Claude built the site, it's obvious from the style.
Which is to say that anybody with a $200 subscription and access to Namecheap and Netlify could have built the site in one hour flat. There's no longer any need for an NGO, media nonprofit, or lobbying group to build such things; the effort required has been reduced to near-zero, so anybody can do it.
Yeah, I figured that it was LLM-build - which I'm generally okay with if there's someone willing to put their name to it so I can make my own determination about trust level.
> There's no longer any need for an NGO, media nonprofit, or lobbying group to build such things; the effort required has been reduced to near-zero
Right but actually creating the thing is only half the story. You need to fact check it (especially with LLMs) promote it, approach journalists to bring it to their attention, etc etc etc.
In many ways making a web site has always been the easy part.
> You need to fact check it (especially with LLMs)
That's true... but with every day that passes it's increasingly less true. Today's best high-end LLMs are highly optimized towards fact checking themselves and each other. The winning move is to get a report from Claude and have both Kimi K3 and GPT-5.6-Pro adverserially review it. Then synthesize a fixed version with any one of them. Then adverserially review it again in incognito mode.
This sounds like a lot of work, but it takes literally two minutes of effort and it works amazingly well.
>promote it, approach journalists to bring it to their attention, etc etc etc.
Well it's not very hard these days with social media. All you need to do is post on HN with a compelling enough headline and people will upvote it even if it's AI slop.
And it doesn't look that great. The CSS is all fucked up for me the more you scroll down. No padding in most of the sections. Also, "modelled", lol. I guess that's Claude's British English at work again.
> Why does it matter? The data sources are cited and are publicly available.
Because I don't want to click through to every data source to verify every figure and need some baseline level of trust about whether they've been correctly used.
If there's an error, I want to be able to contact the author somehow.
Last time I checked, Canada was the largest trading partner of 27 states, directly and indirectly. Disclaimer; I’ve lived in both countries and am a dual citizen so not unbiased.
I'm trying to think of the number of people I (an American) know who considered trade with Canada to be a real issue.
The answer I keep coming back to is I know zero people who considered that.
Does the US have a trade imbalance that causes problems, particularly in our manufacturing sector? Yes. Can tariffs kind of help with that? Also yes. Really, you need to instill some sort of sense of duty to country in business leaders, which is a far heavier lift, but this at least puts a number to it.
Does picking a tariff fight with Canada, our closest cultural ally, solve the above problem to the point where it justifies the costs? Hell no.
at this point one can't really assume it was about picking a tariff fight with Canada any more than the Gaza peace plan was about bringing peace to Gaza. guy is just a shit-thrower. that's his one move, throw some shit and see what he can get out of it. walk into a restaurant and claim that he's been treated so badly they're going to have to sign the whole thing over to him, and settle for 10 free meals and a pack of steaks from the walk-in.
> Really, you need to instill some sort of sense of duty to country in business leaders, which is a far heavier lift, but this at least puts a number to it.
The bigger problem is, when consumers have the choice between cheap crap from Aliexpress et al and (vastly) more expensive made-in-<own country>, usually only the affluent who want to show off will be able to choose the latter.
And that is a socially explosive thing in the long term... the masses, especially the rural ones, really do not like it if they feel that they can only afford subpar crap while the "rich urban librul elite" gets access to the good stuff.
That is the stuff that in the best case fuels populist movements, in the worst case revolutions.
(And on top of that, often enough "made-in-<own country>" is bordering the legally required limit on domestic production or is outright just slapping a label and repackaging the Thing)
America's trade imbalance with Canada is basically crude oil. Which they get at a significant discount because it's much more expensive to export anywhere else.
America then refines it and exports it as finished product or uses it internally.
This "trade imbalance" is a massive benefit to America.
I've seen this point in a few different places and I don't know that it's understood as widely as it should be.
So just to expand on why that's the case. As a net producer of energy right now, the US produces more than it consumes. This is why it get's pointed out, that as a net producer, the trade deficit with Canada is also a surplus (or reduction in deficit) on the other side with other countries. Yes it may not be the same physical barrel that is exported vs consumed, but in a fungible way they're commodities. If you separate out that portion, we (Canada) then buy more goods from the US then we sell. And that's also just the goods trade, not including services which the US also sells more of to Canada than the other way around.
Another poster pointed out that Trump is complaining about the trade deficit at the same time he's trying to increase that trade deficit by building the Keystone XL pipeline....
Every side benefits from a trade. That's why the trade is made. The US is able to afford a trader imbalance because the USD is the world's reserve currency. Other countries are subsidizing our trade imbalance. It's a huge win for the US.
Tariffs will not bring back manufacturing. They increase prices of inputs, reduce incentive for competitiveness and invite retaliation. Look how well tariffs have worked for Brazil and Argentina or for the US under Smoot Hawley.
> The US is able to afford a trader imbalance because the USD is the world's reserve currency. Other countries are subsidizing our trade imbalance. It's a huge win for the US.
The geopolitical calculations regarding China and the socioeconomic conditions of working class people in the Midwestern and Northeastern United States would beg to differ.
You need to have at least some control of your own manufacturing destiny for national security reasons, and you need somewhere for people with a high school diploma to work or they start dying deaths of despair.
Also FWIW - the US is the second largest manufacturer in the world, only behind China due to it's larger population. Our productivity per worker blows China away (though they are catching up) and is the best in the world. We manufacture plenty and do it well.
This idea that we have lost manufacturing and we need some push to onshore it all again is... well... another manufactured problem that isn't.
Or any rate it's mischaracterizing and confusing (A) "we miss having lots of good paying manufacturing jobs" with (B) "America needs to manufacture more widgets."
It doesn't matter what the trade policy is, those amounts/types of jobs are not ones that would come back unless you also outlawed robots and made unionization mandatory.
I agree on the security aspect. However, tariffs aren't gonna fix that but will make it worse. We need to remove red take and lean into projects like Port Alpha and California Forever. We also need to work with our allies who are already strong on manufacturing instead of alienating them at every step possible.
The job situation is unfortunate but these jobs will not come. China has lost more jobs to automation than the US has to China. If we want people to prosper we need to build housing where the economy is and encourage people to move there.
While we have lost tons of factory jobs, we have created lots of service jobs that require similar skills. There has been a boom around jobs like solar installation, HVAC and similar. They just aren't as visible because it's a little bit everywhere, rather than a company or industry town.
That'd be the dumbest thing the US has ever done. The next 50 years would be as Vietnam, with people indistinguishable from Americans, sneaking across the border 8000km long, to explode, and kill, and destroy. A Vietnam that never ends, and is local.
Not to mention, Canada can make nukes if it wants to. It just doesn't. It gave them up, but still has the plans.
Canada is already mostly through, setting up trade agreements with the entire rest of the world. It's amazing what can be accomplished, when it's clear that everybody wants to bypass a certain country.
The whole world is going to trade with each other, and just ignore the United States. It'll be a rough five to ten years of transition, but there's been lots of economic situations like that. The US is the past, it's relevance waning.
The US is also far more vulnerable. It's 90% of the way to a civil war already.
It became an issue when Canada did not bow down to Trump's 51st state demand. With Trump's vindictive nature and narcissistic disorder, you get this situation. It is actually completely unsurprising if you think about it.
As an American, I don't see see how you can separate this trade talk from the constant, explicit threats to Canadian sovereignty by Trump - threats he's carried out in reality against Iran, Venezuela, and Cuba. And now economically against Canada.
It isn't just "which Americans consider trade with Canada to be a real issue," it is "which Americans think Canada should become a territory of the United States."
It's just plainly absurd. It is inexplicable to me that Congress doesn't act. And infuriating to me that my representatives in Congress don't do more (even though they are in the opposition.)
I don't believe that annexing Canada is really a MAGA issue, even though they may claim to support it. I think it's just an inexplicable Trumpian obsession like Greenland.
> Really, you need to instill some sort of sense of duty to country in business leaders
Goods are imported because business is a competition and consumers prefer cheap imported goods. Its not like american executives flatly want to offshore, if a competitor does and they dont their customers will leave. The only solution business leaders can have here is collusion, which is illegal. If we want goods to be manufactured domestically it is on us as consumers to buy domestic products over cheap imported ones.
This seems illogical. You can't simultaneously claim that the US is paying higher prices for Canadian goods because of US-imposed tariffs and then turn around and say only that Americans are paying a tax on buying Canadian goods on Canadian-imposed tariffs. Both countries are either paying higher prices or paying higher taxes. Canada's tariffs must also be viewed as America is taxing Canada back, or else neither can be viewed that way.
Separately you can go back prior to 2024, for example, and discuss monopolization of Canadian companies and import duties on American products which also must be treated in the same fashion for this analysis - Canadian imposed tariffs on dairy (I don't care about dairy other than it being an obvious example) would have to be claimed to be an American tax on Canadians for this to be consistent.
Whatever claim you would levy here, equally applies to Canada minus the dollar volumes depending on which country imports more and what products are imported since Canada is also implementing additional (because they've had tariffs for a while) tariffs on specific goods/services.
I think you are reading way too much into that "you" in that sentence. I read it simply as a list and total of all the retaliatory tariffs that Canada is imposing, and the site emphasizes that this is obviously bad for American jobs, not that American consumers pay the tariffs that Canada is imposing.
This whole trade war with Canada has to be one of the dumbest fucking things I have ever witnessed, and that's saying a lot given the complete incompetence and buffoonery of the current US administration. First they had to imitate Idiocracy with the the WFC fight on the White House lawn, now they're imitating South Park by killing relations with Canada. Heck, a big joke in the original South Park movie was that it was so inconceivable that of all countries Canada is the one we'd have a war with, but Trump just wants to speed run to every country on the planet hating our guts.
> This whole trade war with Canada has to be one of the dumbest fucking things I have ever witnessed, and that's saying a lot given the complete incompetence and buffoonery of the current US administration.
