Canada will match US tariffs 'dollar for dollar' as trade talks break down (bbc.com)

The weak kneed leadership will be getting replaced by the populist message of Trump but coming from the left, people like Mamdani, the DSA candidates, etc.

The people clearly want leaders who will say : we will use political tools to help the economic situation of the poor and middle class.

Everyone from Jon Ossoff to Angie Nixon has some version of this message and its resonating

If Chuck Schumer is asked about the weather, he'll first check with Netanyahu.

Just look at what Senatorial campaigns Schumer supports and doesn't. There's a lot of suspicion that Schumer (and the DSCC) is going to leave Abdul El-Sayed out to dry because he's anti-Israel, basically. Mandela Barnes got similar treatment in 2022. And yet you have blockbuster challenges like Jaime Harrison's, which spent $130M to oust Lindsey Graham. He lost by 10. Trump won by 12 so I guess he gained 2? Well done, everybody, the system works.

Oh and what did the DNC do with Jaime Harrison after he spent $130M to lose by 10? They made him the DNC Chair. The Democratic Party loves a loser. Just like Howard Dean.

I feel like the Dems should have an easy time in the next elections if they don't fumble it given the current state of things. On the other hand, they seem to purity test each other in ways that make such a coalition harder to attain.

They’ve demonstrated over and over that their core principles don’t actually exist, and are simply maxims that they have heard often enough that they blindly parrot them back.

Honestly wild opinions to have. Watch 30 seconds of fox news. A significant chunk of their coverage is about protecting women and children from migrants/pedos/trans people. They want a tough on crime executive branch almost as much as they want low taxes.

The problem is that the media has essentially lost most of its usefulness as a bulwark against the most egregious excesses of crony capitalism and cozied up to it instead. It feels like the Gilded Age again, but the people are somehow more insufferable. Cramming the “light of human consciousness into the stars” apparently requires we create CSAM generating machines powered by nitrogen oxide belching gas turbines. Even the folks at non-profit news outlets like Pro Publica have leadership that refuses to understand that it is difficult to prevent AI errors at scale. Nobody reviews drafts with such detail, we make a lot of assumptions, we trust that the person/machine is not feeding us trash.

This is, of course, doesn’t even bring up the fact that a lot of people in the US now get their news—similar to folks in India via WhatsApp (that became such a problem that Meta was forced to curtail the number of forwards you could do in the app)—by passing trash, hate fueling articles around on social media.

Not all taxes are equal. Regressive ones suck.

Add that to the list of things I thought I'd never hear a conservative say.

Say what you will about the man, but Trump's takeover of the mainstream conservertive movement has been thorough, and eerily cordyceps-like.

In any other normal sane world stuff would get called out, greyed out, and ultimately shot down. In THIS world, the responses (I bet, like this one) are the "greys."

It's a scary world we live in where the Left turns into the Right of the past.

That was the EUs top priority. The other issue was that each country had its own products they didn't want to lose sales from.

More generally, the EU isn't built for a world of presidential powers exercised at whom, which is becoming more of an issue this decade.

Responsible governance around something like when and how to retaliate (if at all) against tariffs comes down to one of the most fundamental forces of economics and trade: real leverage. Whether or not the US should exercise its leverage to attain outsized and favorable terms on the economic stage is the peanut gallery conversation that happens on social media. The two worlds couldn't be farther apart. What will actually happen in the end is just a math equation that has never changed and will never change.

For Europe to become fully self-sufficient when it comes to defense, for one thing.

are the trade barriers in the room with us?

One example: In Canada, there's a vibrant french language film industry, meaning films in french that originate and are made in Canada and then marketed abroad. The english language equivalent is anemic because decades ago, as part of trade negotiations, the Canadian gov't gutted subsidies for english language film production as a trade barrier against Hollywood.

1. Bring back manufacturing jobs 2. Remove trade barriers 3. Make US rich by collecting huge amount of tariffs

If 1 is true then there is no benefit for countries to remove trade barriers or pay tariffs because now there is no leverage (manufacturing jobs to protect).

If 2 is true then there is no leverage for other things to happen - countries aren't going to voluntary remove trade barriers without keeping the jobs or paying tariffs.

So and so forth.

The UK's Neville Chamberlain is remembered for saying of an agreement with Hitler, "peace for our time"*, and by this agreement, appeasement; less well known was that he did pursue re-armament and mutual defence agreements while attempting to deescalate.

