I have no problem with free trade with Japan, Canada and Europe. As I’ve said before I would end trade barriers with these regions.
Last time I checked, we don’t get coffee from Japan, Canada or Europe.
-XT
Great idea. Have Japan, Canada and Europe buy shit from China and sell it to us.
Why hasn’t anyone else thought of that before?
Plus, Japan is probably not the best example of a model of someone willing to freely trade with us…
-XT
Or chocolate.
Which should really drive home the point. What kind of a country would these tariffs result in? And who would want to live there?
I moved to the US from Canada because it had things to offer. If it had lacked coffee, chocolate, and ipods I’d have stayed home.
Put in a bunch of half-assed tariffs based on poll data and anyone that can leave will.
Tariffs won’t make Apple suddenly produce ipods in the US. But what it will do is drive those that want ipods to where ever the hell they are available. And who would be represented in that group? Sure as hell aren’t going to be the labourers happy to have a factory in their podunk little town. It’ll be the Apple executives that won’t want to bother operating in the wasteland that is the US. But at least there will be jobs, lots and lots of jobs–it’ll be one big Amish community.
I’m pretty sure all this nonsense is simply the result of Le Jacquelope not actually knowing what a tariff is. It’s obvious he/she/it has no formal economics training what so ever. Anyone that took macroeconomics would have been told what a tariff was, and what the natural and predictable results are, along with historical examples of what they do to an economy.
But he/she/it knows that the word 'tariff" makes people go a little crazy. I remember when I was 4 and I learned the word ‘cunt.’ At the time I had no idea what it actually meant, but damn it was fun watching my mother freak out.
Beat me to it.
The absolutely 100% inevitable result of the U.S. stopping trade with China and expanding its free trade agreement with Canada et al. would be companies in those places simply reselling Chinese goods.
Hell, if this sort of thing was in in the air I’d start investing in it myself. I’d set up a company with a really Canadian-sounding name and start importing Chinese toys by the boatload, then rebrand them as True Maple Toys or some such thing. All that would happen is that U.S. consumers would be paying a little more for the same Chinese toys, and I’d rake in money as the middleman.
How on earth could the U.S. government stop me? Are they going to audit me? They don’t have the resources, don’t have the jurisdiction, and stuff like injection-molded plastic isn’t followed by material test reports or chain of custody documentation. Any rules set up to require “Canadian content” can be bent enough to get past them. They’re Zoobles, not auto parts. I’d make millions.
The other business opportunity would be investing in businesses that rely on a large percentage of Chinese inputs, but still do most of the manufacturing or assembly in North America. Unable to get the cheaper inputs, the U.S. companies would be unable to compete with Canadian firms that can still get them. My company would take off while its American competitors went out of business. As the U.S. firms went bankrupt we could even swipe their cap[ital equipment at pennies on the dollar, and maybe even sponsor their top people to immigrate here and work for True Maple Industries, so we could take the talent, too. Since the U.S. economy would be plummeting pretty hard, I’m sure I could get folks to come up here for lower wages than I’d have to pay a Canadian. Or I could snap up American companies for cheap and run them by importing the cheap inputs through Canada. I guess my fellow Canadians might be upset that I’m supporting jobs in a low-wage country like the USA that doesn’t have as many social program and protections for workers as we do, but, hey, it’s business, and people in poor countries need jobs too.
I’m starting to like Le Jacquelope’s idea. I could get really rich. It’ll put a lot of Americans out of jobs, but Canadians will gain jobs, so on the whole it’ll be even and I’ll be a zillionaire and be able to give my kid the stuff she deserves.
John, you wanna move up here and go into business with me if LJ gets his way? We could make an absolute killing. Just reimporting toys would be worth tens of millions in the short term. We can always winter in Florida if you get homesick for the U.S. It’ll be really cheap.
Canada would be up an absolute assload of money, and the U.S. would gain nothing.
Rick: Can I just invest in your company without moving the Canada? Nothing against Canada (I like it a lot), but I live in one of the greatest places in North America, and I’m not ready to move. 
Yes - never mind that your silly ideas have no basis in reality.
Go ahead and wave your flag and shout your slogans.
The adults will be over here in the corner, making sure you have food and water.