You'd think that, strategically, a decapitation strike is the worst thing that could happen for a nation. However, that would be incorrect: the worst thing that could happen is this, a vain and incompetent buffoon installed in the top leadership position. With no leader you're just not making decisions, but the organization can continue operating under autonomous cells. With a hyperactive incompetent leader you're speedrunning every conceivable bad decision and everyone just has to look on in horror.
As incomplete as the sentences from one of these may be, their "weave" style tickles the attention mechanisms for their most ardent supporters, and comes across as heartfelt, relatable, and ultimately a coherent stream of consciousness dump.
I don't recall Justin Trudeau making leadership decisions so diabolical and incompetent that Serious People were forced to ask if he was a foreign agent.
I am not sure that there is one example which can meet all your criteria, though there are many examples of stupid things that (almost) everyone agrees he should not have done:
Summary quote from IMDB: "The U.S. President, low in the opinion polls, gets talked into raising his popularity by trying to start a cold war against Canada."
I think the idea is that tariffs cut both ways. They increase prices for foreign goods as well as reduce demand for imports causing job losses in the exporting country. The original tariffs increase prices and the retaliatory tariffs reduce demand for American products causing job loss.
Not only for foreign goods. If there's a tax on imported X, domestic X producers can now charge more because the foreign producers must raise their prices to pay for the tax.
Another way to look at it is that any tariff reduces foreign competition, with all the knock-on effects that implies.
It's not the foreign producer who must raise her prices to pay for the tax. It's the local importer. The net effect on the consumer is that the price of imported goods goes up so then, as you say, the local producers can raise their prices and increase their profits.
It is. When Canada imposes retaliatory tariffs, it is of course a tax on Canadians. Though it is also a market inducement, and one of the complaints of the admin is that Canada's retaliatory vehicle tariffs -- literally mirroring the tariffs the US applied to Canada -- caused a 22% drop in imports.
> import duties on American products which also must be treated in the same fashion for this analysis - Canadian imposed tariffs on dairy
Can you tell us if those import duties are in the room with us? Because you know they didn't exist, right?
There have been $0 in tariffs on US dairy. The tariffs only come into play when the US imports pass a certain volume -- and precisely the same tariffs happen in both directions -- and the US hasn't. Now the US has complained that there are administrative barriers, and maybe so, but they sure aren't clear on what they are, and lie about everything constantly.
Prior to this trade war, there was essentially 0% tariffs on products from the US. And the only reason there is a trade "deficit" is because of massive amounts of Alberta oil that the US desperately needs. I mean, it's hilarious that Trump was literally celebrating bringing back Keystone XL, and increasing the flow of Alberta oil, while simultaneously complaining essentially about that very same oil.
This is, as the WSJ named it, the stupidest trade war in history. All for yet another distraction, as Trump's entire base just desperately need to puff their little chests and celebrate when they think he is punching down on someone. Even if it makes their lives worse and their lot worse.
Hey, thanks for this comment. You seem to be knowledgeable about the topic and I am a moron.
What happens to consumer spending and associated tax revenue when imported goods cost significantly more? Let's take a hypothetical German auto brand that has no factories in the US (BMW, MB, VW have factories, not sure if Audi and Porsche are grandfathered in because of VW).
If a car that cost $100K before and now is $125K, it seems that the demographic that could afford that $100K will shrug and pay the higher price. Now, that's the well-off folks, a bit immune in this economy.
What other consumer goods with imposed new tariffs will cause less spending and shrink the economy instead? It seems that tariffs are a net loss, besides I guess in cases when they are used to prevent dumping.
If you're going to talk about canadian dairy tariffs, please note that (a) this was originally negotiated by trump the last time he was in office, and (b) the tariff only applies when the total imports exceed a limit, which iirc has never actually been exceeded.
Someone else shared this article [1] and I was reading a quote I thought was interesting:
“[Canada] has a large dairy producing constituency that it wants to protect, so they put a cap on imports that can be accessed at a competitive rate. That's what we call a ‘TRQ’ (tariff rate quota),” says Becky Rasdall Vargas, senior vice president of trade and workforce policy at the International Dairy Foods Association. Under the TRQ, Canada accepts a certain amount of dairy products duty-free, without tariffs.
"Rather, Rasdall Vargas blames the dispute on “a systemic set of failures” by Canadian administrators that intentionally prevent American dairy exports from reaching the import cap. These protectionist measures are intended to support Canadian dairy farmers. One rule, for example, requires that Canadian dairy processors be the primary recipients of American dairy products.
“If you’re a U.S. exporter, you're going to want to sell to your customers, not to a competitor,” she says. “Another one is that retailers aren't eligible to obtain an import license quota in Canada. There are layers upon layers of rules that ultimately prevent U.S. exporters from being able to fill those quotas.”
So I'm not sure the quota is as straightforward as many folks are making it out to be and there's more nuance there. This, assuming it is accurate, is really interesting and helps explain why US producers don't even meet the quota that was set.
The main reason the Dairy Supply quota is in place is to stop US dairy producers from dumping dairy into Canada.
That's why the USA has never reached the tarriff limit. The big producers there would just dump 20 million litres at once if they could. They aren't interested in 1 or two.
And if they were able to do that, the Canadian producers would go under. So its kinda simple, the Dairy Supply system is there to protect the Canadian Dairy industry. If it was removed, we would be flooded with cheap, low-quality US milk.
The entire Canadian dairy industry produces less milk than Wisconsin alone. Why does the US need the Canadian market? A: They don't, they just want it anyways.
> The main reason the Dairy Supply quota is in place is to stop US dairy producers from dumping dairy into Canada.
Yet the same rules apply to European cheese: limited quantities that can only be imported through an established dairy cartel member. Anti-Americanism is a convenient marketing tool, along with the nostalgic myth of the independent family farm. The reality is oligarchs like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saputo_Inc.
To protect Canada from the oligarch European producers and their myth of the family farm, right? And certainly every business in Canada is a family run one too?
It follows then that the USA also wants to protect its industries, such as timber, oil and gas, and maple syrup, from Canadian producers that are happy to dump their stuff south of the border for cheaper than US competition.
The US sets the price it pays for Canadian oil, a discount from the market price.
I don't know about timber, but the US maple syrup industry is healthy, just unable to keep up with demand. I think that's a consequence of geography and the time investment required to get mature trees, not Canada undercutting.
I don't really know how the discount is built into the price, but it's a result of the fact that only about 10% of the oil Canada produces can make it to a port time sold to non-US buyers.
The price is “discounted” as in “it's cheaper than the global market price”, because of the shipping difficulties, but it's not a “discount” in the sense of “americans get a discount because we're nice neighbours and they have a coupon”.
A common point of political contention up here are various pipeline issues, precisely because it potentially permit access to more markets, improving the sale price. (However it would also raise the price of gas in Canada for the same reason, with all the implications that comes with that).
> […] from Canadian producers that are happy to dump their stuff south of the border for cheaper than US competition.
The USD and CAD are not 1:1, as the CAD is 'lower value', so of course stuff made in Canada will generally be less expensive. (The trade off is that imports are more expensive for Canadians.)
>So its kinda simple, the Dairy Supply system is there to protect the Canadian Dairy industry. If it was removed, we would be flooded with cheap, low-quality US milk.
Flooded? Cheap? Yes. Low quality? Doubtful. If quality were the sticking point, you'd expect this would be amicably resolved with equal standards for both domestic and imported milk.
Maybe it's obvious, but you left out subsidized. US dairy production is extremely subsidized compared to Canada's. It's not in any sense "free trade". The subsidies would allow the US dairy industry to destroy Canada's (it might even without the subsidies, but the subsidies guarantee it). Once the local industry was destroyed, the US producers/government would be free to increase the price. No country wants that, which is why things like staple foods are subsidized and tariff-protected anywhere in the world where not doing so would give a large neighbor/bloc leverage over them.
That's just a convenient talking point for our government. The model in Canada is effectively a regressive tax on consumers in the checkout line. It conveniently allows for our government to talk about how they don't subsidize farmers, and have a clean budget on that front, but I would prefer to see a model that was actually funded by government taxes such that it could be a progressive tax born more by wealthier Canadians rather than lower income ones being hit hardest.
I also have doubts that our current model is the best way of achieving the goals we had in mind when the programs were created in the 1970s. I know the error bars are quite sizeable, and it's not quite apples to apples, but recent studies that suggest our supply chain management in dairy, eggs, and poultry, costs approximately $244pp per year in higher costs. That's over $10billion per annum Canada wide, equivalent to 2% of the federal budget! I have been discussing this with someone in another thread for days, and the more I look into it, the more I feel like we really need to take another look at the implementation of this program. Dollar amount breaks my brain.
The elephant in the room is that the government is legally required to buy back the quota if change were to happen, and that is an estimated $50 billion dollar bill. Which actually doesn't sound so bad compared to your $10 billion per annum figure, but the $10B is hidden so it is easy to let it be ignored. A one time $50B payout will stick out like a sore thumb and no politician wants to attach their name to that.
When they did it for tobacco back in 2009 it was only around $300 million on the table which isn't nearly as mind boggling and thus much more easily forgotten/ignored.
Yeah, I know that's a colossal elephant to deal with. I mean, I would hope that whatever reforms could lower costs enough that if you did a model similar to Australia, and had a temporary levy to pay for the buyout, the end cost to consumers, even with the levy, was lower prices than prior to the change. That was the case in Australia.
And I know nothing about the market, but I can't imagine it's overly liquid, the fact that all farmers would receive cash for their quota, would definitely be attractive to most. It's already heavily financialized and borrowed against.
And then, you could even do something like NZ did where all the dairy farmers got together and created a coop for processing, NZ is now the largest exporter of dairy in the world! If some of the quota levy went to getting this off the ground, you'd help the farmers retain a bigger piece of the pie with vertical integration of the supply chain. And, hopefully also compete globally and become net exporters, increasing the size of the pie.