Hopefully we won't be here in 8 years wondering how the USA got carved up into a Canadian zone, a Chinese zone, a European zone, and an Aztec zone. That last one might be from a TV show I watched as a kid.

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peace_for_our_time

We aren't the ones who are destroying it, and we have a backbone strong enough to say this isn't good enough.

If what you say is true, then the next administration should understand how one sided the damage done to the relationship has been. No economic trade partner should have to tolerate attacks on their sovereignty and unreliable trade negotiators.

It's a nice thought, but I wouldn't "bank" on it.

This was a common attitude 2017-2020, and they got disabused of that notion when Trump won in 2024. I would further argue the muted response during Trump I based on an idea that thing would "return to normal" emboldened Trump II - so that was not a winning strategy. The only country that seemed to have the correct read, and translated it into policy was China. Every other trading partner of the US seems to be floundering still.

No one other than close US allies caved.

And even then, they all realize Trump is a mad man and cannot be relied upon.

USA market is "yuuge", but rest-of-the-world market is much much bigger.

The world needs leadership. And Canada is helping with that.

I do not think that reciprocal tariffs are actually the answer though. They hurt both sides and the US is not a rational enough actor to respond like you hope they will. The answer is in shifting trade away from the US and isolating their economy. It takes longer but it is what will work. And even if their behaviour does not change, their power will fade with their economy.

Most people do not realize how much of a shift that is.

In the past there was always a ton of EU countries helping the US out, in whatever crap the US started. And a lot of European soldiers died. Those soldiers did not help Europe but the US, because of being allies.

Even when some European countries got called names for not helping in Iraq because they called out that the whole Weapons Of Mass destruction was a load of bull** . It did not stop others from helping the US.

Yet, now, what we see as "help" is so minimal, and even countries like Spain not just refusing but active blocking. It shows how much relationships have deteriorated.

Trump thinks of Europa like a vassal state, and every time we say no or delay, it drives him nuts. Or our best "yes", if often a "well, we need to have agreement in all the countries, see you in a few years". Do not think its coincidence, its done deliberately.

In the past when the US said something, beyond maybe France, most countries quickly followed. This is gone ... We know the world has changed, and the old order is finished.

What the Trump Administration does not get is that the US is no longer central to the world economy. Everyone else has a lot more productive capacity now. Trump is running on a 1980s world view.

ultimately the US is buying stuff, but its the stuff thats actually valuable and not the USD you get from it. its even easier to move when you cant even buy oil from the gulf anymore, whether in USD or otherwise.

the supply chain problem arrived in trump 1's covid disaster, and hasnt exactly been solved for getting stuff to the US again

Also, of course, extracting as much money from the state as possible

s/Trump.*ideas/Line their own pockets/

For example, the first tariff wave was a huge transfer of wealth from citizens to corporations in the OBBBA. First, the income from tariffs was projected to offset the tax cuts for the rich and corporations. Then, when the Supreme Court found them unlawful, the money had to be returned. But first the corporations let consumers pay the tariffs by increasing product prices, but now it is the same companies who get the tariff refunds. And since they are obviously not going to give the money back to the customer, it lined their pockets.

Similarly, people who don't have self-respect don't respect others.

Carney is very popular for a reason.

It's unfortunate and in some ways unfair. I hope the Canadian economy will move towards more open trade partners and will proposer.

The thing that I really struggle to understand is what the grand vision behind this is. A logical consequence of the tariffs is that Canada, Europe and other American allies focus more on those who are willing to trade with them, including China.

If I put a 2/3y contract in place with an American supplier, there's a fair chance that I might have to deal with 10-50% tariffs at some point during the contract. This does make (long)-term business deals with the US risky.

Most obviously Southern Ontario is living in a dreamland where inexplicably ICE autos remain a viable industry ad infinitum.

Some forced reality, by any means, will in the long run prove to be welcome.

From the US strategic perspective this is moving out of the frying pan and into the fire.

Some EU carmakers are fighting back but it's very hard when politicians managed to have energy price in the EU being about 7x higher than those carmakers in China do pay.

I'm not for tariffs but China is dumping and if we don't all want to end up being vassals of China, we should at least protect some of our industries.

And as "good" as chinese EVs are, I'm sorry but they're not anywhere near the quality of, say, what German cars used to be.

If western carmakers had been given a reasonable timeline to switch to EVs and reasonable energy price, the situation would be different.

