Summary
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced retaliatory tariffs after Donald Trump confirmed 25% tariffs on Canadian goods and 10% on energy, set to take effect at 12:01 a.m. Tuesday.
Trump justified the move by linking it to fentanyl smuggling concerns.
Trudeau called the tariffs “unjustified” and imposed 25% tariffs on $155 billion in U.S. goods, with $30 billion effective immediately and the rest in 21 days.
He warned of price hikes and job losses in the U.S., arguing the move violates Trump’s own trade agreement from his last term.
American here.
100% support you Canada. Keep it up.
<3
We know it’s not all of you.
Excuse my ignorance but wouldn’t that make things more expensive for Canadians as well?
Yes. It’s alright, I’ve managed to mostly eliminate American products. Anyone smart or at least patriotic has looked into it as well, since the madness began. It was kind of neat watching the US products just sit on the shelves while Canadian stuff emptied out.
To reiterate what all our politicians have been saying to US media, Trump is raising prices on Americans to hurt us, it’s for no good reason, and we’re forced to do the same on our side.
Genuine question, if Trump’s tarrifs just make things expensive for Americans why would we put retaliatory tarrifs that effect us?
Do tarrifs really just make things more expensive for the home country? How do they effect the country the tarrifs are imposed on?
Yes, but items are targeted to inflict the least amount of pain. We don’t neeed orange juice or bourbon for example.
And inflict the maximum amount of pain on specifically the bad Americans who are doing this.
I like Cory Doctorow’s plan.
The reason Canada got tariff-free access to sell to the US in the first place? Canada agreed to enforce penalties for tampering with digital locks, following the premise of the Digital Milennium Copyright Act.
If the US is going back on the deal, then Canada should too. Make it legal to jailbreak all US tech.
Doctorow advocating for this plan:
- On Democracy Now
- On his blog
- On his podcast
- In the Ursula Franklin lecture at the University of Toronto’s Innis College (I especially enjoyed this one, but it is the longest)
If the US is going back on the deal, then Canada should too. Make it legal to jailbreak all US tech.
That should be considered with plans for further escalation varying from nothing to an embargo.
Though arguably piracy and jailbreaking are not so bad for said domination. Microsoft practically encouraged piracy in ex-USSR at some point. Piracy solves the availability problem, supports market share, leads to short-term loss in sales but long-term growth.
But that’s Microsoft, while US government in general seems to think DMCA is for them what the Sound was for the Danish crown in middle ages.
Heck, make it legal to pirate all American media.
Hit where it really hurts: stop paying Microsoft.
A surprising amount of ‘American’ media is filmed and produced in Canada.
TorontoVancouver is like Hollywood North. This would probably be a footgunProducers like to film in Toronto while pretending that it’s NYC. X-Men and What We Do In The Shadows are the first things that come to mind. I still find it hilarious that the “Westchester” Train Station in X1 is in Hamilton (I believe)
A more subtle crossover is that Ramona (Scott Pilgrim) is from NYC
No problems, make exceptions for anything that was made involving Canada!
Vancouver is a huge TV filming location as well.
Ugh, I feel like a dummy. I was picturing BC in my mind and typed out Toronto. You’re 100% correct about Vancouver
Toronto is used for pretty much any scenes set in NYC though
Stargate SG-1, full of blatant military propaganda (I know it’s not so bad, but), was filmed there.
It already basically is; Anti-piracy laws in Canada don’t have a lot of teeth. I leave my torrent computer running 24 hours a day to seed and I don’t even get emails anymore after switching to a smaller service provider.
In that case, the Candian government should set up an official service for downloading American stuff. Making it easy to find things would be worth a nominal fee for a lot of people.
Yeah, I’m not too concerned about that. Their courts are being attacked with so much that I’m pretty sure downloading a car isn’t going to be high on their list.
They could also make their own play store and apple store, and could charge the developers much lower fees, for the same apps that would work anywhere. It would cost them very little and be nothing but profit.