I dunno, I have no idea what the fucking solution is, but after spending a bunch of time in the weeds of this shit over the past couple days, I am like, we have created a monster, this can't be the most effective way to achieve the underlying goals of the program.
> dairy farmers got together and created a coop for processing
That isn't going to go over well with the big three (Saputo, Agropur, Lactalis) who own ~75% of the processing quota. I suspect if you dig even deeper you will find it is they who hold the political capital that props up the dairy supply management system. If it were only farmers involved it would have been gone ages ago.
Agreed on all fronts. But, if we're entering an era where we have to be less reliant on our trade relationship with the US, we need innovation to compete, and the status quo of Oligopolies in so many fucking industries really needs to be confronted imo. Doubt it'll happen, but it's an increasingly ugly situation.
Protecting your own country's production capacity and industry doesn't come without cost. It likely would absolutely be cheaper if we allowed our core industries to fail and be replaced wholesale with American exporters, but that's not what the majority want for the country.
As we're seeing with this trade war as a whole, tightening economic integration with an asymmetric partner puts your sovereignty at risk as well. If we have no industries of our own, and are utterly dependent on a single unreliable superpower, then we lose the freedom to decide on our own future as the rug could be pulled out from under us at any time. The only way to mitigate that risk is to diversify trade and ensure self-sufficiency in our own industries.
Yes. I am well aware of this. I just find it hard to believe that dairy, poultry, and eggs are some special snowflake type of farm that requires the quota and supply chain management, while every other type of farm, we can manage with direct subsidies.
For reference, there are about 190k farms in Canada, 8% of those farms are dairy, poultry, and eggs whose viability is ensured with supply chain management. The other 92% of farms, are managed with direct government assistance (AgriStability, AgriInsurance, AgriInvest, and AgriRecovery). The latter costs the government $1.5-$2 billion most years. While the recent report on supply chain managed farms suggests the cost born by Canadians to be around $10 billion. Even if that number is off by an order of magnitude, we're looking at $1 billion for 8% of farms, and $1.5-$2 billion for the other 92% of farms.
All I'm saying is it seems like the solution to help ensure viability in dairy, egg, and poultry farming is wildly inefficient and merits a look from first principles. Is there a solution to achieve the same outcome at a lower cost? The world has changed drastically since the policies were implemented in the 1970s.
I admit I am far from an expert, but I have spent an inordinate amount of time reading about this shit out of curiosity in the past couple days. Broke my brain when I saw the numbers around the costs born by canadians in the checkout aisle due to supply chain management.
I am not sure if this factors into it but an interesting difference between dairy and eggs and most other types of farms is that those are highly perishable. Grain can be stored and released gradually to even out market gyrations but dairy is just lost if they don’t match supply closely with demand in real time.
Yeah, that's a fair point but it still seems like a huge delta.
And my rabbit hole over the last couple days has led me to spend a bunch of time looking into Fonterra, which is the farmers processing Coop that happened in NZ when they got rid of their quota system. It's turned NZ into the largest milk product exporter on earth, and their whole strategy is processing milk into more shelf stable products. Cheese and Butter is about 20% the remainder is skim milk powder, whole milk powder, whey protein, and caseins.
Anyhow, all of this is to say, that there are solutions that ensure no milk goes to waste by processing it into more shelf stable ingredients, all of which have massive demand on the global markets. Whether we do much of this in Canada, I am not sure, but, feels like a missed opportunity if not, and likely partially caused by a lack of necessity to innovate due to the artificial moat.
Eggs, haven't looked into but presumably similar to milk in that it can be processed into shelf stable powders.
But, on the poultry front, beef, pork, etc, are all in the 92% of farms group, managed by subsidies, so, while chickens have a shorter lifespan, I don't see why we can manage cow and pork farms with subsidies, but not chicken.
It should also be noted that Canada does not permit dairy products produced with Bovine Growth Hormone, which makes our industry less competitive that American where the practice is widespread.
> does not permit dairy products produced with Bovine Growth Hormone
It should also be noted that this is misleading. The dairy products are permitted to be produced with rBGH and you will almost certainly find some on the shelves as not all dairy products in Canada come from Canadian cows. What isn't permitted is giving it to cows in Canada as it is concern for reasons of animal welfare.
I know you already know that, but the audience needing your message doesn't and they are prone from messaging like that to think there is some reason to be afraid of the milk even though it perfectly satisfies Health Canada concerns. It wouldn't be allowed across the border if it were deemed dangerous. It is worth reminding that Canada happily allows all and every drop of American milk across the border as long as someone is willing to pay the tariff.
Not to the extent that you consider your milk good. Cows cannot produce milk without the hormone. That is the reason why a recombinant version works. What loophole would you close, exactly?
I strongly support buying local where possible, especially for agricultural and farming products. My general algorithm goes: buy in my local area -> city -> region -> state -> country -> western-aligned. I try to buy a lot of American made products in general because of that but even for things like dairy you can find high quality producers that, while more expensive, at least aren’t Big Dairy (for milk), whether that’s Canadian or American or otherwise.
It’s one thing for the government to create protectionist policies, it’s another to have folks like me or perhaps you who practice it in person with our daily economic choices.
I have one rn in he fridge. It's "cream cheese product" because probably cannot put "cream cheese" in the name.
It's made from Canadian milk, not imported.
In Canada Philadelphia is made from Canadian milk.
However i try to avoid ultra-transformed products like cheez-whiz and philadelphia. Those are not even allowed to be called "cheese" here, they must have some qualifier in front or after the word.
So, here is one of the major problems with having a US administration run by liars, crooks, and bullies: your arguments lose all credibility.
I'm a Canadian who is pretty unhappy with our protectionist dairy lobby, and thinks there probably is a bunch of unfair trade barriers erected on our side by the dairy lobby.
I'm probably more open to this line of argument than the majority of Canadians. However, when I see an American who has literally anything to do with their federal government start making these arguments, I more or less have to assume it's either a lie, or at best a truth that's going to be twisted, blown out of proportion, and used to undermine the sovereignty of my country.
The furthest I would go right now would be to support a relaxation of our dairy protections in dialogue with the EU, and then whatever scheme we arrive at can then be applied to trade with the USA at a later date (including requiring dairy imported from the USA to meet EU-level food safety standards).
The USA simply cannot be trusted to be anything like good-faith negotiators.
The limits are often covered pretty misleadingly. If you were to just order a truckload of American butter and import it, you'd be subject to the over-quota tariff regardless of whether the cap was reached. In order to get the preferential rate, you have to file a formal application to use the quota (https://www.international.gc.ca/trade-commerce/controls-cont...), which is subject to all kind of restrictions and limitations. In particular, grocery stores aren't allowed to use the butter quota at all, so any butter destined for retail must be imported at the higher rate.
Fair enough, I agree the truth is more nuanced. I regret even using dairy as that has caused a lot more of a discussion about the specific item being, idk, targeted? than I would have liked and detracted from a more broad point that I wanted to make or at least discuss. Thanks for sharing that article, will take a look at that too.
>Aside from that, the "obvious" dairy tariffs you speak of are almost entirely theoretical. Those are anti-dumping tariffs that kick-in only when a certain threshold has been met. It never has.
What about others' contention that the reason why the quota hasn't been hit is that it's a pain to make use of?
How do you square your initial statement about how the tariffs are "almost entirely theoretical" and "anti-dumping", then in the next paragraph you seemingly walk back on that, but then move the goalposts to something like "well ok the tariffs might not be only theoretical, but trump is still wrong because he used the phrase 'ripped off'" and that "Nobody has been over-charged", despite the comment you were replying to never mentioned "over-charged", only "Canadian imposed tariffs on dairy". By all accounts that's true. The tariffs do exist, even if nobody pays them. The fact there's some complicated workaround doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
That is definitely a flatly wrong statement. Unfortunately, it reinforces the Trumpian disinformation that tariffs are fees that other countries pay us... or something.
Trump is taxing Americans when he imposes tariffs. Canada is taxing Canadians when they impose retaliatory tariffs.
And FWIW, most economists think retaliatory tariffs are stupid - on net they cause more harm to the retaliating country than if there were no retaliation. But the politics around tariffs are just stupid. It's all stupid.
> And FWIW, most economists think retaliatory tariffs are stupid - on net they cause more harm to the retaliating country than if there were no retaliation. But the politics around tariffs are stupid too. It's all stupid.
You can't divorce these tariffs from their geopolitical context, which is Trump threatening to annex Canada.
> And FWIW, most economists think retaliatory tariffs are stupid - on net they cause more harm to the retaliating country than if there were no retaliation.
This is wrong, because you're using the extremely broad concept of "harm" for a specific monetary loss. There are many more things at play here than just money gained/lost.
Agreed that "Canada is taxing you back" doesn't make sense. But "America is taxing Canada" makes even less sense. Sorry, just no. America is taxing Americans, Canada is taxing Canadians, these taxes harm exports and imports.
Also, we've never had fully free trade. You can whine about dairy, we can whine about unfair lumber tariffs. These are all part of CUMSA, an agreement that has been illegally violated every damn day under Trump's regime. Let's just cut to the chase. If Trump won't honour CUMSA why make any deal with him? There is no reason he'll honour any new agreement either. He was the one who negotiated CUMSA in the first place.
> But "America is taxing Canada" makes even less sense
I don’t disagree. I just wanted to point out the framing needs to be consistent, which I think you agree with.
I also agree with you with respect to free trade. Every exporter is a free trade proponent. Curious how when it comes to imports or protecting domestic industries all of a sudden every country in the planet puts up some sort of protectionist barrier.
