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Ask HN: Should Canadian companies leave AWS in preparation for cut?

24 points by _spduchamp ↗ HN
My wife and I run a small chain of second-hand clothing stores and maintain our own custom point-of-sale system that handles us buying our inventory directly from our customers who sell to us. The database and API run on AWS in the Canadian data center. We have contingencies for total system failure, but it's not a fun way to limp along doing business.

We are concerned we are an executweet away from having those AWS services cut.

Any other Canadian business here migrating away from AWS as a precaution?

10 comments

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rocketpastsix
I don't think thats on the table right now. Good to have a cut over plan, but I wouldn't stress it right now. It appears the Canadians are aiming their efforts at hurting "red" states, and AWS is based in a "blue" state that tends to fly under the radar.
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ActorNightly
AWS is highly unlikely to get cut. That was the whole point of Bezos and Zuck meetings with Trump, because they understand that the best course of action is dangling money in front of a manchild as a way to avoid attention.

Of course, nothing is for certain, but my opinion is based on the fact that all the negative rhetoric about Trump tanking the economy is coming from the same places that predicted Kamala win.

bruce511
(I didn't downvote you.)

I agree that the predictions of a tanked economy are primarily coming from the same places that predicted a Kamala win.

And who knows, maybe it won't tank. Objectively though it's fair to say that tarrifs don't typically help an economy. Certainly not in the short term, and in thus case likely not in the long term.

The problem with tarifs in the US context is that they can go as quickly as they come. I'm not going to build a factory here (a multi-year project, with a multi-decade level of return) if the tarrifs can be lifted at any time.

So I'll either just find an alternate source of supply, or more likely (as in the case of Mexican fresh produce) just pass the cost onto the consumer.

Which means that the link between Kamala predictors and Economy predictors is irrelevant.

Will AWS come under threat? Probably not. Maybe it gets a bit more expensive for a while. When that happens obviously you have time to figure out a solution.

While it's useful to have a plan and process for a reasonably fast change, "fast" in this case is like a month. And if AWS is simply banned in Canada overnight, well frankly that'll tank Canada's economy so badly that the 2nd hand clothing business will be booming. (Ie Canada won't do that, and it seems unlikely that Trump/Bezos eould.)

nejsjsjsbsb
Can't AWS just restructure to have a Canadian subsidiary if that happens? Maybe they have this already. Unless they ban ownership of foreign companies.
omnizone
Do you have a dev team that maintains the POS system?