I’ve been fond of Canada since forever. I’ve been there six times- twice to Quebec, twice to Toronto, twice to Vancouver.
Most Americans don’t follow the news in Canada, but I do. I look at the headlines at both the Montreal Gazette, and the Toronto global mail every day, via Apple News+.
President Trump has been a wild lunatic on a number of international matters since he was sworn in this year, but Let’s focus on Canada here.
Trump has claimed that Canada has not properly secured its border with the US, allowing ( non Canadian ) illegals to sneak in to the US. He has also claimed that Canada is allowing fentanyl to be produced in Canada, and smuggled into the US over the northern border.
Both issues are fair to raise but Trump grossly exaggerates the extent of the problem as respects Canada.
Trump was about to impose a 25% tariff on most Canadian goods coming into the US, because Canada was supposedly doing nothing to stop the drugs and the illegals- but then, at the last minute he paused Tariff implementation, because PM Trudeau agreed to devote more security at their side of the border.
What Trump did not tell us That Trudeau had -already- reached The same deal with President Biden In December 2024. The screaming and roaring on the US side was about nothing.
Canada has been a good neighbor and ally of the US for as long as our two nations have been around. Trump has seriously harmed that relationship. Not only by his inept “ negotiating “, but by his disrespectful Comments about the Canadian nation, his comments about making Canada the 51st state, all The asinine comments that no real president would ever make.
It has long been the tradition that The anthems of both the USA and Canada are played before NHL hockey games involving teams from the two countries. Recently, we have seen Canadian fans boo the US anthem, and In return we have seen US fans in some cities booing the Canadian anthem.
I expect the trade and security issues between the nations to be resolved shortly. But damage has been done.
Americans will forget this affair shortly, Canadians won’t.
Je me souviens.
16 comments:
The Northern border has always been wideopen, and that was the headline issue. That part has now been addressed publicly. The real issue that is still being hammered out is the 120-160 Billion dollar trade imbalance. American Banks for instance can't do business in Canada, but Canadian banks can here, along with a ton of other product and service restrictions Canada has imposed on the US. They are such a good friend they impose massive tariffs and restrictions on American products and services.
The halt of the tariffs is just for 30 days as these other issues are negotiated out. The border security was the just the down payment to allow Canada to negotiate the rest. It's ballparking here because I don't have the numbers in front of me but about 60% of Canada's GDP comes from it's oil imports into the US along with Lumber, car parts and other items. Without our market or with a 25% tariff on that oil and those goods Canada's economy collapses.
Tariffs are the tool to deal with our so called allies to bring down the trade imbalance.
Fair trade is supposed to be fair.
Worth your time to read.... a little more about USAID
https://x.com/shellenberger/status/1887282681609588759
You mean oil exports.
US banks can do business in Canada. Citibank and JP Morgan Chase do business there today.
Trump renegotiated NAFTA With Canada and Mexico, during his first term. Is it now the Trump position that the deal that Trump struck was no good?
I can’t say this enough- the complete disrespect shown to Canada by a clueless, unhinged president has You don’t know how to go caused permanent damage to what was a great alliance, for well more than a century. Every report out of Canada shows this. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c0qw9y94w2vo
National pride is more important than money. The US is the logical first market for Canadian oil and gas, but many other countries will be happy to buy those products.
I guarantee you one thing - Canadian trade negotiators from this point on will be seeking to diversify their markets away from the US, big-time. The world is a big place.
Trump is wrong on trade imbalances. We each have trade imbalances with, say, supermarkets. We each import most of our foods from them and export no goods back, only money. See? Trade imbalances are and always were a red herring and often they are necessary and good.
Canada will be alright. Poilievre will soon be in charge and Trump won't be inclined to tweak their noses.
The exciting development is Gaz-a-Lago. I can't wait. Kick the colonists back to where they came from (all Arabs outside of Arabia are colonists, eh comrades?) and the field is clear for hotels and golf clubs. There's room behind the strip for an F1circuit too. Use the rubble for landscaping and claim it as a recycling success too. What a fusion of geo-strategic vision and real estate entrepreneuralism.