The fact that both Apple and d Google fail to keep malware off their stores makes me think it’s maybe not so easy.
Pretty sure Canada could do as good of a job as anyone though.
Im pretty sure i watched him say this on democracy now and he was a great listen
Yep, I caught that one too. He’s a fantastic orator. He’s got an endless arsenal of one-liners.
I added a link to that and some other instances where he’s made this argument.
Trump is such a vindictive moron. Whether he’s a Russian asset or just a certifiably stupid, the end result is the same.
Good god I hate this fucking timeline. Fuck corporate America for backing this monster and fuck everyone who voted for him. Fuck the Democrats for collectively shrugging about all this too.
Whether he’s a Russian asset or just certifiably stupid
Most definitely both.
Yeah, if he was just in it for his own aggrandisement, none of this would make sense. The orders are very clearly coming from Moscow here, because only Putin benefits from all this bullshit.
And he’s stupid for going along with it - a smart Russian asset US president would get something in return other than a pat on the head.
hey lemmy, how do i learn to become a smuggler
Ok I’ve been wanting to ask this and all the articles don’t really address it so I’m confused.
The whole rhetoric is that Trump’s tariffs will impact the citizens with increased prices and it’s really just going to cause economic harm. Like cool, I can understand that. But why is Canada then performing the same action effecting their citizens? I get it’s retaliatory, and suppose to expedite (hopefully) a return to normal trade policy. I just don’t get why this is the move when it’s a bad move in the first place (two wrongs don’t make a right and all). Please be gentle, I’m honestly just confused.
Trump’s tariffs are universal. Meaning that even in cases where the only practical option is Canada, for example potash, they have to suffer a direct 25% price increase.
The Canadian tariffs are highly selective, we only tariff goods that have alternate non US suppliers at similar prices. In this case the tariffs would mostly reduce market competition without directly affecting price.
I think the better approach is to not enforced the digital lock aspects of the free trade agreement and have Canada be a leading repairer of farm and industrial equipment.
Aluminum is another one, apparently. The element is everywhere, but it takes massive amounts of electricity to get in metal form, which we just happen to have from all the dams in great lakes region.
Our Aluminum companies are literally planning to change nothing. They expect their American customers will just eat the cost.
Doesn’t Belarus also produce potash? I thought they were dropping sanctions against them to get it
I mean yeah, but Canada produces an ENORMOUS percentage of the world’s potash.
Edit: checked the numbers. Canada produced ~38% of the worlds potash (25mil lbs), while Belarus produced 5-7mil lbs, most of which already goes to China, Russia, and India. Canada exports 46% of our potash to the US, meaning the US could buy ALL of belarus’ potash and still not meet current supply.
There really aren’t any other moves to take. It’s either this or lie down.
Also, I will say that tariffs can be a lot easier to manage if you only implement them against one of your trading partners. While major imports from that trading partner, and any goods produced with any of those imports, will see a price hike, most Western countries have very diversified economies and can make up the difference elsewhere. The real trouble begins when you start having blanket tariffs affecting all of your major trade partners, which seems to be Trump’s plan.
It’s still going to hurt - we import so much from the US that this is going to impact Canadians no matter what (even before price hikes in unrelated businesses starts).
If the tariffs are taylored correctly they can cause more pain in the US while minimizing cost to Canada. For example, us grain is not cheap and you can make it so that Canada buys from other countries at a similar cost. This will hurt farmers in the US (a key group for Trump) while not really hiring Canada.
Make it hurt for the morons that support nazis
My understanding is that when the americans institute their tariffs, all canadian products become more expensive for americans and not price competitive with local american products. This results in a decrease of purchasing from Canada.