It all comes down to who has pricing power. If Canadian exporters can raise prices without unduly harming sales, then the tariffs on their goods are predominantly paid by American consumers. If the US cannot, then the tariffs on their goods are predominantly paid by American exporters (and must be absorbed by reducing profit margins).
Whether or not that is true, I have no idea. One would expect there to be enough diversity of trade that on the balance it cannot be that lopsided, but maybe that's wrong. It is certainly possible for one side of a trade war to be hurt both coming and going, without any logical inconsistency.
I assume the data source citations are referencing Census Department API endpoints, I would make the data sources explicit by adding links.
You also might want to consider archiving the data if you aren't already given this administration's tendency to remove data that doesn't further their agenda.
I like the idea behind the site, but I have some nits.
First, when you list something like a financial figure, you must also include the relevant time period. E.g. you say 16.0B in taxes collected by Canada from American exporters. But you don't list the time period.
Second, you say 313 are taxed today. What is this in reference to? Goods? People? Companies? Percentage?
Am I the only one who finds this site undecipherable?
Take this snippet for example:
American exporters
$16.0B of what American exporters sell to Canada sits in headings Canada taxes today, 10.5% of the total. From 8 September it is $26.5B.
See whose jobs
What does "sits in headings Canada taxes" mean? Whatever this means, how does it jump to $26.5B from $16.0B on a single date? Don't things have to enter for tariffs to be collected?
"See whose jobs" is even more confusing. Nothing about jobs was mentioned. It's talking, presumably about an increase in a tariff collected by Canada. I can understand this will affect certain jobs, but "See whose jobs" just confuses the situation more. I cannot figure out for the life of me what's going on.
Here's another example when you click the "nuclear option" it jumps, without context beyond "Canada’s energy supply is a fourth exposure, and a different kind" to this:
The nuclear option
Canada has not done this, and nothing here predicts it will. But tariffs are the smaller lever. Flip the switch to see which states buy their energy from Canada, and whether they have anywhere else to buy it.
Crude cost per gallon
$1.86
what everyone else charges, up 26¢ a gallon
Both figures are prices the United States actually paid this year: $67.17 a barrel to Canada, $77.92 a barrel to everyone else, across 704 million Canadian barrels. Careful with the gap, though. It is not a pump price, since refining, distribution, tax and margin all sit on top of the crude. Nor is it really a discount: Canadian barrels are mostly heavy crude, and heavy crude sells below lighter grades wherever it goes, so a lot of the difference is just the grade. What replacing one with the other would cost is a question this page does not have the data to answer.
Am I really dumb for not understanding this site, or is this the infogram equivalent of a Nigerian prince email?
Imagine you want to build a factory in the US. You pay tariffs on the factory equipment you need - much of it is made overseas. You pay tariffs on your input goods. And then when you try to export your customers get hit with a retaliatory tariff. I don't agree with tariffs but even if we accept some level of protectionism you can't tariff everything the way this administration wants. You have to pick what you actually want to prioritize and choose your battles.
Tariffs hurt domestic manufacturing for a number of reasons, but one of the major ones is because something like 50% of our manufacturing inputs are imported.
Protectionism and tariffs simply don't work in the global world.
Capitalism will keep producing things where they make sense not where politicians want.
Exceptions make sense only to protect industries that are absolutely vital and critical for security. Ship building should be one of those for countries like US or UK.
Or when you want to kickstart an industry and need to protect it for a limited amount of time (Koreans and the Japanese both did so with some of their industrial sectors, but it was always time limited).
This administration thinks it can make every industry thrive through tariffs.
I don't see how it can work, even for a country with the resources of the US.
Exactly. The tarriffs are but a part of the attack on the previous status quo.
The current Admin is hostile to neoliberalism, globalism, the maritime order, sole superpower, international comity, etc.
We've been heading towards a multi-polar world order for a while. It is what it is.
The current Admin is speed running the transition. There is no theory, workdview, vision for whatever comes next. Or how to get there. Just cronyism and patronage.
The prior Admin, whatever its faults, has a plan for navigating the transition, unwinding neoliberalism, to invest in domestic capacity and supply chains.
>Ship building should be one of those for countries like US or UK.
Yet, protectionism for that, as practiced in the US (ie. jones act), was a massive failure. There might still theoretically a domestic shipbuilding sector, but it's bloated, inefficient, and as a result is totally not up to the task of standing up to China, which does have a competent shipbuilding sector.
What do you mean? German manufacturers have always competed on the global market and they have always been against tariffs because they rely heavily on exports.
A handful of people I used to work with lost their US manufacturing jobs in 2025 by exactly this mechanism. Their job was assembling products from components built in China, for export to Europe. Their inputs got new tariffs in 2025, and European retaliatory tariffs hit them on the other end. The jobs were moved to a factory in China.
Trump tariffs aren’t for economics reasons. He’s using that as a bullying tactic. It’s pretty obvious given that each tantrum is followed by a new tariff
Canada is very unfortunately caught in the trade war between the USA and China. It's pretty easy right now for certain goods to bypass the US tariffs by being transshipped through Canada and enter the USA without tariff because of minimal processing. Chinese steel is a notable example of this.
And a lot of Canada's trade MOUs with other countries basically requires they have this special privilege. So there's gonna be fallout everywhere.
I wouldn't personally want to own Canadian dollars right now but I think they'll get this figured out.
> Ukraine was used as a pawn to anger Russia. What did Russia try to do and continue to do so?
Ukraine is a sovereign country, free to decide for themselves which military and economic bloc best suits them.
Russia rolled tanks into Ukraine after denying they were planning to attack, airdropped special forces into Kyiv after denying they were planning to attack, repeatedly threatened the use of nuclear weapons even though they're not willing to admit to being at war and Ukraine doesn't have nukes, tried to assassinate then candidate-PM Yushchenko in 2004, annexed Crimea, committed a bunch of warcrimes while doing so, and they did all this even though Ukraine only gave up its nuclear arsenal under the condition that its sovereignty would be respected.
> Canada has been used as a pawn to threaten America by China, and Canada is trying to pivot from the USA to China?
Canada's primary pivot is away from the USA, not towards China, e.g. Canada also deepening ties with the EU.
No, Canada is just the last in line of this US administration's mission of alienating and pissing off every single ally while bending to enemies and Israel.
>It's pretty easy right now for certain goods to bypass the US tariffs by being transshipped through Canada and enter the USA without tariff because of minimal processing.
This talking point keeps getting repeated on HN. Always without sources because the only source is a dubious White House "report" that is nothing more than a manufactured reason for buying an expensive new AI system (probably from a big donor). https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/The-Gr...
That same report equally names the European Union, India, Israel, Japan, Mexico, South Korea, and Taiwan alongside Canada. So literally every modern western economy is making this "pretty easy"? Yeah, ok.
I haven't personally seen it on HN but it has been an issue at least since the beginning of tariffs, and there's significant rules in the original NAFTA agreement to try and curb it. So it's not new, and definitely predates that report.
Here's a NYT article from April about the difficulty in preventing transhipping.
Canada generally doesn't have much problem coordinating with the US on tariffs on Chinese goods. A primary example is Chinese Vehicles. The trouble is that by launching a trade war against Canada, the US has lost the willingness of Canadians to participate in such coordination.
Re: Canadian dollars, it's the US dollar that I believe is the more salient concern [0]
If steel and aluminum is imported to Canada, they face Canadian tariff rates. If the US and Canada coordinate their tariff regimes (as I illustrated with the EV example), the rolled steel and aluminum will be tariffed at a rate the US government deems adequate.
If you're suggesting that Canada is facilitating the covert smuggling of Chinese steel and aluminum then I'd require a bit more evidence. It's become fashionable for the US government to level such accusations, but as we saw with claims about fentanyl, it's all bunk.
There's much more than tariffs at stake. The fight here is about influence but the way Trump is handling his push to regain American influence in the Western Hemisphere is pushing several allied countries even further away — including some that have been allies for more than two centuries.
This strategy is going to fail and when it does countries will trade much more one with others currencies and less with USA and USD. When that happens the American house of cards will collapse because it will no longer be possible to print trillions of dollars and count on other countries to absorb them trusting in the American policies and agreements.
The printing dollars formula facing low single-digit inflation is coming to an end.
U all can downvote me like on the credit-card thread but this is the reality for those outside the big American walls.
America's former allies feel deeply insulted by what they perceive as a deranged snubbing. That remains even if the American courts decide later they're unenforceable.
Some of the trade demands with Canada infringed on Canada's constitutional structure re the French language in a way that is simply impossible for them to meet. No they can't do monolingual English-only packaging.
The entire thing was a pretense or a sham. There were no negotiations. It was a shakedown. Canada understands it this way. I don't know what Americans think it was.
LBH, Canada has always been real economy loser with respect US trade with ~80b goods / services deficit AFTER discounted energy - cheap crude sales to US to fuel US refinery mismatch. US doesn't have strategic domestic energy self sufficiency without Canadian crude, CAN sludge should be selling at premium (same with VZ but we see how that went). In an ideal world Canada could be making more refining and selling high margin refined fossil to global markets and not sending ~80b to US.
Which is to say, if Canada sorts out inter provincial trade, pivot to domestic goods/services and sell commodities globally at benchmark prices it on paper come out ahead. Nvm associated brain drain via US integration killed what was left of Canadian tier1 industries (not much to be done). Or half reason CAN has to sell cheap to US is US lobbying (read political meddling / foreign influence) on infra/pipelines. Or discount NORAD which LBH missiles over polar orbit aren't stopping at Canada, as if Canada needs to free ride on NA security architecture.
TLDR is Canada always loser of even happy vassal arrangement, the carrot was always stale but it dint' need to be sweet with how big US stick is. But stick not big enough to force CAN to deepthroat new rotten carrot arrangement. At least not yet.
They know the stick is huge but with how everything is going with US and the TACO mentality they feel US will be back on the table once the reality starts hitting.
