The Republican-controlled US government has decided to impose a 25% tax on American imports of goods from Canada
The Republican-controlled US government has decided to impose a 25% tax on American imports of goods from Canada
Language matters.
The President is empowered by a Congress controlled by a narrow majority. Rather than the individual they have chosen, I am pissed at the Republican party. And disappointed in the American people. The guy? He was always that way and would have continued to be so at a safe distance from the levers of power without his enablers.
It is the American and especially Republican relationship with Canada that is important in this situation. Those are what endure, that person is only momentarily significant. So, where we can choose the narrative, I think that's important to focus on.
Plus I suspect he likes the sound of his own name.
The best suggestion I've seen, personally, is just to stop respecting American copyright law's bullshit.
Cory Doctorow thought that through: https://pluralistic.net/2025/01/15/beauty-eh/#its-the-only-war-the-yankees-lost-except-for-vietnam-and-also-the-alamo-and-the-bay-of-ham
I wish I could upvote this 1000x
Yarrrrrrr. I couldn't agree more
Too late for that!
Isn't Canada in an agreement with the US that trades "no tariffs" for "no infringing on copyright"?
If the US is imposing tariffs, Canada should now be free to copy any American product.
Or was I lied to?
This also means Canada should be free of its water transit treaties. Let's divert water from flowing south over the border.
Kick Nestle completely out of the country, too -- no more cheap access to our water.
Start right now on new local beef processing faciliities.
Agreed. Fight fire with fire. The only way to get the people to react is to make them uncomfortable. We tried reasoning, that failed. Let the leopards loose.
More in this case, bullies and fascists only respond to force, that is all. There is no decorum, no societal norm, no mutually agreeable term that can be arrived at. Punch them in the face and keep doing it until the consequences are greater than the benefits of acting as such.
Power, through force is the ONLY thing they respect and understand.
Never gonna happen, but I would love to see countries removing embassadors from the US and closing their borders to their citizens.
Sadly I would have to be consistent and ask the same for my country (.ar), where our own delirious-in-chief is following to the letter Project 2025's playbook.
copyright
just make content ludicrously expensive and force people to pirate it, then don’t follow up on people doing so
that’ll make some very powerful interest groups that basically only exist in the US absolutely frothy with rage
Dude America is the biggest exporter of culture in the world.
The biggest Canadian cultural influences made their mark in American media. Jim Carey. Ryan Gosling. Ryan Reynolds. Robin Williams. Raffi. Tommy Chong. The Rock. Seth Rogan. Will Arnett. William Shatner. Eugene Levy. Mike Myers. Rick Morannis.
To name a few.
(Also are there any famous Canadian Actresses?)
There's a bit of a problem here though.
Say we put tariffs on services from Amazon for example. What should they apply to? Amazon the online store and Prime Video? Or should we also apply them on cloud services? Because a LOT of Canadian companies are using their cloud services.
Even if they switched to Google, wouldn't we want to tariff them as well for supporting Trump also? Or even Microsoft? They all spent a million $ for his inauguration. And I'd bet they would bend to his demands if push comes to shove.
We always knew that we depended too much on these companies and it's never been so obvious than now. When we're suddenly at the mercy of a psychopath fascists dictator president at the controls of our biggest economic partner.
I don't know how you could tariff Meta, but I'd love if it was crippled so the essential groups I'm in would move somewhere else. I only ever get served posts from 1 or 2 of my real acquaintances as needles in a haystack of irrelevant trash.
"You need to pay local taxes on any profit made off Canadians, it's your responsibility to report your numbers and prove that they're true, if you can't we're blocking your platforms."
The good solution is rather to invest in diversity of sources. For the oil side, the solution is to invest in renewables and electrification as to not depend on oligarchs anymore, just like China is massively doing by the way.
Nuclear. Canada has an amazing(currently growing) nuclear industry. We need to foster that even more.
I'm planning on buying canadien goods when I'm driving through half of the country this summer. I need a decent winter coat, so I'll pick up a Canada goose.
Kanuk coats are made in Montreal, Avalanche is another option made in Quebec as well.
I think Canada goose coats are made in Burlington now.
This is incredibly stupid as an economic counter plan for a nation whose number one import and export (>50% respectively) is the US. Compare that to the US's highly diversified trade portfolio. Trump would clap back with a 100% general tariff on Canada.
American trade can survive without Canada. But Canadian trade can't survive without America.
The bulk of Canadian exports to the US are oil. We can certainly tariff US goods, but export tariffs on Canadian oil and hydro electricity to the US will probably be a big component of the Canadian response.
Even with a big increase on hydro power exports to the US, it's still cheaper than most other sources of electricity, so they'll still happily pay it.
As to oil, there are some refineries in the US that are set up to process Canadian bitumen. Canada's long history of just exporting raw materials and re-importing finished goods give a pretty outsized room to manuever here. This refineries will probably just pony up and pay more.
Where the damage will come is in areas like the auto sector, where there are tightly coupled supply chains.
Paul Krugman points out in his article The End of North America that there is probably already damage done to the concept of North American manufacturing.
Trump is going to do a whole lot of damage, we're going to take some of that damage, but my favourite quote on the topic:
Canada and Mexico account for about a third of US exports. US businesses may be able to survive without them, but they sure won't make the shareholders happy.