This isn't new to Trump. US companies often lobby to have other US companies harmed by trade decisions, to their advantage. Most of Canada's industrial economy is owned by US multinationals. The softwood lumber dispute has lots of examples of new tariffs on specific products that one American company makes in Canada that another American company operating in Canada doesn't make in Canada, but they do make something else in Canada.
When the competitor is forced to close, the successful lobbyist's American plant now has less competition for customers and their Canadian plant now has more suppliers willing to accept less for the inputs. So win-win, but only for the winner.
To be fair that is step 1 of what the tariffs are supposed to do in order to bring manufacturing back home. That is, make it unprofitable to have off shored operations.
The problem is we wont get past step 1. There is no confidence that this business climate will persist past this administration. Building out infrastructure would take time and we have demonstrated that you can only plan out 4 years at a time. The debt markets have been crowded out by AI cap ex and it looks like interest rates are increasing again. Debt servicing would be impossible on a low margin product. There just isn't any situational awareness.
And I believe in the US employers pay unemployment. Whereas in Canada the government pays it out but funds via deductions from workers' paycheques. So another savings for US companies operating here.
Our healthcare is the direct result of underfunding and the allowance of mistreatment of health care workers resulting in low human resources.
A private system is not better and just increases prices. It does not inherently all of a sudden increase the amount of resources that exist within the system.
Part of the reason also is the bottleneck in number of spots in the health care schools.
A great many of the horror stories you often hear are rare, overblown, and most often by people who don't advocate for themselves.
Take the people who claim to have been on a wait list for a family doctor for years. They get their name on the list and then do nothing else. No looking for doctors, no research, no advocating for themselves. When my old family doctor retired I had a new one within 2 months. My dad had one in a few weeks.
Our healthcare isn't perfect, it definitely has lots of problems. But the tripe you often see that our healthcare is crumbling and terrible, it's total horseshit.
I’m one of those who was on the list looking for a family doctor for 8 years before I finally said fuck it. I was also looking actively so please tell me the name of a doctor who would take me on gladly as fast as you claim….
I would be astonished if Carney weren’t working on a deal to set up EV manufacturing in Canada with BYD etc. to replace the forthcoming job losses in the auto industry.
They've already expressed interest in purchasing the Stillanis plant in Burlington. They want in the Canadian market. And if you haven't noticed, there's 40 million people in Canada and less than 1/2 of those people are interested in setting foot in the US. With that number getting lower everyday.
It will also be cheaper to build them in Canada and Ship them to the UK. If they replace the US auto jobs, Carney will completely open the Canadian market to BYD for any model made in Canada to be sold in Canada and set a high Tariff on US Autos. US auto isn't going to get to take the jobs and still reap the profits.
Most of the Japanese car makers have operations in different SE Asian countries. Those countries may have a higher population than Canada, but they don't have higher incomes or auto ownership. There is a market there, even if they can't export.
Trump is threatening to nuke the vehicle market, the Chinese offer a more reliable deal and im sure would be happy to take any partner away from the US.
Companies aren’t refusing to build factories because Trump might be gone in four years. They’re refusing because factories last decades, while his tariffs can change by tweet or proclamation and repeatedly tax the imported components American factories need. Erratic tariffs raise those costs repeatedly, while immigration restrictions tighten the construction and manufacturing labor supply. With no reliable way to calculate costs or supply chains, companies delay investment, or more intelligently, keep production abroad and pay the tariff once on the finished product.You cannot justify a multibillion-dollar plant when neither its input costs nor its trade rules are predictable. The four-year concern is a symptom of this administration’s instability, not an independent business-cycle problem.
Traditionally, governments use tariffs to punish the foreign competitors of domestic manufacturers. I think it's unprecedented of a government to use tariffs with the goal of punishing its own companies' foreign operations.
I have a theory that tariffs would be more impactful if Trump used them retroactively against countries with tariffs on US goods. They base the tariff amount on trade imbalance between two economies across all sectors combined, instead of isolating sectors apart from eachother. This causes sweeping tariffs on the country as a whole rather than address the tariff imbalance per sector per country.
Man, hate to see that kind of economic pain his my favourite named named “city” (actually more like a cluster of towns) - it’s almost always referred to by it’s full name: Abitibi-Témiscamingue.
It’s just delightful to say.