EU carmakers may be saved by people preferring to buy cars from their own continent but that remains to be seen. The latest BMW EVs, for example (once you remove the spying / remote control issues: but that affects chinese EVs doubly so), are apparently very fine machines.

Let's be serious, that has nothing to do with the Canadian situation, which has more than enough going on without needing to imagine things.

Edit to add: the extent to which many of you will apparently blame anything and everything on Putin is extraordinary. Just because the sun shines on Putin as well does not mean he made it do so.

The Green Movement in Europe, which Trump opposes, was best thing to happen to Putin.

As far as I can see, where Trump goes wrong is the same place the social democrats go wrong: believing in economic fallacies. In Trump's case that would be the belief that tariffs are beneficial.

He also on rare occasion aligns with very socialist leaning politicians like Elizabeth Warren, like when he sought to prevent private equity from buying up housing — which totally misdiagnoses the cause of the housing shortage. But it's these economic fallacies that makes Trump popular for the same reason social democrats are popular. The vast majority of people don't understand economics.

[1] https://youtu.be/eKEycjREgPE

The only way that the US can start rebuilding this trust is that the incoming Democratic President and Congress (assuming we are so lucky) immediately starts by prosecuting Trump and his family (and results in actual jail time, not just fines or small stays), zero out their government contracts, fire most of the people installed in government since 2025, expand the Supreme Court, and remove the fillibuster. I know people think ideas like that are extreme, but really, what else is going to convince the rest of the world that the US has cleaned up their act? It has to start at home first.

It’s insane that the US administration (said as an American) doesn’t continue to treasure a values-aligned, peaceful, stable, independent neighbor along a massive unprotected border.

But I don’t understand this energy carve-out argument.

It feels good to say things like the EU and Canada should just ban whatever, but the US can just ban imports of critical goods from Europe too and harm European industries (I’m not in favor of this but it’s certainly an option).

So if the EU can cozy up to China, well we can drop the whole Taiwan issue and cozy up to China too. If Europeans don’t care about democracy in Taiwan maybe we shouldn’t either. Oh and by the way, China is helping Russia prosecute its war against Ukraine (just like Iran and North Korea) but I guess Trump sent some mean tweets so NATO is over, all the alliances are over, the EU and Canada will cozy up to China, and ban all American products. Things that can be easily discarded by both sides aren’t worth much.

The EU should abolish their tariffs and let the clowns in the US do whatever they feel like.

No. Van der Leyen also promised EU investments into the USA. This is betrayal as well; that money should go into EU countries. Or Canada.

Then, because it isn’t on-premise anymore where you could just continue running without paying for the service contract you lose direct access to the product. So that might even mean whole companies going under.

The US are making a fortune on gas at the expense of Europe an it's not that the promise to buy gas is meaningless because unenforceable within Europe, it's that it was already happening in practice. And that makes Europe even more dependent on the US (while the complaint was that we could't buy gas from Russia and depend on them).

EU has carbon tax internally and they are rolling out CBAM to prevent "carbon exports" (manufacturing stuff outside EU and then importing those product without tax). CBAM is currently used directly some high-emission sectors: iron and steel, aluminum, fertilizers, cement, electricity, and hydrogen.

EU importers require granular data on the embedded emissions (both direct and indirect). US companies in these supply chains have had to overhaul how they track and verify carbon intensity down to the sub-supplier level to help their EU buyers comply with strict European reporting standards.

EU will gradually expand CBAM after allowing supply chains to adjust.

I really would love to see this, but the sad truth is that there are no real alternatives for a very big amount of software products. In the end, the eu residents will simply have to pay more for a lot of software products, and that's it :(

He did a pretty good explanation of the difference between theory and practice in his Rest is Politics Leading podcast interview recently :).

Sticks in my mind and well worth listening.

China put tariffs specifically on the sectors that voted for Trump and depended on sales to China.

When the other party is not playing the same game, or not playing in fairness, then the best game theoretical move is to cease cooperation and retaliate.

Since you are getting hurt you play tit-for-tat to get the other to knock it off.

So you add export taxes to items they care about (oil/fertilizer/...) and compensate the losses incurred by existing industries.

You also add tarriffs on items that have alternatives, like alcohool.

Maybe add tarriffs on items with elastic prices, say 100% tarriff on digital services. Software services will have to adjust prices so they end up the same after tarriffs since few people will accept youtube or netflix doubling in price.

This hurts both countries but will get a result - either free trade or no trade.

