I agree. That was the point I was making earlier:
“It’s starting to look a lot like Brexit”
The new term is “Bregret”
“And almost six in 10 Britons (59 per cent) think that Brexit has gone fairly or very badly, with just 12 per cent believing it has gone well, according to a YouGov poll in October.”
What would they gain by rolling over and taking it?
I did a bit of Googling on this.
Canada produces about 21.9 million tonnes of potash per year, of course it fluctuates a bit, but between 16 and 22 million tonnes is about right.
A container on a container ship can carry up to about 64,000 pounds (29,000 kg), in a volume of 28 to 85 m3, and the largest such ships can carry over 24,000 such containers. Let’s say 20,000, for an average size ship.
Potash has a bulk density of 1185 - 1329 kg/m3 (See this pdf). At the lower density, 29,000 kg would be about 24 m3, so will fit in such a container.
If I’ve done the math on this correctly, this is the equivalent of just over 3 average size container ships per month, to ship our entire output somewhere other than the US.
Yes, this will be disruptive, yes, we’ll take a hit in the process of finding new buyers, but in the context of a world-wide trade war with the US, I think lots of people will be looking for opportunities, so it won’t be quite so hard as it might have been before. But it doesn’t seem to rise to the level of “damn near impossible”, and in fact, I think we should start this process regardless of what Trump actually ends up doing. We’ve seen that the US is just too volatile now, and anything we can do to diversify our markets, we should start doing. We’ll still be buffeted by waves of instability, but I’d prefer 10-foot waves to 20-foot waves.
Well obviously we don’t have much of a choice. I don’t think potash will be as easily sold elsewhere as other things but assuming the Americans are no longer honest or trustworthy simply requires finding other friends and trade partners.
And geez, can we get rid of interprovincial trade barriers already?
Trump is doing the retaliation now:
US President Donald Trump has said he will impose 25% tariffs and sanctions on Colombia after its president barred two US military planes carrying deported migrants from landing in the country.
Trump said the tariffs “on all goods” coming into the US from Colombia would be put in place “immediately”, and in one week the 25% tariffs would be raised to 50%.
Colombian President Gustavo Petro responded by saying he would impose 50% tariffs on the US.
27% of the coffee sold in the US comes from Colombia.
There are now conflicting reports as to whether Colombia is backing down or telling Trump to go fuck himself.
I admit to some confusion here. If the people being deported with Colombian citizens, doesn’t Colombia HAVE to take them back? Surely there are international treaties to this effect? People get deported all the time by most of the countries in the world to most of the other ones. If you couldn’t force countries to accept back their own citizens it’d be ridiculous.
I don’t see why not. We produce about 40% of the world supply, and even if that mostly goes to the US, that means there’s already the capacity to process 60% elsewhere in the world. Tell those guys to ramp up production, and tell them they’ll be first in line to buy our potash before the US.
Even half of our potash going elsewhere will have a noticeable effect on the US, at a cost to us that we can probably bear. Pound for pound, this might be our most effective weapon in the coming trade war.
They’re being sent in military jets, and no sovereign nation “has to” allow foreign military jets to land, in non-emergency situations.
Weapon? They’re doing it to themselves. They’re gonna buy it anyway for now - for YEARS - even if the Trump admin is looting the importer. American industry can’t adjust away from it in any less than a year or more, if ever, as alternatives are all more expensive anyway. Let them shoot themselves, we lose nothing. New arrangements can be made in plenty of time to adjust later.
Nevermind.
The three biggest importers of potash are Brazil, China and the US with +/- 10mil MT each. I reckon Brazil will be buying all the potash they can use ATM, and your grand design is to drop another 10mil MT of stock into the global market?
You’d be better off leaving it in the ground.
Or simply not dropping prices, indeed bump them up, when the US tariffs come into effect.
@Horatius answered the rest, but here I’m beginning to notice that right wing sources are even more unhinged, with Fox declaring that “Colombian leader quickly caves to Trump, offers presidential plane for deportation flights”
The latest I did see was that Colombia has retaliated with 25% tariffs to American goods.
What Faux news and other on the right are going for is the misleading point about the plane offered by Colombia to take its citizens back, the point was that Colombia does want to see their citizens treated humanly and not in the inhuman way Colombia and others noted how the Brazilian citizens were being treated, starting with deportations with little to no due process.
The Hill seems to have noticed how the right wing media is grasping for straws to get their sorry narrative going in this issue:
Colombia will send its presidential plane to Honduras to pick up Colombians after the country refused to accept migrant deportation flights from the United States, causing President Trump to enact tariffs and other retaliatory measures on Sunday.
Colombian President Gustavo Petro has arranged for the presidential plane to facilitate the “dignified return of Colombian nationals who were to arrive in the country today in the morning hours, coming in from deportation flights,” read a statement released on Sunday.
Earlier Sunday, President Trump slapped Colombia with 25 percent tariffs on all goods coming into the U.S., and he issued a travel ban and immediate visa revocations on “Government Officials, and all Allies and Supporters,” among other measures, after the South American country rejected two planes carrying migrants.
Petro hit Trump back by ordering an increase of import tariffs on goods from the United States by 25 percent.
25% tariff in response, offering the presidential plane to take Colombians back in more humane ways…
Yep, that is caving for Faux news.
We just got back from buying some excess coffee.
Re Colombia, President Gustavo Petro’s Full Statement (scroll down in link) is worth reading. Sounds a lot like Trump, doesn’t it? It’s a reminder of how MAGA is a populist Latin Americanization of U.S. politics.
Despite the harsh anti-Trump rhetoric, what Petro is actually asking of the U.S. – a nicer deportation plane ride – is minor. I think this is intentional. Petro is signaling strength to his people while asking, of the U.S., something so small he’s sure we’ll grant it.
If Trumpworld is so, well, loco, that it won’t give Petro the fig leaf he is asking for to make his situation a little less humiliating, this will be an ongoing crisis.
I actually bought a huge box of coffee pods today while I was out reluctantly grocery shopping. Lucky me.
Sounds like a good test of “The cruelty is the point”. There’s really no good reason to treat the people on the planes like that. So will they stop? What matters more to them, the deportations, or the pointless cruelty?
Donald Trump Jr. is reported quite agitated over the 25% tariff on Colombian imports.
Those ones won’t be affected. And now the coffee they’re packed in will be almost as valuable for smuggling!
Really, am I the only one who thinks slapping tariffs on a nation best known for decades of avoiding US border controls is kind of hilarious?
Doubt it. The wholesale price of Colombian beans is one of many price inputs to a can of Maxwell House. And they can mitigate the price impact by changing the blend. Taste may get a little worse, but most of us will not notice,
This may be a bigger impact: