That would be Conservative leader, Pierre Poilievre for prime minister, however, more recent polls are less certain that he will win the sweeping majority he appeared to be headed for just a few weeks ago. Poilievre comes across like an angry man, a “Trump Light”.
Sounds like the worst dog ever.
A question about boycotts.
We have Home Depot and Costco, Amazon warehouses, among many other US companies up here, and there are tons of them. At the same time they are obviously all staffed by locals.
So, for the Canadians out there, how are you approaching this? We could boycott those businesses, and cause the layoffs of a huge number of Canadians, or not boycott them and save those jobs.
Thoughts?
Ideally your purchasing power is being shifted from a US based company to a local one. Thus there will be a balancing for local jobs and businesses not a loss.
If all of Home Depot’s business moves to Rona, then Rona is going to be hiring a lot. Insofar as you’re moving your purchases rather than decreasing them, employment in retail should remain more or less even, albeit distributed differently across different stores.
I don’t intend an absolute boycott, but just shift purchasing patterns as much as practicable.
Preference for Canadian-source goods over non-US imports over US imports.
Preference for Canadian-owned retailers over US-owned retailers.
If I need a particular product and it comes from the States, I’m still going to buy it. Probably. And I wouldn’t see a problem with making specific exceptions. Costco, for example, is by comparison to almost all retailers, a model citizen. If you think Costco is more worthy of your patronage than Loblaws, even now, I’d be very hard pressed to make a coherent argument against that view.
Isn’t Rona owned by Lowe? Please correct me if I’m wrong.
Lowe’s is leaving the Canadian market, existing Lowe’s stores are rebranding to Rona, but I now see that they didn’t do this by spinning off Rona as a Canadian subsidiary but rather by selling it to a private equity firm out of New York. Somehow I had it in my head that a Canadian group had taken over.
So scratch that example, but the principle remains.
Not any longer…
In November 2022, Lowe’s agreed to sell its Canadian operations (including the Lowe’s-branded stores) to the American private equity firm Sycamore Partners, which also operates, among other properties, Staples Canada.[6] Following the sale, Rona planned to convert the Lowe’s-branded stores to the Rona brand.[18] The sale was completed on February 3, 2023.
But note that Rona is American-owned.
Home Hardware, however, is Canadian owned, still headquartered in St. Jacobs, ON. It has 1100 stores across Canada under the Home Hardware and related brands.
Trump is a predator and a Russian asset. He has ill intent for Canada no matter who the Prime Minister is.
BBC is reporting that Mexico tariffs are to be suspended for a month. Just breaking news at the moment so no details.
CNN reports same for Canada most likely. Good job President Flip-flop-flip-flop!
I hope Canada keeps the US whiskey off the shelves.
This is stupid bullshit.
I have many customers in manufacturing and can tell you that just the ongoing threat of this stuff is fucking them up. You cannot make decisions to run a business like this. Their American customers, believe me, are NOT on board with Trump. They want the damned rules back.
Looks like my wondering about that Costco is correct. Bellingham is noticing the impact.
I’ve posted it on other threads, but … if I may …
How I’m seeing Trump’s general approach to governing and foreign policy:
Good night, Westley. Good work. Sleep well. I’ll most likely kill you in the morning.
Does it ever yield results? Sure. And a blowtorch can be an effective treatment for athlete’s foot.
Same here, with the exception that I will prefer Costco over Loblaw due to the Weston’s.
They are one of my customers, just had a call with them.
Same goes for IT projects.
Tariff? I don’t think that word mean what you think it mean.
At some point, Canadians will tire of taking the liquor off the shelves, putting it back on, taking it back off, putting it back on…
but where we finally settle is going to be off the shelves, because the uncertainty and irrationality is not worth putting up with.
I’m pretty sure that American liquor is staying off the shelves regardless of what happens in the short term. The only thing that will bring it back is either a new president or a renewed free trade agreement.
Paul Krugman made the same point a week ago:
The meat of the argument:
Imagine yourself as the CEO of a U.S. company considering a range of possible investments, whose likely profitability depends on future federal policy. For example, some factories will be worth building if America honors the free trade pact with Canada and Mexico Trump himself signed in 2020, a minor revision of a free trade pact that took effect in 1994.
But those factories won’t be worth building if Trump rips up that agreement and imposes high tariffs at both our northern and southern borders. Instead, you’ll want to make defensive investments, designed to limit the damage of being cut off from Mexican and Canadian customers and suppliers.
So which investments will you make? A likely answer is, “None of them.” The rational thing, surely, is to hold off on big spending until, one hopes, there’s more clarity about policy.
So, lousy for industry, fixed, long-term investments, and suchlike. But there is one group that can make money in an environment like this, a group I like to call “the financialiizers.” These folks are day traders, insiders, goldbugs, cryptobros and scammers to various degrees. These are people who, with the right kind of knowledge, can survive and even thrive in chaotic circumstances, as long as they know a little in advance how and when the tides are going to change. Donald Trump did some pump-and-dump work in the 90s, amassing a position, touting its virtues, and then selling into the wave of buyers convinced such a famous mogul could do no wrong, so he knows the territory.
Could it be that Trump and his various hangers-on, political allies and such are financializing this chaos, and profiting while the average investor is taking it in the shorts? I’d love to have the data to be able to find out.
I’m sure they’d like to get the tariff situation straightened away, but I can just about guarantee that they are on board with many other parts of Trump’s agenda - taxes, regulations, labor rights. If the tariff thing were resolved they’d be gaga for him. And what’s the easiest way to resolve the tariff thing? I mean, U.S. states can’t tariff one another…
The Federal government isn’t interested in any back and forth. They see the reasons (drugs) are flatly false and that Trump is only using them to secure these executive powers without any constitutional checks.