If they get going now it'll ready just in time for when I retire there.
American banks operating in Canada as either subsidiaries or branches include: Amex Bank of Canada, Bank of America, Bank of New York, Capital One, Citibank Canada, Comerica Bank, Fifth Third Bank, J.P. Morgan Canada, M&T Bank, Northern Trust, PNC Bank, State Street, U.S. Bank and Wells Fargo.
Altogether, the American banks have assets of 113 billion Canadian dollars, the Canadian Bankers Association said in a statement.
( New York Times, February 7, 2025 )
What's the deal with Canadian steel? (I've just realised: Trump's new battle cry: "STOP THE STEEL").
Are there any "unfair trading practices" here or is it just that Canadian firms manufacture steel more efficiently and cheaper than Americans?
Interesting report on the BBC. Trump tried steel tariffs before, in 2018, supposedly to protect American jobs. It didn't work: two years later there were fewer steel jobs in the US than before the tariffs.
Trump's tariffs did, of course, lead to an increase in steel prices in the US, which in turn drove prices up in many other sectors and no doubt led to job losses.
I actually visited a large Canadian steel manufacturing plant in Hamilton Ontario years ago. It was owned by a company called ArcelorMittal, A big international steel maker with plants in the US, Canada, and other countries. ArcelorMittal Imported US steel into Canada, and Canadian steel into the US, in a very integrated operation. I don’t think that someone like Trump is aware of just how completely integrated the US / Canadian auto and steel industries are today. There are US made cars being driven down every major road in Canada right now.
And you are quite correct in that the steel tariffs will cause inflationary price increases for the many US manufacturers that use steel. There are unfair trading nations in this world, but I don’t really think that Canada is one of them.
Btw
In 2018, Harley Davidson stopped exporting motorcycles from the US to Europe, moving that production to its European factory, In response to a US/EU trade war that Trump started.
banking may not have been a good example, it's a field I really know nothing about. This article explaines it better, and I bow to your greater knowledge in financing Phantom. https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/other/donald-trump-blasts-canada-for-banning-us-banks-what-s-that-all-about/ar-AA1ym8pv?ocid=BingNewsSerp
The Trade imbalance comes down to this if you sell us steel at say 25 cents a foot or pound and we sell it to you for 25, but before you let it in if you let it in at all you charge an us an additional 25 to bring it in before we can sell it that makes our goods 50 compared to your 25. A good example noel how many American made cars do you see in Germany, not a lot that's because of tariffs germany puts on american cars.....
You are all to intelligent to believe that trade between our nation and the rest of the world is fair. Unless it's an exclusive item ie a food that is only grown in a country and not in yours that can be charged at any amount, but if you grow wheat and I grow wheat the product coming out of each country should be roughly the same price. simplistic explanation but it works.
// how many American made cars do you see in Germany, not a lot that's because of tariffs germany puts on american cars.//
That is actually a good example (although Germany itself doesn't put tariffs on any imported cars; it's the EU that does it as part of the EU Common External Tariff framework). The EU puts a 10% tariff on cars imported from the US, whereas the US levies only a 2.5 pc tariff on German cars.
However, the situation for commercial vehicles is very different, with the EU putting a 22% tariff on US vehicles and the US putting the very high tariff of 25 percent on the same class of vehicles from Europe (this is curiously called the "Chicken Tax", as it was originally imposed in response to European tariffs on American poultry decades ago).
But the situation is more complex than you describe, Troll. German auto manufacturers also build cars in the US, including some of the top auto brands in America and a lot of which are exported from the US. For example, the BMW Spartanburg plant is the largest BMW plant in the world and one of the biggest U.S. vehicle exporters. They build almost half a million cars p.a. in Spartenburg, South Carolina, (for some reason, German car makers are AFAIK all in the southern states; BMW in SC, Mercedes in Alabama, Volkswagen, Audi and Porsche in Tennessee). Over half of the BMWs built in the US are exported.
Where do the parts, tools and production machines come from? - a lot from Germany.