If we do nothing, then Canadians are still buying just as much american as before and there are little to no consequences for the tariffs
With tariffs on both sides, the effect is roughly “equalized” in that we are both now buying more local goods and less trade over the border
Higher import taxes (tariffs) on Canadian goods for Americans will increase the price, presumably reducing the amount of these goods that Americans will buy which hurts the Canadian producers. The only thing Canada can really do is hurt American producers in the same way, hence increase tariffs to reduce Canadian consumption of American goods and hurt American producers just as much (or preferably more). Hurting each other is a loss-loss strategy though, which explains why trade wars typically do not have winners only losers…
I was going to buy an item but the price went up since yesterday. Not going to buy it now. It’s his tax on us. Not going to finance Krasnov’s destruction of America.
We need to really turn the screws into the U.S. Along with applying tariffs, we also need to just outright stop delivery of critical materials they need. Full Stop.
I’m know this is just a sounding board, but honestly I’d love to see the cutting off of any and all essential raw materials they need. I’m sure they can source it elsewhere, but they most likely can’t get enough of it fast enough.
Cut off anything they need for energy and more importantly: agriculture.
People can live without power. Make their stomachs ache.
Trump is a diseased cunt who doesn’t understand what happens when things don’t go his own way. Let’s show him.
I said it before. Stop sending aluminum and steel and aerospace and military manufacturing would suffer immensely. That is 90%+ of all good made, metals have strict import requirements and certifications, and we couldn’t just make our own on a whim.
The Beaverton had as a headline a few weeks back along the lines of “Americans choose the most expensive way to figure out what they purchase from Canada” which I thought was appropriate.
Yes make us hurt. It’s the only way.
Starting off slow and ramping up sends the correct message that (a) we want to find a way to stop this garbage and (b) we can and will make things more painful for business and consumers alike if it continues long term.
should double those tariffs.
If Trump escalates, so do we.
If we go “all in” on day one, we don’t have any future leverage.
you are right, got to strategically tariff so it hurts US but with minimal impact on Canada.
unfortunately, America has created a system where we can’t really do anything about the president at this point I am really wondering how long will the global world order allow Donald Trump to continue to screw things up for everybody else? Not just talking about economics with Mexico, Canada and China. But also the military situation in Ukraine, which directly impacts the European Union as well as NATO 
I didn’t want Trump to become president for many reasons, one of the main ones being I didn’t want him to pull USA out of NATO, because it strengthens our shared enemies.
Things are actually going worse than I expected, which is really impressive.
I know people are probably sick of hearing this, but I kind of figured this would be the worst possible case imaginable because the same thing happened to Hitler. They threw his ass in jail and then after a couple of months they let him walk and then when he regained power, he knew that he could never lose power again, and if he did, he’d never be able to accomplish his personal objectives. 
There’s something about history that we can learn from here. I don’t know why Trump was even allowed to run, but yeah, here we are. 
He was allowed to run because McConnell stonewalled Obama and let Trump select a bunch of Supreme Court appointees, which then decided that trump can’t be held accountable for anything.
Then everyone decided the rule of law was important, except trump, which means he’s steamrolling every safeguard we had.
They absolutely can do something. They don’t want to. They support this.
This is not Donald Trump, this is America. They voted for exactly this. And they seem to be enjoying it.
I am NOT enjoying it and I’m doing everything in my power to resist this administration.
Checks instance name
In Minecraft. Always in Minecraft.
Fair, not everyone, but a slight majority of people still support this shitshow.
The polls I saw said the opposite.
And that’s ignoring that a large percentage of those who do still support our are choosing to believe their messiah over reality and think that it will make everything cheaper; I do believe that as soon as it’s no longer deniable a large chunk will turn on him. But unfortunately not all of them since plenty will be fully prepared to just blame someone else anyway
Trust me, we (the sane of us) don’t like any part of the dumbest idiots of the country letting it the rich narcissist Nazis takeover them.
I am really wondering how long will the global world order allow Donald Trump to continue to screw things up for everybody else?
I mean what are they gonna do? Invade and depose him? We’re witnessing the end of the Pax* Americana, simple as that.
*Terms and conditions apply.
