Canadian Tariff situation gets its own thread
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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
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Must have been quite the tantrum he was having when he riffed this in the middle the night:
Trump turned his sights on the new levy in a late night post on his Truth Social platform.
"Despite the fact that Canada is charging the USA from 250% to 390% Tariffs on many of our farm products, Ontario just announced a 25% surcharge on "electricity," of all things, and your not even allowed to do that," he wrote.
Not allowed? By whom?
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/trump-ford-ontario-electricity-tariffs-trade-war-1.7480234
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@xenon said in Canadian Tariff situation gets its own thread:
At what point do you take the steering wheel back from the child?
Congress could do it in an afternoon if they wanted to. The GOP owns this.
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@xenon said in Canadian Tariff situation gets its own thread:
At what point do you take the steering wheel back from the child?
Congress could do it in an afternoon if they wanted to. The GOP owns this.
@jon-nyc said in Canadian Tariff situation gets its own thread:
Congress could do it in an afternoon if they wanted to. The GOP owns this.
What is the procedure to take back an executive order?
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Helluva tantrum in the Oval Office:
"I have instructed my Secretary of Commerce to add an ADDITIONAL 25% Tariff, to 50%, on all STEEL and ALUMINUM COMING INTO THE UNITED STATES FROM CANADA, ONE OF THE HIGHEST TARIFFING NATIONS ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD," Trump posted Tuesday on Truth Social.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/trump-canada-steel-alumimum-tariffs-1.7480309
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Because of course he’s negotiating with himself.
President Trump then threatens to “permanently shut down the automobile manufacturing business in Canada” if Canada does not drop a 250% to 390% tariff on U.S. dairy products, which he doesn’t state only kicks in after a certain quantity of tariff-free U.S. dairy enters Canada, a quantity that was originally negotiated and agreed to by Trump during the USMCA in 2018.
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The incompetence is off the charts. The US makes less than 20% its own aluminum. Would require several Hoover dams of electricity for the US to plug the supply gap (and all the plant investment that goes along with it).
Either there’s some extreme malice going on behind the scenes or this is extreme incompetence.
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The amount of aluminum in a typical car varies by vehicle type and design, but here’s a general breakdown by weight:
Aluminum Content in Cars (By Weight)
• Standard passenger car (sedan, crossover): ~250 lbs (113 kg)
• Luxury/sports car: ~400+ lbs (181+ kg)
• Electric vehicle (EV): ~500-800 lbs (227-363 kg)
• Pickup truck/SUV: ~600-1,000 lbs (272-454 kg)
• Aluminum-intensive vehicles (e.g., Tesla Model Y, Ford F-150): ~1,000+ lbs (454+ kg) -
Alcoa is a global leader in aluminum production, operating facilities in multiple countries. Approximately 81% of Alcoa’s aluminum smelting capacity is located outside the United States, highlighting the company’s significant international manufacturing footprint. 
Key Overseas Operations:
• Canada: Alcoa operates three primary aluminum smelters in Canada, accounting for nearly one-third of the country’s total primary smelting capacity. 
• Australia: The company has significant alumina refining operations in Australia.
• Iceland, Norway, and Spain: Alcoa maintains aluminum production facilities in these countries, contributing to its global production capacity.This extensive overseas presence allows Alcoa to effectively serve diverse markets and leverage regional advantages in raw materials and energy resources.
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Alcoa CEO is a biased source, but he says a 25% tariff would cost 100,000 US jobs - and that’s just in the aluminum industry.