US having veto over Canada trade negotiations, dictating language policy which could cause Quebec to cede from Canada, and stop the "buy Canadian" policy put after the last tariff round etc. It not even a stick anymore it is a proper gun which blow in the face of any Canadian who agrees to these terms.
Not to mention? Any deal signed isn't worth a thing these days. The US is absolutely, positively not trustworthy.
Just look at the bridge deal. We negotiate a deal, build a bridge for billions, then at the last minute? Rip up a signed agreement and reneg. After the money is spent. It's pathetic. I expect better from used car salesmen. It doesn't matter why, for what reason, it reflects 100% on the US, it's not just one man.
We don't trust the US any more. It lies. It cheats. It scams. We used to buy US weapons, but now we don't trust that, either. I can imagine spending 200B on weapons, and then the software just stops working.
The US used to be the most trusted, beloved nation by Canadians. I think many Canadians would trust Iran, China, Russia more than the US now, to keep a deal.
And that?
That's a pathetic outcome, from a pathetic administration.
1. The American economy is large, but insular. Most trade is between states, not with other countries. This is why most countries shrug and accept tariffs on their goods. For them, trade with the U.S. is not as big of a deal as it's portrayed, so it's not worth risking "fireworks" over. Canada and Mexico are rare exceptions to this. Canada, particularly, is reliant on international trade and trade with the U.S.. That's why they are fighting back for a deal that's better than slow death.
2. Canada is the #1 export market for a lot of American goods. e.g. Autos. Trump is determined to destroy Canada's auto manufacturing sector and bring it all to the U.S.. That might sound good to Americans, but they need to realize that this will necessarily mean they'll lose their #1 export market. If tariff's freeze Canada out of the American market and the Canadian auto industry dies, there will be no incentive to maintain the trade barriers against Chinese autos. Thanks to heavy automation, China is producing better autos than North America can at a fraction of the cost. American autos will be more expensive than ever after a forced retreat from Mexico and Canada and will be totally unable to compete on price and quality. Then there will be the lasting hostility to American products that Trump has caused.
3. Americans should closely examine some of the demands that were in the deal Canada just walked away from. One was for Canada to follow U.S. trade policy with other countries, no questions asked, no variations allowed. e.g. If the U.S. decides Tuvalu needs to be tariffed, Canada would be obligated to as well. Canada would also need to ask permission to sign trade deals with other countries. This would have been a complete surrender of sovereignty and would have reduced Canada's international trade policy to that of an American vassal. Not even an American state! This was a completely unacceptable proposal that was likely introduced to poison pill the negotiations. Howard Lutnick's last minute arrival and direct financial interest in generating more tariff refunds is not getting enough attention.
4. Americans are mostly ignorant of the fact that one of the biggest trade wars of the last century is going on with their Northern neighbour. Of those who are aware, the overwhelming majority are not supportive. Canadians are universally aware of it and overwhelmingly in support of Carney. Canadians have been cutting travel to the U.S. and buying fewer American goods for over a year. Now they're going to do it harder, and many won't stop even after the trade-war ends. Kids are watching their parents read labels in the grocery store to make sure they're not buying American goods and asking why. Trump can negotiate a new trade deal with Carney but he can't negotiate away the sense of betrayal Canadians now feel.
5. People are saying that Canada is too small to win this trade war, but this is not even remotely true. In Canada the war is supported because it's a matter of sovereignty, which is priceless. In the U.S., it's fracturing the Republican party. In Canada, people are voluntarily boycotting American goods and services, as well as travel to the U.S.. In the U.S., there are looming mid-terms that rising costs from a fresh trade-war could help decide. The most recent tariffs imposed by Trump were likely aimed at forcing an agreement he could tout as a "huge victory" right when he needed it. Instead, he has an embarrassing fiasco blowing up in his face. He's so short on ideas that he's threatening to rename lakes! The U.S. may be big, but U.S. leadership is small, inept, and poised to lose it's hold on power. Carney has signalled that he's ready to maintain this trade-war for the two years and change needed for Trump to leave office, but a few months may be all that's required.
> People are saying that Canada is too small to win this trade war
Anyone who says this is an idiot. People have sacrificed far more for far less. As you pointed out this is existential for canada. It is just so, so hard to win a fight that the other side sees as existential when you dont.
From what I researched, Tarrifs that are discussed are impacting about 5% of overall trade between USA and Canada. This seems more political and clickbait than anything meaningful. 5% is not something to be concerned about unless you are directly impacted. “They” (news, politicians) just want your attention.
I have anecdotal experience that makes the ~$1,600 per house hold feel like an underestimate.
We purchased a Subaru Outback right around the first round of tarrifs. We were in the market for the base trim, no bells & whistles. We ended up getting the highest trim bc all the remaining base trims were post-tarrifs and and cost $3.5k more than the pre-tarrif higher trim that was already in the lot.
Mind you the Subaru outback was assembled in IL, USA so it is not just imported entirely from Japan.
And that's not considering all the other "consuming" we do (which is quite limited being outdoor ppl).
>We purchased a Subaru Outback right around the first round of tarrifs. We were in the market for the base trim, no bells & whistles. We ended up getting the highest trim bc all the remaining base trims were post-tarrifs and and cost $3.5k more than the pre-tarrif higher trim that was already in the lot.
The average car on the road is ~15 years old. The actual lifetime is likely higher. Therefore for proper tariff accounting, your subaru's contribution to this year's tariffs should be 3500/15 = $233, not $3.5k. Not to mention much of the items people buy are either:
1. domestically produced (this includes housing, the biggest cost for most people)
Gruez was spot on, our last car was 15 years old. Though I don't know if his stat considered resold cars. We wouldve kept it too but the work it needed was $8k. Parts were available and already imported, just that mechanics in the area had all raised their labor rate. I support liveable wages but that points to tarrifs having higher order effects than just the goods that they apply to.
We never had a problem with Canada before. Only when Silicon Valley tech bros and Maga got political power did we end up with all these so-called problems with Canada.
I would rather put tech bros and maga in the enemy bucket before I ever do that with Canada.
This whole tariff discussion is bullcrap, premised on the wife-beater logic of the cult leader of the Maga movement and Peter Theil acolytes.
The site is far from strong evidence for what most people in this thread believe. It is also AI-generated, if you cannot tell.
"Canada is taxing you back" frames a Canadian tariff as a charge on Americans when it's really charge on Canadian importers.
The site reached the front page of HN because it confirms the mainstream opinion here, which is "go team go," anti-Trump admin US.
I'm not pro-Trump admin btw; But I am anti political team sports on HN and will continue saying so until HN reverts to its previous culture of objectivity that we had before this culture of blindly signal-boosting anything that portrays the current boogieman as bad.
What I don't think most people realize is that for many consumer goods coming from Canada the Americans are not paying the tariffs, Canadians are paying it instead because USPS is not setup to actually collect tariff payments from their own people and refused to do so. When I buy USPS shipping labels for my business that ships to the US, as a Canadian, I have to pay the fucking US tariff out of my own pocket and I have no way to charge my customer other than jacking the fuck out of my price. I lost so much money last year after the tariffs first went into effect and no one (UPS, USPS, US Gov't) knew what to do, how to charge, how to collect, but eventually after a 1.5months I managed to get CUSMA figured out. This 50% tariff is still the same scenario, I'm expected to pay the tariff on behalf of my American customer, so WTF. Oh and I got no refunds from anyone for that first 1.5months of insane costs as I'm not from the US.
I can ship UPS instead and then push the tariff back where it belongs, but nobody wants to pay 4x for shipping and then get another bill afterwards. US Customers already screamed bloody murder about a total $4 duty fee, which anyone in Canada would kill for on an international purchase.
I have nothing to offer except my recent dumb purchase. Could only find an out of print Moleskine black page artist notebook from a Canadian seller. It's important that it matches with a book I already have.
We're rapidly approaching a time in which America doesn't make anything that can't be replaced.
If Carney was serious he'd fly to Beijing and shake Chinese hands. That would utterly terrify the few responsible adults left in Washington to back the fuck down.
None of you have any idea what you’re talking about - this thread should be nuked. A bunch of arm chair commentators with no actual understanding of the specifics of a negotiation claiming to know otherwise.
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[ 0.20 ms ] story [ 19.4 ms ] threadWhich is to say that anybody with a $200 subscription and access to Namecheap and Netlify could have built the site in one hour flat. There's no longer any need for an NGO, media nonprofit, or lobbying group to build such things; the effort required has been reduced to near-zero, so anybody can do it.
Right but actually creating the thing is only half the story. You need to fact check it (especially with LLMs) promote it, approach journalists to bring it to their attention, etc etc etc.
In many ways making a web site has always been the easy part.
That's true... but with every day that passes it's increasingly less true. Today's best high-end LLMs are highly optimized towards fact checking themselves and each other. The winning move is to get a report from Claude and have both Kimi K3 and GPT-5.6-Pro adverserially review it. Then synthesize a fixed version with any one of them. Then adverserially review it again in incognito mode.
This sounds like a lot of work, but it takes literally two minutes of effort and it works amazingly well.
With no humans publishing semi reliable data, there is nothing for Claude to quote.
Well it's not very hard these days with social media. All you need to do is post on HN with a compelling enough headline and people will upvote it even if it's AI slop.
It's basically just documenting the utter stupidity of a trade war with a close ally with whom we are tightly coupled economically.
Because I don't want to click through to every data source to verify every figure and need some baseline level of trust about whether they've been correctly used.
If there's an error, I want to be able to contact the author somehow.
The answer I keep coming back to is I know zero people who considered that.
Does the US have a trade imbalance that causes problems, particularly in our manufacturing sector? Yes. Can tariffs kind of help with that? Also yes. Really, you need to instill some sort of sense of duty to country in business leaders, which is a far heavier lift, but this at least puts a number to it.