Well if this were the middle east or a communist problem , western countries would just have him assassinated…which is horrible- but its true if you go back long enough
The trouble is that the problem is not confined to just Trump. If he dies, Vance becomes president. If they both die, Mike Johnson does. This is not a coup by a single person, this is an entire philosophy - neo-fascism - thats now in charge of the US. Its goose-stepping turtles all the way down.
While that’s all true, nobody likes Vance or Johnson the way they like Trump. If he dies and Vance replaces him, I expect a lot more pushback than what Trump gets.
I don’t think any of them give two shits about pushback. Unless that pushback takes the form of forcible removal from power, they wont care in any way.
I don’t think it’s within other countries capabilities (Israel maybe, but why would they), nor in their intrest.
In some failed states it’s considerably easier to have certain people eliminated (and for sure has happened many many times).
Current USA is an internal affair with external effects. Other countries can’t do anything, that’s what happens when 1 country has the very biggest strongest military and security machine ever (way bigger than any competitor, no country get near). Even if they’ld want to, there is no way. And the current situation is unpredicatble and not stable, it would become even less predictable and less stable when certain people were to be assassinated.
If assassinations happen in the trump admin in the near future, I think it would more likely come from USA security services internally. Not sure if it’s for the better. Decent chance in that case of civil war type scenarios tbh.
at this point civil war is maybe the best we can aim for
I’m sure there will be a welcome mat, door is open
The problem is that the global order is collapsing. That’s what makes this possible for Trump and his companions. It’s been going to shit for a while. We’re entering a world where international law will be less important. Sadly.
International law was already completely irrelevant when it came to the developed world imposing its will on the entire developing world, or anyone classified as an “enemy”. There are hundreds of violations across the years that were never enforced, from America carpet bombing south east asia and installing puppet regimes around the world, to Russias use of phosphorous warheads and chemical weapons in Syria, to Israel (and allies) genocide in Palestine.
International laws have only ever been, at best, gentleman’s agreements among the developed world’s oligarchs and political classes.
What’s happening now is the US political class and oligarchy are shifting allegiance to fascist authoritarianism and imperialism, because both are populated with mentally ill narcissists and psychopaths of insatiable greed and megalomania, completely detached from reality; no different to the feudalist monarchs, emperors and pharaohs of old.
I also don’t believe this is an America problem, as much as it is a capitalism problem. Americas oligarchy are no different to Russias oligarchy, who are no different to Chinas oligarchy, who are no different to every oligarchy. They are borderless, stateless, only worship wealth and power, and are a reflection of the psychology created by unchecked wealth and power; these people view themselves as the rightful rulers of humanity, by virtue of their wealth and power, and views concepts like democracy a direct threat to their existence.
We’re entering a world where international law will be less important. Sadly.
At the risk of sounding like a broken record: International law was never important. It was always rules for thee and not for me.
Surely the US isn’t the only country that has foreign leaders assassinated?..
The US is one of the only, if not the only country in the world where what can be done is enshrined in the constitution.
Lee Harvey Oswald found a way to do something about the presidency. Just saying…
I mean then Vance would succeed him, which is… not good. At least Trump is an idiot.
I believe you mean Bernard Montgomery Sanders who we all know was the second shooter.
I guess this is a joke, but it’s dangerous because any conspiracy theory can find many people who take it seriously these days.
It is Robert Evans of Behind The Bastards has been making this joke for 6-7 years now
Lee Harvey, ONI and Guy Bannister
Why doesn’t trump just setup fentanyl production in the states? Seems like a easy fix for me /s
By the end of these 4 years, everyone will be jobless and prices will be unreasonably high. Wonderful.
4 years? Do people really think that there will be mid-term election? and presidential one in 4 years? really?
I thought the point of all this was to ratchet up tensions so Trump could declare martial law and suspend democracy indefinitely.
“We have always been at war with everyone but Russia and China….”
Yes, elections are run by the states, not the federal government. Will red states have fair elections? Absolutely not.
Just like, checks notes 96 years ago!
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