From Macleans -
…Taking into consideration Trump has now publicly focused on dairy…
Again a very small (but politically influential) business sector is being protected to the absolute detriment of other Canadians. Other businesses do not get protection, they have to compete.
Trump simply does not understand what trade is fundamentally. We export dollars and get goods and services in return, but he would rather import currency and export goods and services. It is a strange preference and irrelevant to prosperity.
If the trade imbalance is due to overbearing regulation, there is a reason to complain, but not about other countries.
You have actually paid attention to what others have written right? You did note the reduction in tariffs associate with cheese following the CETA agreement?
Regardless, your statement of no other business getting governmental support is rubbish. What do you think the Canadian Exploration Expenses deductible is?
My understanding is that the US has a 350% tariff on tobacco products. Much to my surprise on googling it seems possible this was something Canada might have once had issue with. China ,which produces vastly more tobacco than the US, would seem likely to have rather more.
You’d think it would be kind of hard to get up on a high horse about unfair tariffs given the above. But apparently Trump ain’t afraid of no high saddle.
Exactly ! And that’s what puzzles me (or, depending on how far back my last caffeine fix was, drives me up a wall) about people like **Starving Artist *who opine that the EU benefits a lot from trade with the US and thus should be grateful. Of course we benefit from trade with you. We give you our Samsung phones and our Beaujolais wine and in return you give us money, which we’re very fond of so that’s very thoughtful of you, thanks. We collectively and implicitly expect that you guys want to have the phones. We did not put a gun to your heads and order you to take the phones off our hands. And yes, we do make the phones specifically to sell to you. We do benefit from it. That’s the whole point of trading, for the love of all that is unholy !
What the fuck other model is there ? What do the Starving Artists of the world want from us ? Do you want the phones but *not *give us the traditional money in exchange ? That’s not trade, that’s called “robbery”. We no want, sorry. Do you want to give us the money and not get the phones instead ? That’s… well, we’d be OK with that, I think, despite the whole break with tradition. It’s progressive, it’s new, it’s un-swampy, I like that. You could do that.
But if what you want is no phones and no money, no trading, no nothing, “America will go it alone !”, you’re really hurting yourselves more than anything. We’ll still be trading among each other, you see. And China.
U.S. corporate profits are at an all-time record high; U.S. exports are at an all-time record high; U.S. employment is setting record highs. The U.S. has orchestrated strong trade deals like TPP which would give it strong economic and geopolitical influence throughout the Pacific region.
The U.S. stock market has been blazingly hot for more than nine years, hugely outperforming other world markets. The U.S. economy is so hot its central bank has raised interest rates to levels much healthier than those of its peers.
And despite the high exports and hot economy, and despite weak-dollar intentions of Trump and Mnuchin, the dollar remains very strong. A Japanese Yen is worth less than a penny; and the British pound has plummeted to levels not seen since the strong-dollar crisis of 1985.
If this is what happens when the U.S. is bested in trade negotiations I’d hate to imagine what economic conditions favorable for the U.S. would look like. :eek:
Supply management is not the main point of contention in NAFTA talks. Yes, that’s the main thing that Trump is tweeting about because it’s getting traction with Americans, but that’s not the hill that Canada is going to die on. Trudeau said on NBC that flexibility on supply management is possible. He has said otherwise to the Canadian dairy industry … but that’s a pretty transparent lie. Supply management is the cheapest trade chip he can cash, economically speaking (politically speaking may be a different story).
The main sticking points are the US’s untenable requirements for a sunset clause (which kills the potential for long term investment in Canada), removing any enforcement mechanisms from NAFTA (along Trump to impose future tariffs against Canada with Canada having no realistic recourse, effectively meaning that there is no free trade at all here) and US-specific auto content requirements (kneecapping Canada’s auto industry).
Until the US backs off on these points, an agreement with the US has no value to Canada. Also, the US must offer Canada meaningful trade concessions in exchange for loosening supply management, or else what’s the point?
Trump has proven himself to be a liar and not be trustworthy, not in the slightest. Even if Canada was to sacrifice Dairy trade to Trump’s bully tactics - he’d just be back with another demand in a different sector the following week.
A country’s leadership would have to be incredibly naive to capitulate to his crap.
Well, of course.
Canada’s dairy system is terrible for ordinary Canadians, but that’s an issue independent from trade agreements. It would be possible for Canada to eliminate supply management and allow for Canadians to buy milk and cheese at fairer prices without dropping tariff protection from the subsidized U.S. dairy industry.
In the scale of US-Canadian trade, dairy is a fart in a windstorm. The potential trade in dairy is maybe a day’s worth of current automotive trade. End that, and hundred of thousands of Americans AND Canadians lose their jobs in a month.
I’m not disagreeing with you on many of these points, but what you appear to be arguing is that US trade relationships with its allies could be unfair - and they could - without arguing that they are. All I have to go on are the things Trump has stated he thinks are unfair (based on nothing coherent); your assessment that he “senses” legitimate areas of concern is not supported by any evidence that I’ve seen. Yes, certain trade policies are “unpopular” with specific segments of the population…but this has little to do with “fairness”. Any trade policy at any end of the spectrum - free trade, fair trade, protectionism - is going to have winners and losers, and the losers are always going to be understandably unhappy about it. The question to answer is never “Did I get everything I wanted?” or even “Did I get something for everyone?” but rather “Did I get enough to address as many of my top priorities as possible?” That’s the best that anyone can get out of a negotiation.
Here is an interesting write up from the cbc that states the interprovincial tariffs costs the Canadian economy $50 to $130 billion dollars per year, or $7,500 per household. The Federal government has the ability to stop these tariffs, but does not so as not to pick a fight with all the provinces.
Even before the tariffs went into effect, back in March just the talk of it possibly happening later down the road caused my building supplier to shoot up the prices 25% on items like tubing, c and z purlin, rebar, etc., sheet metal not as much. And just a couple of weeks ago, my supplier gave me a heads up that’s it’s probably going up another 25%, and asked me if I wanted to get another order in now, which I did. Didn’t check back to see, but I suspected it did.
Trump concentrating on supposedly helping the steel producers in this country, threw the consumers under a big bus, which is pretty much all of us, especially me. It will be my last business expansion. I’d like to have kept going, but retiring a bit early instead of dealing with this is the best choice for me at this stage in my life.