Does picking a tariff fight with Canada, our closest cultural ally, solve the above problem to the point where it justifies the costs? Hell no.
The bigger problem is, when consumers have the choice between cheap crap from Aliexpress et al and (vastly) more expensive made-in-<own country>, usually only the affluent who want to show off will be able to choose the latter.
And that is a socially explosive thing in the long term... the masses, especially the rural ones, really do not like it if they feel that they can only afford subpar crap while the "rich urban librul elite" gets access to the good stuff.
That is the stuff that in the best case fuels populist movements, in the worst case revolutions.
(And on top of that, often enough "made-in-<own country>" is bordering the legally required limit on domestic production or is outright just slapping a label and repackaging the Thing)
America then refines it and exports it as finished product or uses it internally.
This "trade imbalance" is a massive benefit to America.
So just to expand on why that's the case. As a net producer of energy right now, the US produces more than it consumes. This is why it get's pointed out, that as a net producer, the trade deficit with Canada is also a surplus (or reduction in deficit) on the other side with other countries. Yes it may not be the same physical barrel that is exported vs consumed, but in a fungible way they're commodities. If you separate out that portion, we (Canada) then buy more goods from the US then we sell. And that's also just the goods trade, not including services which the US also sells more of to Canada than the other way around.
Tariffs will not bring back manufacturing. They increase prices of inputs, reduce incentive for competitiveness and invite retaliation. Look how well tariffs have worked for Brazil and Argentina or for the US under Smoot Hawley.
The geopolitical calculations regarding China and the socioeconomic conditions of working class people in the Midwestern and Northeastern United States would beg to differ.
You need to have at least some control of your own manufacturing destiny for national security reasons, and you need somewhere for people with a high school diploma to work or they start dying deaths of despair.
This idea that we have lost manufacturing and we need some push to onshore it all again is... well... another manufactured problem that isn't.
It doesn't matter what the trade policy is, those amounts/types of jobs are not ones that would come back unless you also outlawed robots and made unionization mandatory.
The job situation is unfortunate but these jobs will not come. China has lost more jobs to automation than the US has to China. If we want people to prosper we need to build housing where the economy is and encourage people to move there.
While we have lost tons of factory jobs, we have created lots of service jobs that require similar skills. There has been a boom around jobs like solar installation, HVAC and similar. They just aren't as visible because it's a little bit everywhere, rather than a company or industry town.
Not to mention, Canada can make nukes if it wants to. It just doesn't. It gave them up, but still has the plans.
Canada relies on US and is isolated from the rest of the world, US can strangle it economically if need be until it folds.
They can also cause divisions inside the country and disrupt it.. we're seeing this already in Alberta.
Canada is vulnerable.
The whole world is going to trade with each other, and just ignore the United States. It'll be a rough five to ten years of transition, but there's been lots of economic situations like that. The US is the past, it's relevance waning.
The US is also far more vulnerable. It's 90% of the way to a civil war already.
Alberta has been going on for decades.
It isn't just "which Americans consider trade with Canada to be a real issue," it is "which Americans think Canada should become a territory of the United States."
It's just plainly absurd. It is inexplicable to me that Congress doesn't act. And infuriating to me that my representatives in Congress don't do more (even though they are in the opposition.)
Buying and selling don't need to be equal between buyers and sellers, and it's really just an incoherent idea.
Goods are imported because business is a competition and consumers prefer cheap imported goods. Its not like american executives flatly want to offshore, if a competitor does and they dont their customers will leave. The only solution business leaders can have here is collusion, which is illegal. If we want goods to be manufactured domestically it is on us as consumers to buy domestic products over cheap imported ones.
This seems illogical. You can't simultaneously claim that the US is paying higher prices for Canadian goods because of US-imposed tariffs and then turn around and say only that Americans are paying a tax on buying Canadian goods on Canadian-imposed tariffs. Both countries are either paying higher prices or paying higher taxes. Canada's tariffs must also be viewed as America is taxing Canada back, or else neither can be viewed that way.
Separately you can go back prior to 2024, for example, and discuss monopolization of Canadian companies and import duties on American products which also must be treated in the same fashion for this analysis - Canadian imposed tariffs on dairy (I don't care about dairy other than it being an obvious example) would have to be claimed to be an American tax on Canadians for this to be consistent.
Whatever claim you would levy here, equally applies to Canada minus the dollar volumes depending on which country imports more and what products are imported since Canada is also implementing additional (because they've had tariffs for a while) tariffs on specific goods/services.
This whole trade war with Canada has to be one of the dumbest fucking things I have ever witnessed, and that's saying a lot given the complete incompetence and buffoonery of the current US administration. First they had to imitate Idiocracy with the the WFC fight on the White House lawn, now they're imitating South Park by killing relations with Canada. Heck, a big joke in the original South Park movie was that it was so inconceivable that of all countries Canada is the one we'd have a war with, but Trump just wants to speed run to every country on the planet hating our guts.
You'd think that, strategically, a decapitation strike is the worst thing that could happen for a nation. However, that would be incorrect: the worst thing that could happen is this, a vain and incompetent buffoon installed in the top leadership position. With no leader you're just not making decisions, but the organization can continue operating under autonomous cells. With a hyperactive incompetent leader you're speedrunning every conceivable bad decision and everyone just has to look on in horror.
Well, Canada repeatedly elected Justin Trudeau (now departed)... so both countries have made some... interesting decisions...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WE_Charity_scandal
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SNC-Lavalin_affair
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aga_Khan_affair
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-43151115
I still believe his most egregious betrayal of voters was his abandoning proportional representation, without providing any justification.
Summary quote from IMDB: "The U.S. President, low in the opinion polls, gets talked into raising his popularity by trying to start a cold war against Canada."
Not only for foreign goods. If there's a tax on imported X, domestic X producers can now charge more because the foreign producers must raise their prices to pay for the tax.
Another way to look at it is that any tariff reduces foreign competition, with all the knock-on effects that implies.
It is. When Canada imposes retaliatory tariffs, it is of course a tax on Canadians. Though it is also a market inducement, and one of the complaints of the admin is that Canada's retaliatory vehicle tariffs -- literally mirroring the tariffs the US applied to Canada -- caused a 22% drop in imports.
> import duties on American products which also must be treated in the same fashion for this analysis - Canadian imposed tariffs on dairy
Can you tell us if those import duties are in the room with us? Because you know they didn't exist, right?
There have been $0 in tariffs on US dairy. The tariffs only come into play when the US imports pass a certain volume -- and precisely the same tariffs happen in both directions -- and the US hasn't. Now the US has complained that there are administrative barriers, and maybe so, but they sure aren't clear on what they are, and lie about everything constantly.
Prior to this trade war, there was essentially 0% tariffs on products from the US. And the only reason there is a trade "deficit" is because of massive amounts of Alberta oil that the US desperately needs. I mean, it's hilarious that Trump was literally celebrating bringing back Keystone XL, and increasing the flow of Alberta oil, while simultaneously complaining essentially about that very same oil.
This is, as the WSJ named it, the stupidest trade war in history. All for yet another distraction, as Trump's entire base just desperately need to puff their little chests and celebrate when they think he is punching down on someone. Even if it makes their lives worse and their lot worse.
What happens to consumer spending and associated tax revenue when imported goods cost significantly more? Let's take a hypothetical German auto brand that has no factories in the US (BMW, MB, VW have factories, not sure if Audi and Porsche are grandfathered in because of VW).
If a car that cost $100K before and now is $125K, it seems that the demographic that could afford that $100K will shrug and pay the higher price. Now, that's the well-off folks, a bit immune in this economy.
What other consumer goods with imposed new tariffs will cause less spending and shrink the economy instead? It seems that tariffs are a net loss, besides I guess in cases when they are used to prevent dumping.
[1] https://www.farmprogress.com/farm-policy/the-real-story-behi...
That's why the USA has never reached the tarriff limit. The big producers there would just dump 20 million litres at once if they could. They aren't interested in 1 or two.
And if they were able to do that, the Canadian producers would go under. So its kinda simple, the Dairy Supply system is there to protect the Canadian Dairy industry. If it was removed, we would be flooded with cheap, low-quality US milk.
The entire Canadian dairy industry produces less milk than Wisconsin alone. Why does the US need the Canadian market? A: They don't, they just want it anyways.
Yet the same rules apply to European cheese: limited quantities that can only be imported through an established dairy cartel member. Anti-Americanism is a convenient marketing tool, along with the nostalgic myth of the independent family farm. The reality is oligarchs like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saputo_Inc.
To protect Canada from the oligarch European producers and their myth of the family farm, right? And certainly every business in Canada is a family run one too?
I don't know about timber, but the US maple syrup industry is healthy, just unable to keep up with demand. I think that's a consequence of geography and the time investment required to get mature trees, not Canada undercutting.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Canadian_Select
A common point of political contention up here are various pipeline issues, precisely because it potentially permit access to more markets, improving the sale price. (However it would also raise the price of gas in Canada for the same reason, with all the implications that comes with that).
The USD and CAD are not 1:1, as the CAD is 'lower value', so of course stuff made in Canada will generally be less expensive. (The trade off is that imports are more expensive for Canadians.)
Flooded? Cheap? Yes. Low quality? Doubtful. If quality were the sticking point, you'd expect this would be amicably resolved with equal standards for both domestic and imported milk.
I also have doubts that our current model is the best way of achieving the goals we had in mind when the programs were created in the 1970s. I know the error bars are quite sizeable, and it's not quite apples to apples, but recent studies that suggest our supply chain management in dairy, eggs, and poultry, costs approximately $244pp per year in higher costs. That's over $10billion per annum Canada wide, equivalent to 2% of the federal budget! I have been discussing this with someone in another thread for days, and the more I look into it, the more I feel like we really need to take another look at the implementation of this program. Dollar amount breaks my brain.