So it's hard to see how Trump's tariffs are going to have a positive impact overall, and easy to see how they will lead to the American consumer buying inferior quality and paying higher prices for it, and generally living with higher prices for almost all consumer items.
Steel is also a complex issue. The US pays out vast subsidies for steel production in the so-called "Rust" states, and that is hardly going to change because the Congressmen representing those states have a strong lobby in Washington. But subsidies totally distort prices for exported steel.
German steel products on the other hand receive little or no subsidies and are thus sold at close to market prices. So there's an unfair trade practice if you want one. (on the other hand, few countries subsidise more than Italy and Spain. China is probably the biggest sinner in this regard; some of its biggest steel companies are even state owned, but all receive very heavy subsidies that allow them to sell at low prices, sometimes even below cost. If Trump wants to tackle Chinese steel, the EU will for once be on his side)
Phantom is right. Global business and industry has become extremely intertwined over the past decades, and this has led to growth and wealth for hundreds of millions of people around the world.
One cute example I was reading about is a Chinese manufacturer that makes leather cowboy saddles, complete with all the trimmings and designs from the Old West. They have a huge share of the US market.
Well, Trump is going to sort them out, isn't he? Problem is, almost all the leather they use is imported from the US.
I believe that a major reason why the German, and other foreign owned auto factories are in the Southeast, is that unions are weakest in the south east. The UAW has tried many times to organize the German owned factories in the US, and each time the ( well treated ) workforce has voted the union down.
Phantom is correct the Foreign Car Manufacturers do base themselves in states that are primarily Right to Work States. Which means an employee doesn't have to be a member of a Union to work for any Company. Unions 100 years ago were absolutely necessary. Now they are nothing but parasitical and destructive.
All things are not created equal, government subsidies corrupt the process. The best way to view this is not by the individual item but by the whole. ie: if your country exports $10 of goods to us while only importing $1 worth of goods from us that must change.
India is a good example they are banging out the numbers now. To avoid a large trade imbalance that now exists India will make up for that imbalance by buying Oil/LNG, and Modular Nuclear Energy.
The imbalance doesn't have to be equal by product, but by volume as a whole. We buy $100 of your products, you buy $100 of ours. That is the goal. So a nation can still sell their cars or steel at the price they want as long as they buy an equivalent of products made in the US to balance the dollar amount of trade between the two nations.
As for the EU their time is coming. If they want to choose to be in a trade war with the US we welcome it. The factors involved in those negotiations are going to be fun to watch. EU as a whole is one of the top markets in the world, however it is made up of 27 countries. 23 of those countries were just hit with a massive government expense. ALL NATO countries will be required to pay 5% of their GDP to fund NATO. Most now don't pay 2%. Add that to the cost to any nation in the EU that are members, which is most of them. The threats to Europe are not the same as the threats to the US. They may come from the same countries but not in the same manner. Russia and China can fire Nukes at us, they can't roll in tanks, in Europe they can. We spent 300 Billion defending Ukraine because the Russian expansion was a threat to our NATO allies, yet the people most threatened only payed 100 Billion. Now that's a trade imbalance.
God bless JD Vance.
American cars have not been popular in Europe, tariffs aside, because they have generally been too gas-guzzling and not as good as Japanese and German vehicles. It's fair to say that the Germans seem intent on lowering their quality in sympathy, however.
For rhe average European driver US manufacturers just haven't been producing anything of interest because Europeans aren't interested in pick-ups and V8s.
//because Europeans aren't interested in pick-ups and V8s.//
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cq8kn5v37wxo
Trump, economic advisors Peter Navarro and Larry Kudlow both spoke recently about how the EU was Unfair as respects trade in automobiles. They both separately said the same thing – that the EU tariff of 10% was too high ( And I think all here would agree with that ), but both of them also noted that (Germany) assessed 19% VAT tax on car imports from the US. Is that a correct statement about VAT? Wouldn’t the same VAT be assessed on sales of German / EU made cars to German customers?
I would think that VAT would apply to both Domestic and Imports in Germany, but Noel would have to give us that answer.
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