 million and Canada has 35 million, less than California and not *that* much more than Texas. I am not sure what the real practical benefit of a “dollar based EU analogue” would be.

    The EU/monetary union exists in part because they had 20+ neighboring countries, most with 50m or fewer people, using 20+ currencies. North America doesn’t really face that issue, so this seems like a solution in search of a problem.

35. If JJ McCullough (Canadian Youtuber) is to be believed, there is a lot of Anglo-Canadian pride that hinges on being “not American”.

    Following that logic, I think Canada would be in dire straits before they would allow for such American influence in their economy.

    That said, I am somewhat favorable to the idea of a North American bloc (though I would include Middle America and the Caribbean in this concept), so as long as this idea isn’t meant to just stop at Canada, I would be at least in support of the idea (though without looking at the details it is hard to tell whether I would support it in practice or not)

36. No. I don’t believe that Canada would even consider it.

37. unpopular opinion maybe, but I wouldn’t be fundamentally against it. The US and Canada collaborate on a lot of things that are usually sovereign national things anyway, like air defense. I don’t see any negatives for the US in a deal like that.

    But (and a big one), I don’t know why Canada would ever go for it? They have fewer people, less GDP, and less GDP per capita. Essentially they’d be signing up for a system that would inherently be more tilted towards benefiting the US. I don’t see any real advantage for either country, and I see a lot of disadvantage for Canada.

38. Against if for no other reason than the Euro, without a strong central bank regulated by a strong central government, is an intrinsically fragile currency. It is prone to provincial manipulation and mismanagement which very nearly sank it on numerous occasions.

39. If Canada wants to adopt the US dollar they can always join the Union 🙂

40. I remember this was a conspiracy theory in the late 2000s early 2010s that mexico, US, and Canada would make the Amero by like 2015.

41. There is no reason for us and it’s a detriment to Canada.

42. Do you mean the [Amero](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_monetary_union)?

43. Nah. They just absorb Minnesota, Maine, and Michigan. Starting to be clear all 3 of us are ready to bounce. I’m a Minnesotan and constantly joke about how we are just Canadians with American currency. I’d gladly switch to loonies and toonies.

44. It would serve very little value for both countries.

45. I’d be up for the free movement and employment aspects of it, but I’m not sure that an actual single market and unified currency would have much of an impact if it’s only two countries. Dollars Canadian and Dollars American are fairly close in value, our customs and regulatory regimes are already pretty similar, and NAFTA/USMCA/CUM Zone/WhateverTheFuckIt’sCalledTheseDays is functionally a free trade agreement between us.

    I’m not so sure the Canadians would be up for it though, depending on their politics. It harms Canadian employers as they have to raise wages to compete with US ones, which in turn means higher prices. Conversely, the higher pay would benefit the Canadian people, and there is more opportunity between two countries rather than in a single, relatively smaller one.

46. There’s zero benefit for Canada to lose it’s fiscal independence. Who sets interest rates?