Just two years ago, Swatch brought to market a whole series of Omega branded Speedmaster Moonwatch chronometers and sold them at a premium price for what were essentially plastic, quartz movement watches. But that in no way dissuaded the buying public, the watches sold out quickly and reappeared on the used market at elevated prices.
To really do justice to this official factory produced tribute watch is to discard the cheap plastic “bioceramic” case and place the movement into a metal Speedmaster case. And I intend to go one step further. 2025 marks 95 years since the introduction of Hergé’s Tintin comic book character and in North America this means Tintin and all his friends have become public domain figures. In 2013, Omega introduced a Tintin Speedmaster with an outer track consisting of alternating red and white sectors reproducing the color scheme of the Professor Calculus’ moon rocket in Destination Moon. It was to appear with the actual rocket on the dial face, but the Hergé family did not grant licensing rights and the resulting compromised design was the result. The watch production only lasted two years and is rare and expensive to purchase. We’re going to add the Tintin mod to the project.
I have advocated not buying anything made in China – if possible, since that government is increasingly hostile to the free democracies of the world. And I never thought I would say this but that now also includes not buying anything made in the United States of America. The newly sworn in 47th President recently threatened to use economic coercion to “persuade” Canada to become the 51st state by levying a 25% tariff on all Canadian goods imported into the US (it is literally coercion since the tariffs are illegal and violates the free trade deal that he himself renegotiated in his first term and then declared a spectacular success for America). This would likely push the Canadian economy into a recession by reducing annual growth by 2% and send half a million Canadian workers into unemployment. Presumably if we needed more convincing, he could keep raising the tariff level until we capitulated. Canada of course would reply in kind and this type of trade war would also hurt the average American citizen too since many things would instantly become more expensive like gasoline since 70% of crude oil refined in America comes from Canada, as well as a great deal of hydro electricity used by the East coast.
Trump is serious. He understands that the Arctic is the future and that Russia and China are also staking their claims to it so he wants to seize the Canadian lands in the Arctic. That is also the motivation for his desire to buy Greenland from Denmark. But Trump is renowned for not being well read or a good negotiator. If he had kept his intentions secrets, he would have had a much greater chance of achieving his goals. But by mocking Canada as a future state, he instantly stiffened the resolve of the entire nation. Canadians define themselves as NOT being American. Much of Canadian history is a reaction to perceived threats from America. We thought this nonsense had all but vanished in the 20th century but then who would have ever thought a man like Trump could ascend to the presidency not once, but twice.
Trump prides himself as a master businessman but his record speaks otherwise. He was a property developer in his hometown of New York City, yet he bought the Plaza Hotel there in the 1980s for $400 million and a decade later sold it for a $83 million loss. He had three casinos in Atlantic City that went bankrupt. How inept must one be to run a casino into bankruptcy?
Trump may very well force economic hardship onto Canada since the US economy is 10x larger, but the Canadian people are now unified more than they have been since the Second World War and are tough enough to take on far more pain than I suspect Trump is willing to bear from the cries of his own people.
And to my fellow Canadians, I’ve started to occasionally pay for the drive through order of the car behind me at Tim Horton’s. This act of friendship towards a total stranger reminds Canadians that we are all in this together, and we will survive this together and be stronger and better for it in the end. Canada can find markets for its exports elsewhere in the world, we have the respect of the entire planet. The North West passage will soon supplant the Panama Canal as the conduit for European trade to Asia. Trump says America doesn’t need Canada. As usual he has got it ass backwards.
Jim Chung's Ramblings 