Won’t be after **LJ **gets his way…
Since RickJay stole my idea, I’ve decided to start a US based company that redistributes Canadian “made” products, obviously imported from China. Then I’m going to run a smear campaign against True Maple Toys, and encourage idiots like LJ to buy good’ol 'merican made products. My 100% mark up will seem like a bargain.
I’m also planning to team up with Mexican drug cartels to use those tunnels for importing consumer electronics. An ipad at 1.5 lb, will be worth way more than a kilo of coke.
Growing up I always remember hearing about the street value of blue jeans in communist Russia. I look forward to smuggling those into the US too, I might even bring in Russian made jeans at a loss just for the irony factor.
Even iPads manufactured in the US would not quite be “worth” that much. Or so my friends tell me…
If walking abortions like you continue to get your way you’ll be asking for your wages in Canadian currency. What with your policies dragging the US dollar to ruin.
Nobody’ll be able to afford anything from Canada.
Only an idiot like you would believe the U.S. wouldn’t catch onto that shit and bar those goods from the country.
Only a brain-dead idiot like you.
Wow. Dr. Evil has smarter plans than this. Any fool would know you’re getting them from China because any fool knows Canadian labor rates and we know you can’t be making stuff like that in any Western country at those prices.
You’d get caught right at Jump and maybe even get thrown under the bus for it by your own Government.
You’ve got to be by far the most cartoonish wanna-be villain master planning fucktard… ever!
Well you got one thing right - you’ll be in the corner. Shunted over on the forgotten side of the room.
Judging by the way things are going in America it’s the only place you’ll be able to whisper your bullshit opinions without the rest of the country laughing at you.
What I want to see is Mr. Black Knight as head of Apple, on national TV:
“What does that even mean? How many times are you going to harp about 16million people without jobs.”
“We need unemployment, it’s the only way for growth. Without unemployment a business can’t start because there is no one to be employed.”
“I’ve been hiring lately and I love high unemployment. It means I get multiple applicants, good applicants.”
“When unemployment was low in 2006 job applicants were crap, they were the dregs of society, the leftovers and unemployables no one else wanted.”
By the time this fucktard got done talking the unemployed bum down the street could buy Apple stock. It’s rare that you get this powerful a mix of insensitivity, stupidity and rabid insanity in one fucked up excuse for a mind.
Black Knight, we need you on TV. Now. You’re going to be the man who does ALL the heavy lifting for the anti-offshoring movement. 
“Anyone with half a brain has 3 months living expenses saved.”
I would love for that cotton candy brained buffoon to say this in public. Talk about making an idiot of oneself.
It’s indeed possible that emacknight has either completely LOST his mind, or he never even had one to begin with.
But when prices go up, so do wages, remember?
Is that really the first time you’ve heard that?
Do you not have 3 months living expenses saved?
Show of hands, who out there doesn’t right now have 3 months living expenses saved? (preferably in a moderately liquid form)
And for the record, part of my job is to tell people to have 3 months living expenses saved. That way, when they get laid off they aren’t earning $0 as you are so fond of saying. That way, they aren’t homeless as you would predict. That way they don’t starve as you would predict.
There are worse things in life than being unemployed. Going through life arrogant and stupid is one of them.
Want some more advice?
Anyone with half a brain:
…doesn’t spend more than a third of their income on living expenses (or three times their salary on a house)
…wears a seat belt
…wears sunscreen
…eats a balanced diet
…gets exercise 3-4 times a week
…takes an economics course before going on an internet message board and suggests tariffs as a way to increase employment in the US.
…learns was the false dilemma fallacy is before accusing someone of it
Canadians are so productive we can produce things a 5/90th what China does, we’re that good! We’re also very polite and rather humble. I’m surprised you didn’t know that, what with how much you know about productivity of various countries.
Of course they’d try, and I made reference to that. There are industries where content from certain countries is prohibited from import; that’s why I mentioned auto parts. If you’d like to cut down on the fifth grade insult silliness, we can actually exchange some interesting points here. You aren’t hurting my feelings, you know.
As I said, it’s effectively impossible for the U.S. to prevent a Canadian firm from importing Chinese consumer goods and re-exporting them as Canadian. There just isn’t any practical way to look at a Zooble (I like using these toys as an example because my daughter loves them) and tell whether it was molded in Ghuangzhou or Guelph.