When they did it for tobacco back in 2009 it was only around $300 million on the table which isn't nearly as mind boggling and thus much more easily forgotten/ignored.
And I know nothing about the market, but I can't imagine it's overly liquid, the fact that all farmers would receive cash for their quota, would definitely be attractive to most. It's already heavily financialized and borrowed against.
And then, you could even do something like NZ did where all the dairy farmers got together and created a coop for processing, NZ is now the largest exporter of dairy in the world! If some of the quota levy went to getting this off the ground, you'd help the farmers retain a bigger piece of the pie with vertical integration of the supply chain. And, hopefully also compete globally and become net exporters, increasing the size of the pie.
I dunno, I have no idea what the fucking solution is, but after spending a bunch of time in the weeds of this shit over the past couple days, I am like, we have created a monster, this can't be the most effective way to achieve the underlying goals of the program.
That isn't going to go over well with the big three (Saputo, Agropur, Lactalis) who own ~75% of the processing quota. I suspect if you dig even deeper you will find it is they who hold the political capital that props up the dairy supply management system. If it were only farmers involved it would have been gone ages ago.
As we're seeing with this trade war as a whole, tightening economic integration with an asymmetric partner puts your sovereignty at risk as well. If we have no industries of our own, and are utterly dependent on a single unreliable superpower, then we lose the freedom to decide on our own future as the rug could be pulled out from under us at any time. The only way to mitigate that risk is to diversify trade and ensure self-sufficiency in our own industries.
For reference, there are about 190k farms in Canada, 8% of those farms are dairy, poultry, and eggs whose viability is ensured with supply chain management. The other 92% of farms, are managed with direct government assistance (AgriStability, AgriInsurance, AgriInvest, and AgriRecovery). The latter costs the government $1.5-$2 billion most years. While the recent report on supply chain managed farms suggests the cost born by Canadians to be around $10 billion. Even if that number is off by an order of magnitude, we're looking at $1 billion for 8% of farms, and $1.5-$2 billion for the other 92% of farms.
All I'm saying is it seems like the solution to help ensure viability in dairy, egg, and poultry farming is wildly inefficient and merits a look from first principles. Is there a solution to achieve the same outcome at a lower cost? The world has changed drastically since the policies were implemented in the 1970s.
I admit I am far from an expert, but I have spent an inordinate amount of time reading about this shit out of curiosity in the past couple days. Broke my brain when I saw the numbers around the costs born by canadians in the checkout aisle due to supply chain management.
And my rabbit hole over the last couple days has led me to spend a bunch of time looking into Fonterra, which is the farmers processing Coop that happened in NZ when they got rid of their quota system. It's turned NZ into the largest milk product exporter on earth, and their whole strategy is processing milk into more shelf stable products. Cheese and Butter is about 20% the remainder is skim milk powder, whole milk powder, whey protein, and caseins.
Anyhow, all of this is to say, that there are solutions that ensure no milk goes to waste by processing it into more shelf stable ingredients, all of which have massive demand on the global markets. Whether we do much of this in Canada, I am not sure, but, feels like a missed opportunity if not, and likely partially caused by a lack of necessity to innovate due to the artificial moat.
Eggs, haven't looked into but presumably similar to milk in that it can be processed into shelf stable powders.
But, on the poultry front, beef, pork, etc, are all in the 92% of farms group, managed by subsidies, so, while chickens have a shorter lifespan, I don't see why we can manage cow and pork farms with subsidies, but not chicken.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_cheese
It should also be noted that this is misleading. The dairy products are permitted to be produced with rBGH and you will almost certainly find some on the shelves as not all dairy products in Canada come from Canadian cows. What isn't permitted is giving it to cows in Canada as it is concern for reasons of animal welfare.
I know you already know that, but the audience needing your message doesn't and they are prone from messaging like that to think there is some reason to be afraid of the milk even though it perfectly satisfies Health Canada concerns. It wouldn't be allowed across the border if it were deemed dangerous. It is worth reminding that Canada happily allows all and every drop of American milk across the border as long as someone is willing to pay the tariff.
We have cows too, and farmers.
It’s one thing for the government to create protectionist policies, it’s another to have folks like me or perhaps you who practice it in person with our daily economic choices.
There’s also other brands of cream cheese.
However i try to avoid ultra-transformed products like cheez-whiz and philadelphia. Those are not even allowed to be called "cheese" here, they must have some qualifier in front or after the word.
I'm a Canadian who is pretty unhappy with our protectionist dairy lobby, and thinks there probably is a bunch of unfair trade barriers erected on our side by the dairy lobby.
I'm probably more open to this line of argument than the majority of Canadians. However, when I see an American who has literally anything to do with their federal government start making these arguments, I more or less have to assume it's either a lie, or at best a truth that's going to be twisted, blown out of proportion, and used to undermine the sovereignty of my country.
The furthest I would go right now would be to support a relaxation of our dairy protections in dialogue with the EU, and then whatever scheme we arrive at can then be applied to trade with the USA at a later date (including requiring dairy imported from the USA to meet EU-level food safety standards).
The USA simply cannot be trusted to be anything like good-faith negotiators.
What about others' contention that the reason why the quota hasn't been hit is that it's a pain to make use of?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49455381
Trump is taxing Americans when he imposes tariffs. Canada is taxing Canadians when they impose retaliatory tariffs.
And FWIW, most economists think retaliatory tariffs are stupid - on net they cause more harm to the retaliating country than if there were no retaliation. But the politics around tariffs are just stupid. It's all stupid.
You can't divorce these tariffs from their geopolitical context, which is Trump threatening to annex Canada.
This is wrong, because you're using the extremely broad concept of "harm" for a specific monetary loss. There are many more things at play here than just money gained/lost.
Also, we've never had fully free trade. You can whine about dairy, we can whine about unfair lumber tariffs. These are all part of CUMSA, an agreement that has been illegally violated every damn day under Trump's regime. Let's just cut to the chase. If Trump won't honour CUMSA why make any deal with him? There is no reason he'll honour any new agreement either. He was the one who negotiated CUMSA in the first place.
I don’t disagree. I just wanted to point out the framing needs to be consistent, which I think you agree with.
I also agree with you with respect to free trade. Every exporter is a free trade proponent. Curious how when it comes to imports or protecting domestic industries all of a sudden every country in the planet puts up some sort of protectionist barrier.
Whether or not that is true, I have no idea. One would expect there to be enough diversity of trade that on the balance it cannot be that lopsided, but maybe that's wrong. It is certainly possible for one side of a trade war to be hurt both coming and going, without any logical inconsistency.
this administration has three boxes it reaches into to sprinkle around daily
[CHAOS] [CORRUPTION] [CRUELTY]
hope everyone is enjoying the billion spent on golden statues in DC while you can't afford to put gas in your car
but don't worry, he still gets to fly around in his billion dollar QatarForceOne while taking $2 Million golf outings each weekend
You also might want to consider archiving the data if you aren't already given this administration's tendency to remove data that doesn't further their agenda.
First, when you list something like a financial figure, you must also include the relevant time period. E.g. you say 16.0B in taxes collected by Canada from American exporters. But you don't list the time period.
Second, you say 313 are taxed today. What is this in reference to? Goods? People? Companies? Percentage?
The labels need some serious love.
Take this snippet for example:
What does "sits in headings Canada taxes" mean? Whatever this means, how does it jump to $26.5B from $16.0B on a single date? Don't things have to enter for tariffs to be collected?"See whose jobs" is even more confusing. Nothing about jobs was mentioned. It's talking, presumably about an increase in a tariff collected by Canada. I can understand this will affect certain jobs, but "See whose jobs" just confuses the situation more. I cannot figure out for the life of me what's going on.
Here's another example when you click the "nuclear option" it jumps, without context beyond "Canada’s energy supply is a fourth exposure, and a different kind" to this:
Am I really dumb for not understanding this site, or is this the infogram equivalent of a Nigerian prince email?The language is very like Claude Code with Opus 5: no prepositions, unclear references, ambiguous, bad phrase transitions, ...
And the css is exactly the same that Claude Code uses for its artifacts and documentation.
The wild part is that I'm quite academic, Waltz, Mearsheimer, Morgenthau are on my wall.
Okay let's get flagged for saying the uncomfortable silent part(chatGPT joke)...
Canada suffers more than the United States.
What do we need that shouldn't make domesticially?
Capitalism will keep producing things where they make sense not where politicians want.
Exceptions make sense only to protect industries that are absolutely vital and critical for security. Ship building should be one of those for countries like US or UK.
Or when you want to kickstart an industry and need to protect it for a limited amount of time (Koreans and the Japanese both did so with some of their industrial sectors, but it was always time limited).
This administration thinks it can make every industry thrive through tariffs.
I don't see how it can work, even for a country with the resources of the US.
Exactly. The tarriffs are but a part of the attack on the previous status quo.
The current Admin is hostile to neoliberalism, globalism, the maritime order, sole superpower, international comity, etc.
We've been heading towards a multi-polar world order for a while. It is what it is.
The current Admin is speed running the transition. There is no theory, workdview, vision for whatever comes next. Or how to get there. Just cronyism and patronage.
The prior Admin, whatever its faults, has a plan for navigating the transition, unwinding neoliberalism, to invest in domestic capacity and supply chains.
But now the plan is calvinball.
Yet, protectionism for that, as practiced in the US (ie. jones act), was a massive failure. There might still theoretically a domestic shipbuilding sector, but it's bloated, inefficient, and as a result is totally not up to the task of standing up to China, which does have a competent shipbuilding sector.
He is absolutely a life-long bully.
And a lot of Canada's trade MOUs with other countries basically requires they have this special privilege. So there's gonna be fallout everywhere.
I wouldn't personally want to own Canadian dollars right now but I think they'll get this figured out.
Canada is fighting Anchluss. The MAGA wing is entirely serious about annexing Canada.