In the meanwhile, Trump's entourage has derivative bets on this and take massive proffits shorting everyone. For them, this is all massively profitable.

I can't understand why there isn't a single country that did that.

BRICS is just that for oil.

The US is not indefatigable. As of March 2026 the nine largest foreign holders of US Treasury securities are Japan, UK, China, France and Canada.

All nations the US is jerking around. If they dump bonds US in big trouble. Oh, and the US is almost $40T in debt.

This was one of the very embarrassing things that happened to Donald as a boy, done by Freddy Trump (his late older brother), when everyone had enough of him.

Yes, I had the thought that it sounded a lot like speech.

Thanks.

Generally speaking, capital and commerce steer towards efficiency. Goods from Australia will always be “less efficient” than goods crossing between Canada and the USA and Mexico due to geography.

The only way to make up for that difference is if goods are dramatically cheaper to produce (i.e China) to make up for the geographical barriers.

While it may work for beef, it can’t work for everything. So, Canada is generally stuck with the USA until it can find ways to export/import efficiently from other countries, and some things, like produce, can never work.

Depends whether demand is flexible or not.

If you think Canadians have more nationalistic pride than Americans, you seriously need to get glasses.

Americans literally pledge themselves to their country every day of school.

In context, this only applies to oil that the US imports. That number means that of the oil that the US imports, 60-70% of it comes from Canada. The US currently produces more oil than any other nation. Your note should read "the US imports 60-70% of the oil that it imports from Canada"

- 100% of the natural gas

As mentioned above, this means that US imports of natural gas come exclusively from Canada. The US currently produces more natural gas than any other nation too. Your note should read "100% of the natural gas that the US imports comes from Canada"

It makes sense that Canada is sole source for imported natural gas since that is a product that is most efficiently transported in pipelines, like crude oil.

The way your numbers are framed seems to me to imply that the US is a net importer of oil and natural gas when in fact we began to ramp up exports of oil and natural gas (and coal) in 2006-2008 time period. Those exports helped the industry remain a dominant political force and provided a lot of seed money for the corruption that we have seen in the US since.

No, instead the Trump tariffs have specifically targeted the regions of Canada that a) elect left of centre governments and/or b) have manufacturing economies.

So Ontario's auto sector, BC's forestry, and Quebec's aluminum and aerospace sectors.

Meanwhile Alberta and Saskatchewan -- which have compliant quite honestly pro-Trump governments -- have only 2% of their exports currently impacted by tariffs.

It has the look of an attempt at regime change, masquerading as economic policy.

So anybody that will follow, regardless of the person's policies won't matter fully, as that person itself will be replaced 4-8 years later.

It’s worse than that. This doesn’t suit the US. It suits Trump (or at least, that’s what his addled mind thinks).

IMO you don't want lawfare -- but rather you want to remove bad laws like the DMCA (and related), and the life-plus-70 copyright term, and thus foster more innovation and growth.

It's easiest to repeal anti-consumer/anti-commons laws.

Why?

This didn't even exist until 2011: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Modernization_Act

And how would something like banning parts pairing "cause a lot of short-term issues"? Existing supply chains would remain intact. They'd simply be broadened, eventually, by new entrants. If incumbents leave the market in a fit of pique, you can rest assured that the gaps will be filled, and that those incumbents may very well be liable for breach of contract if they refuse to service existing Canadian customers.

Yet what I'd suggest is to go a step further rather than retreat: Subsidize EV production (including from Chinese firms) on the condition that final assembly or some fraction of production is done in Canada. Keep the jobs, make cleaner cars more efficiently, and make them available to Canadian consumers at reduced (subsidized) prices.

...Then export those subsidized vehicles to Europe and wherever else, where they might benefit from favorable EU-Canada or Brazil-Canada trade policies.

I’m trying to encourage people to understand the facts in a forum dedicated to intellectual discussion.

More "relative" than you think.

Look at the wars the US fought after WWII: Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, etc. The US suffered a lot less pain than any of those countries and was in a lot stronger position. But those countries were willing to face the pain, the US wasn't. That's why the US lost those wars. The same pattern goes now with Iran. You kill people on those countries, those countries hurt the American voters in their pockets.

In trade wars it might be the same mechanism. For the American people, a trade war is mostly to follow the glorious orange leader. For Canadians it is a matter of national sovereignty.

Most of that was inflation, so it hurts U.S. citizens. I mean, you could reduce it even further pretty easily, but I'm not sure you would want to pay $1,000+ for a Big Mac.