Canadian Tariff situation gets its own thread
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As Canadians knew all along, the US threat of sanctions against us were never about fentanyl or illegal immigration across its northern border. It was our auto sector:
The biggest risk for Canada is now coming into focus. And it's bad news if you're one of the hundreds of thousands of Canadians with a job connected to the auto sector. His target may be you.
In closed-door conversation, members of Trump's team have been pushing auto companies in recent days to commit to drastically scaling back their long-term footprints in Canada and Mexico in exchange for permanent tariff relief — without success so far, according to three sources connected to the industry, who spoke on condition they not be named.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/trade-war-trump-plans-auto-sector-1.7477139
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It’s the union sellout.
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This crap here is exactly what I was concerned about when O’Brien started hanging around the GOP.
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A technologically luddite America will give a very small blip of an uptick to jobs numbers or whatever, and a permanent destruction of our competitiveness globally.
@Horace said in Canadian Tariff situation gets its own thread:
A technologically luddite America will give a very small blip of an uptick to jobs numbers or whatever, and a permanent destruction of our competitiveness globally.
What I don't understand is how Trump can't see this stuff.
Is he a cynic or an idiot?
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A true believer…
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That’s just the way of the narcissist schoolyard bully. Badger and gaslight until they break. Repeat often to remind them who’s in charge.
Like John Bolton said, Trump not only has no plan but is incapable of anything other than to reap chaos on others and everything around him. That is exactly what the world is witnessing being played out. The only ones benefiting from it all are Putin and Xi.
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I’m not surprised by his positions so much as his ability to make others do a 180 on theirs.
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https://www.cnn.com/2025/03/07/business/tariffs-trump-canada/index.html
A day after offering Canada a one-month reprieve on punishing, virtually across-the-board 25% tariffs, President Donald Trump has threatened new tariffs as soon as Friday on Canadian lumber and dairy products. It’s yet another twist in a serpentine trade policy that seems to shift on an hourly basis.
“Canada has been ripping us off for years on lumber and on dairy products,” Trump said in an Oval Office address Friday, citing Canada’s roughly 250% tariff on US dairy exports to the country. Trump said America would match those tariffs dollar-for-dollar.
“We may do it as early as today, or we’ll wait until Monday or Tuesday,” Trump said. “We’re going to charge the same thing. It’s not fair. It never has been fair, and they’ve treated our farmers badly.”
Canadian trade minister Mary Ng pushed back on Trump’s comments, saying his claim that Canada was “ripping off” the United States was “not true.”
Ng said that Trump’s proposed reciprocal tariffs on dairy and lumber are “completely unjustified.”
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Not all tariffs are unjustified or unjustifiable, especially if they are short term motivators to make our trading partnerships more fair. (The claim about Canada's tariffs on US dairy products would have to be fact checked, of course.)
I am just against the sort of tariff which brings anti-competitive jobs into America that the market could never justify, in the presence of global competition.
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https://www.cnn.com/2025/03/07/business/tariffs-trump-canada/index.html
A day after offering Canada a one-month reprieve on punishing, virtually across-the-board 25% tariffs, President Donald Trump has threatened new tariffs as soon as Friday on Canadian lumber and dairy products. It’s yet another twist in a serpentine trade policy that seems to shift on an hourly basis.
“Canada has been ripping us off for years on lumber and on dairy products,” Trump said in an Oval Office address Friday, citing Canada’s roughly 250% tariff on US dairy exports to the country. Trump said America would match those tariffs dollar-for-dollar.
“We may do it as early as today, or we’ll wait until Monday or Tuesday,” Trump said. “We’re going to charge the same thing. It’s not fair. It never has been fair, and they’ve treated our farmers badly.”
Canadian trade minister Mary Ng pushed back on Trump’s comments, saying his claim that Canada was “ripping off” the United States was “not true.”
Ng said that Trump’s proposed reciprocal tariffs on dairy and lumber are “completely unjustified.”
Dairy and lumber have been long standing trade issues of dispute between Canada and the US. In the case of dairy products the dispute also extends to Canada’s trade relations with the EU and UK.
Canada maintains a provincially regulated system of strict supply management across the country in lieu of direct federal farm subsidies as in the US and elsewhere. Essentially each province has its own dairy producers’ association that sets provincial quotas for dairy production to ensure that there is no over supply and prices remain at or above a set minimum. This also serves as a barrier for interprovincial trade in dairy products since each provincial association shields its members from out of province competition in dairy products. The US and our other trading partners do not like this system and want it scrapped altogether. Easier said than done since the system is not under federal jurisdiction and no government in Ottawa is willing to precipitate a constitutional crisis with the all 10 provinces over dairy or, for that matter, any agriculture product that falls under a provincial supply management system. The dairy lobby and the provinces together demand that there be no negotiation over the existing system or protectionist regulations and tariffs in place over dairy related imports.
My personal opinion is that the supply management system Canadians continue to maintain is a hangover from a bygone era and should be altogether scrapped. Let the dairy farmers and producers either sink or swim according to free market forces. However well over 95% of the country thinks the opposite on the matter.
The lumber issue is again over the fact that the forest resources are provincially managed and regulated. The US has issue with how each province determines is own stumpage fees - a resource royalty forestry companies pay to the provincial government on lumbering a given area. The US in particular does not like how the stumpage fees are calculated and consider it to amount to an unfair subsidy and trade practices. The fight never seems to stop and each time it has gone to tribunal the US has lost its case. Other times US tariffs have been lifted because US builders complain that the tariffs drive up the cost of all building materials. If Trump thinks he can fix it by doing the same again he go ahead. It will come back to bite him like it did to Clinton, GW Bush, Obama and possibly even himself during his first term.
Likewise Trump’s current strategy of extorting the entire Canadian economy over these two long-standing irritants along with alleged banking obstacles is wholly unjustified right out the gate. There is no issue that cannot be dealt with under the existing CUSMA that warrants punitive sanctions on the entire Canadian economy.
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Ontario electric energy export surtax on hydro deliveries into US:
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/ontario-electricity-tariffs-ford-trump-1.7479180