There are SOME things where import tracing is currently practiced - large steel fabrications, or big die sets, for instance, basically anything large made of pre-determined grades of steel is usually accompanied by mill test reports. Even that’s pretty informal though - an MTR would be trivially easy to fake. It’s generally not done now because it’s not worth bothering.
No matter what rules you set up, there will be loopholes - just defining “made in Canada” is something that is nearly impossible to pin down. Is a Blackberry made in Canada? They’re assembled here, they’re designed here, the software’s written here - well, most of it, but third party apps maybe not. Some of the parts are made here, but some of the parts are made overseas, and some of the raw materials that go into the parts made here are extracted overseas. It’s probably not even possible for Research in Motion to KNOW what percentage of the matter in a BlackBerry was extracted in Canada; where was the lead solder on the circuit board mined? There’s no way they know. They don’t buy it directly and even the people that do buy it directly probably buy it from a metals vendor.
I work with a company in Brantford that makes steel furniture for labs. The furniture is cut, formed, painted, assembled and welded in their Brantford, Ontario plant. All design and all activities take place there. But the steel’s from all over the world. The paint is probably American. The giant robotic laser cutters, which cut the parts and which are a hugely important input, are Salvagninis, from Italy. Is thier stuff Canadian? How Canadian is it? And if they SAID it was all Canadian how on earth would you prove otherwise?
In any consumer product you touch the manufacturer was supplied by suppliers who were supplied by suppliers who were supplied by suppliers. If I assemble or modify it in Canada you haven’t a hope in hell, as a U.S. regulator, of knowing where I get my stuff. It’d take you hundreds of billions to create the Department of We Hate The Chinese to create an enforcement agency with any hope at all of assessing the origin or products, and then I can still tell them to fuck off because they have no jurisdiction over True Maple Toys. And if they require permits to export to the US… well, it’s not ree trade anymore, is it? You just blew your plan to have free trade with Canada.
There’s also my point about the Cheap Input Problem. Suppose you have two companies, one in the U.S., “Missouri Widgets,” and one in Canada, “Manitoba Widgetry,” who make widgets. As Canada and the U.S. already more or less have free trade, the two companies compete throughout the US/Canadian market. Now the Le JAcquelope administration raises tariffs against China. Problem is that widgets are 65% comprised of pig iron and cheap steel, which is all imported from the Third World. Missouri Widgets no longer has access to that input, thanks to you; Manitoba Widgetry still does and now enjoys a huge cost advantage. Both companies are still making widgets in their home country; you’ve just shot the American company’s cost structure to hell.
Nor have you explained where the coffee, bananas, chocolate, or… and here’s a really important one… OIL will come from.
Sure you could, if I imported it all from China and just marked it up a little. You’d see prices at Wal-Mart jump up, but not by so much that people couldn’t get by.
At least for awhile. As your economic policies started eliminating U.S. jobs, eventually the number of people who could afford True Maple products would decline. But I could still get rich while it lasted.
However, as I am a firm believer that Canada should maintian high levels of immigration, some Americans could come here to get jobs, I suppose. Skilled workers should probably start learning about hockey if you become President.
I have half a LIFETIME of living expenses saved, dumbass. But I used to be one of those paycheck-to-paycheck people. I’ve been on both sides of the tracks. Apparently saying I have more experience in LIFE than you isn’t saying much considering you fir the profile of a pimple faced wuss that lives in his mommy’s basement and sucks all his knowledge out of Fox News’s ass.
A great deal of the country, in fact. That’s why they’re called the POOR class.
You’re an idiot, Black Knight.
You’d make a great suicide counselor. Tell them your views on economics and they’ll be so thankful that they aren’t YOU that they’ll put Rippy the Razor away and go dancing in the rain.
And if you’re unable to get better than a minimum wage job that goes out the window.
Damn, you’re an idiot.
Oh and love your master plan there for relying on a shitty job market to get better employees. Ever thought that when the market gets better they’ll hop and leave your sorry ass? Yeah, you would if you were a business owner and not an acne ridden Von Mises drone.
On planet Black Knight there is no such thing as high unemployment being damaging to BUSINESSES due to a lack of consumer spending.
Does your mother know about all the crap that you’re typing in the dark corner of her basement?