Whether or not people can survive without milk is entirely beside the point. Milk is in huge demand not just for direct consumption, but as an ingredient in many food products (cheese, ice cream, yogurt, butter, etc). Surely given how much people enjoy consuming dairy products, it would make no sense to be solely reliant on importing the main ingredient when we are perfectly capable of producing it ourselves and providing employment to those supplying the ingredient?
Another factor you have to remember when Trump is using this as an example of how “unfair” NAFTA is, is that the US knew about Canada’s dairy management system when they were negotiating NAFTA. Do you imagine that the US just said, “Oh, okay, you can keep that”, without extracting some other concession in a different area of NAFTA?
It only looks unfair when you only look at what Canada got, and refuse to look at what Canada might have given up.
Which is, of course, exactly how Trump looks at every deal. But we don’t have to sit idly by and let him get away with that.
It’s not a whoosh. penultima thule was suggesting that Wisconsin gets cold too so it doesn’t have a weather advantage over Canada, but it simply does not get as cold.
The Wheat Board was as often opposed as supported by farmers (who thought they could get a better price if wheat was sold outside the board), and did not prop up the price of wheat - rather, it caused farmers to farm stuff not subject to the Board, like canola.
From your cite:
Also from your cite:
The notion that it is relatively uneconomical to grow grains in Canada because it is cold here is simply incorrect.
Wait… steelworkers? That’s exactly what trump is trying to do.
The protectionist game works both ways. Canada used to have high duties on clothing and shoes, so did the USA - but at a certain point, foreign production could undercut even those prices. No matter how fancy the equipment, there’s only so fast you can push a pair of cut cloths through a sewing machine. So the only question is “how little can you pay them?” But once the industry disappears, it doesn’t come back on demand - leading to absurdities like Trump brand ties, Ivanka’s line of goods, and MAGA hats, all made overseas - not just because it’s impossible to find local manufacturers who can come close to competing on price, but because those factories have disappeared to the point that even if you chose to manufacture in the USA, there’s nobody with the scale of factory production to do what you want.
The question is, how many of those facilities - manufacturing, resource acquisition, agriculture, etc. can a country really afford to lose and on what scale? Basic food production is probably the one thing that any country want to ensure they have…
This contains testable assertions - notably, that grain, and thus, cattle feed is “less abundant” and “more expensive” in Canada.
Is there any proof of this? It seems odd, then, that Canada is a major net exporter of grain, competing successfully in world markets against the US, given that grain is “more expensive” here.
Note that the price of wheat is “low” and is not set by Canada …
The problem is that you can’t tell from the milk whether the cows used growth hormones or not*. So US farm corporations could just follow their Presidents’ example and lie, claiming to Canada all their milk was produced without growth hormones.
*Not without expensive & time-consuming, and sometimes not accurate, lab tests.
If you had bothered to read my post you would have seen that I never said anything about it being uneconomical to grow wheat in Saskatchewan. I said their growing season is shorter than wheat growing areas south in the US. Wheat is grown as far south as Texas which has a much longer growing season than anywhere in Canada.
Bullshit. I know nothing of the temps in Canada, but I know it is colder than 40 here in January. Maybe 40 down towards Illinois, but up here where the cows are it’s half that.
And I can buy 6 pairs of socks here in Canada from Costco for the equivalent of $7.70US. Made in China.
There are still some textile and clothing factories in the USA and Canada, but the vast majority have gone overseas, there’s not enough left here to supply the market if they had to. You can bring those jobs back, if you impose major tariffs. Then clothing would be fairly expensive again, and even then, the workers in those plants would likely be getting minimum wage.
When floods hit Thailand a few years ago, there was a severe shortage of hard drives. Earthquake in Taiwan over a decade ago and RAM chips were in short supply. There are probably some technologies - like CPU chips - that for national security reasons should not be lost to overseas. And by losing that capability, we are held ransom to foreign events.
I remember watching “Grumpy Old Men” and thinking - they’re driving on the ice and going ice fishing at Thanksgiving. Must be Hollywood script writers who think the whole north freezes solid after labour day. Even in Canada, and allowing for inordinately late US version of Thanksgiving, the ice is not that thick… in fact quite often by the third week in November there may be no ice.
How do the Vancouverites (and other Canadians?) who reputedly make milk and cheese runs over the border to buy much more cheaply in the U.S. manage to sneak their purchases back home? You’d think the Canadian dairy industry would demand cheese-sniffing dogs at the border to stop the flow of illicit dairy goods.
You get to bring in a certain amount of goods duty-free when you take a trip to the States. If you’re over the amount, you pay duty on the excess. Bringing back some milk would normally be below the quota.