Carney, for a change, is right. Canada is being attacked.
Wow, that's some amazing propaganda you've bought in to there...
He posted a picture of him taking over Canada and arresting Carney today.
That is not propaganda. And if you say it's "joking", if you threaten to shoot your friend multiple times, you'll find they don't consider it a joke.
Ukraine was used as a pawn to anger Russia. What did Russia try to do and continue to do so?
Canada has been used as a pawn to threaten America by China, and Canada is trying to pivot from the USA to China?
Ukraine is a sovereign country, free to decide for themselves which military and economic bloc best suits them.
Russia rolled tanks into Ukraine after denying they were planning to attack, airdropped special forces into Kyiv after denying they were planning to attack, repeatedly threatened the use of nuclear weapons even though they're not willing to admit to being at war and Ukraine doesn't have nukes, tried to assassinate then candidate-PM Yushchenko in 2004, annexed Crimea, committed a bunch of warcrimes while doing so, and they did all this even though Ukraine only gave up its nuclear arsenal under the condition that its sovereignty would be respected.
> Canada has been used as a pawn to threaten America by China, and Canada is trying to pivot from the USA to China?
Canada's primary pivot is away from the USA, not towards China, e.g. Canada also deepening ties with the EU.
The rest is too woke, too British, and too CCP oriented to work with.
This talking point keeps getting repeated on HN. Always without sources because the only source is a dubious White House "report" that is nothing more than a manufactured reason for buying an expensive new AI system (probably from a big donor). https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/The-Gr...
That same report equally names the European Union, India, Israel, Japan, Mexico, South Korea, and Taiwan alongside Canada. So literally every modern western economy is making this "pretty easy"? Yeah, ok.
Here's a NYT article from April about the difficulty in preventing transhipping.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/07/us/politics/tariffs-trade...
Re: Canadian dollars, it's the US dollar that I believe is the more salient concern [0]
[0] https://www.morningstar.com/news/dow-jones/20260825307/bitco...
If you're suggesting that Canada is facilitating the covert smuggling of Chinese steel and aluminum then I'd require a bit more evidence. It's become fashionable for the US government to level such accusations, but as we saw with claims about fentanyl, it's all bunk.
canada is very unfortunately caught in the trade war between the USA and canada
Asking them to change French programming laws, and stopping the "Buy Canadian goods" law etc.
This strategy is going to fail and when it does countries will trade much more one with others currencies and less with USA and USD. When that happens the American house of cards will collapse because it will no longer be possible to print trillions of dollars and count on other countries to absorb them trusting in the American policies and agreements.
The printing dollars formula facing low single-digit inflation is coming to an end.
U all can downvote me like on the credit-card thread but this is the reality for those outside the big American walls.
Some of the trade demands with Canada infringed on Canada's constitutional structure re the French language in a way that is simply impossible for them to meet. No they can't do monolingual English-only packaging.
The entire thing was a pretense or a sham. There were no negotiations. It was a shakedown. Canada understands it this way. I don't know what Americans think it was.
Which is to say, if Canada sorts out inter provincial trade, pivot to domestic goods/services and sell commodities globally at benchmark prices it on paper come out ahead. Nvm associated brain drain via US integration killed what was left of Canadian tier1 industries (not much to be done). Or half reason CAN has to sell cheap to US is US lobbying (read political meddling / foreign influence) on infra/pipelines. Or discount NORAD which LBH missiles over polar orbit aren't stopping at Canada, as if Canada needs to free ride on NA security architecture.
TLDR is Canada always loser of even happy vassal arrangement, the carrot was always stale but it dint' need to be sweet with how big US stick is. But stick not big enough to force CAN to deepthroat new rotten carrot arrangement. At least not yet.
The whole story about why the talks failed:
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/25/world/canada/trump-carney...
US having veto over Canada trade negotiations, dictating language policy which could cause Quebec to cede from Canada, and stop the "buy Canadian" policy put after the last tariff round etc. It not even a stick anymore it is a proper gun which blow in the face of any Canadian who agrees to these terms.
Just look at the bridge deal. We negotiate a deal, build a bridge for billions, then at the last minute? Rip up a signed agreement and reneg. After the money is spent. It's pathetic. I expect better from used car salesmen. It doesn't matter why, for what reason, it reflects 100% on the US, it's not just one man.
We don't trust the US any more. It lies. It cheats. It scams. We used to buy US weapons, but now we don't trust that, either. I can imagine spending 200B on weapons, and then the software just stops working.
The US used to be the most trusted, beloved nation by Canadians. I think many Canadians would trust Iran, China, Russia more than the US now, to keep a deal.
And that?
That's a pathetic outcome, from a pathetic administration.
1. The American economy is large, but insular. Most trade is between states, not with other countries. This is why most countries shrug and accept tariffs on their goods. For them, trade with the U.S. is not as big of a deal as it's portrayed, so it's not worth risking "fireworks" over. Canada and Mexico are rare exceptions to this. Canada, particularly, is reliant on international trade and trade with the U.S.. That's why they are fighting back for a deal that's better than slow death.
2. Canada is the #1 export market for a lot of American goods. e.g. Autos. Trump is determined to destroy Canada's auto manufacturing sector and bring it all to the U.S.. That might sound good to Americans, but they need to realize that this will necessarily mean they'll lose their #1 export market. If tariff's freeze Canada out of the American market and the Canadian auto industry dies, there will be no incentive to maintain the trade barriers against Chinese autos. Thanks to heavy automation, China is producing better autos than North America can at a fraction of the cost. American autos will be more expensive than ever after a forced retreat from Mexico and Canada and will be totally unable to compete on price and quality. Then there will be the lasting hostility to American products that Trump has caused.
3. Americans should closely examine some of the demands that were in the deal Canada just walked away from. One was for Canada to follow U.S. trade policy with other countries, no questions asked, no variations allowed. e.g. If the U.S. decides Tuvalu needs to be tariffed, Canada would be obligated to as well. Canada would also need to ask permission to sign trade deals with other countries. This would have been a complete surrender of sovereignty and would have reduced Canada's international trade policy to that of an American vassal. Not even an American state! This was a completely unacceptable proposal that was likely introduced to poison pill the negotiations. Howard Lutnick's last minute arrival and direct financial interest in generating more tariff refunds is not getting enough attention.
4. Americans are mostly ignorant of the fact that one of the biggest trade wars of the last century is going on with their Northern neighbour. Of those who are aware, the overwhelming majority are not supportive. Canadians are universally aware of it and overwhelmingly in support of Carney. Canadians have been cutting travel to the U.S. and buying fewer American goods for over a year. Now they're going to do it harder, and many won't stop even after the trade-war ends. Kids are watching their parents read labels in the grocery store to make sure they're not buying American goods and asking why. Trump can negotiate a new trade deal with Carney but he can't negotiate away the sense of betrayal Canadians now feel.
5. People are saying that Canada is too small to win this trade war, but this is not even remotely true. In Canada the war is supported because it's a matter of sovereignty, which is priceless. In the U.S., it's fracturing the Republican party. In Canada, people are voluntarily boycotting American goods and services, as well as travel to the U.S.. In the U.S., there are looming mid-terms that rising costs from a fresh trade-war could help decide. The most recent tariffs imposed by Trump were likely aimed at forcing an agreement he could tout as a "huge victory" right when he needed it. Instead, he has an embarrassing fiasco blowing up in his face. He's so short on ideas that he's threatening to rename lakes! The U.S. may be big, but U.S. leadership is small, inept, and poised to lose it's hold on power. Carney has signalled that he's ready to maintain this trade-war for the two years and change needed for Trump to leave office, but a few months may be all that's required.
Anyone who says this is an idiot. People have sacrificed far more for far less. As you pointed out this is existential for canada. It is just so, so hard to win a fight that the other side sees as existential when you dont.
We purchased a Subaru Outback right around the first round of tarrifs. We were in the market for the base trim, no bells & whistles. We ended up getting the highest trim bc all the remaining base trims were post-tarrifs and and cost $3.5k more than the pre-tarrif higher trim that was already in the lot.
Mind you the Subaru outback was assembled in IL, USA so it is not just imported entirely from Japan.
And that's not considering all the other "consuming" we do (which is quite limited being outdoor ppl).
The average car on the road is ~15 years old. The actual lifetime is likely higher. Therefore for proper tariff accounting, your subaru's contribution to this year's tariffs should be 3500/15 = $233, not $3.5k. Not to mention much of the items people buy are either:
1. domestically produced (this includes housing, the biggest cost for most people)
2. tariff exempt (think oil)
3. produced abroad, but have fat markups
Not everyone is buying brand new cars
I would rather put tech bros and maga in the enemy bucket before I ever do that with Canada.
This whole tariff discussion is bullcrap, premised on the wife-beater logic of the cult leader of the Maga movement and Peter Theil acolytes.
"Canada is taxing you back" frames a Canadian tariff as a charge on Americans when it's really charge on Canadian importers.
The site reached the front page of HN because it confirms the mainstream opinion here, which is "go team go," anti-Trump admin US.
I'm not pro-Trump admin btw; But I am anti political team sports on HN and will continue saying so until HN reverts to its previous culture of objectivity that we had before this culture of blindly signal-boosting anything that portrays the current boogieman as bad.
I can ship UPS instead and then push the tariff back where it belongs, but nobody wants to pay 4x for shipping and then get another bill afterwards. US Customers already screamed bloody murder about a total $4 duty fee, which anyone in Canada would kill for on an international purchase.
Learn from my mistake:
* $19.99 item cost
* $21.25 shipping
* $2.99 tax
* $31.94 import fees (billed directly by UPS)
Total cost: $76.17
If Carney was serious he'd fly to Beijing and shake Chinese hands. That would utterly terrify the few responsible adults left in Washington to back the fuck down.
Is hacker news going to be at the table?