Other close contenders: St Louis de Ha!Ha!, Dildo and Spread Eagle (which are across the bay from each other), and of course, a special shout out to Regina, which is a staple of every Canadian schoolchild’s playground vocabulary.
Also, maybe they will open a facility here in the US and employ US workers now. Why should a US company operate in another country and employ no US people who pay non US taxes.
They won't open a US facility: the US has a huge shortage of loggable forests, which is why American lumber is much more expensive than Canadian lumber
the US actually has massive timber capacity, and the American South specifically is one of the largest wood-supply regions on the planet. There are real regional constraints (federal land restrictions in parts of the Pacific Northwest, for example), but that's a regulatory/geographic issue, not a nationwide shortage.
The actual root of the price gap, and the reason this dispute has run since the 1980s, is how the two countries price timber. About 90% of Canadian forest land is provincial/government-owned, with stumpage fees set administratively rather than by market auction. In the US it's the reverse — roughly 90% private land, priced competitively. The US has argued (with mixed success at the WTO) that Canada's system amounts to a subsidy. So it's a structural/pricing story, not 'Canada has wood and we don't
The US lot owners charge a higher competitive price because the lumber is in shorter supply. If they had a greater supply, the market price would be lower, like it is in Canada.
Canadian lot owners (i.e. the Provinces) charge a nominal price because that is the market price in Canada because the supply is functionally unlimited. It's not like loggers are competing to log the same patch of forest. There's more than enough forest for everyone to log to their heart's content. And after it's logged, it regrows.
Canada explicitly manages timber as a limited resource. Each province sets an Annual Allowable Cut, a yearly harvest quota, which only makes sense if the supply is finite and needs to be managed sustainably. That's the opposite of unlimited.
The actual dispute, going back 40 years, is about how the price is set on that quota-limited resource. In the US, timber rights are sold competitively at auction, so the price reflects real-time supply and demand. In Canada, stumpage fees are set administratively by government staff — and the concern (backed by multiple WTO/ITA rulings over the decades finding subsidy margins in the 3-18% range) is that officials have an incentive to keep those fees low to keep their provincial industry competitive, independent of what an auction would actually reveal about scarcity. Notably, BC itself moved part of its system to auction-based pricing in 2006, specifically to demonstrate its prices reflect the market — which only makes sense if the prior administrative system didn't reliably do that.
So it's not 'US scarce, Canada abundant.' It's 'US price-discovered via auction, Canada price-set by bureaucrats on a resource that's explicitly quota-limited, not unlimited.
The quotas are never met, because it's set higher than what Canadian loggers could ever use: a functionally unlimited level. The only reason it really exists is so that the loggers know the upper limit of what the forests can support and so that the government can point at the quota system when being challenged by environmentalists: "we're protecting 99.9% of our forests; see, only 0.1% of our forests are available for logging." In BC and Ontario, the actual harvest is usually about half of the quota and in Quebec, the actual harvest is usually about 70% of the quota.
Additionally, in the "non market" system, the loggers also need to bear additional costs such as building their own roads and replanting the forests when they're done. In the "market" system, the lot owner pays all of those costs, so the costs to the loggers end up ~ the same either way. Loggers seem more or less indifferent between paying "market" rates and "non market" rates, which is itself very strong evidence that the "non-market" rate actually is the market rate.
>Notably, BC itself moved part of its system to auction-based pricing in 2006, specifically to demonstrate its prices reflect the market — which only makes sense if the prior administrative system didn't reliably do that.
No, they did that because they were sick of the Americans complaining and wanted to call them out on their bullshit. So they implemented a market-based system, and SURPRISE, the Americans didn't stop complaining. Because the Americans didn't actually believe their own bullshit
Fair enough, we will see how this all plays out over the next few years. America will either come up with the wood, or an eventual agreement will be made, or I guess we will go without paper. Either way, I am weirdly optimistic. I think it will work out for the US in the long run. Only time will tell though.
So, US landowners will make more money, paper industry will employ more US workers, more US workers will pay into taxes etc… I will pay some amount more for paper but the US economy in the longer term should wind up better for it
You forgot the part where every US business that relies on those outputs (e.g. carpenters, home builders, retailers, etc.) face higher costs and lower profits and pay less taxes and the part where other economies retaliate so US exporters make less money, employ fewer workers, fewer US workers will pay into taxes, and you will pay some amount more for everything and the US economy in the longer term should wind up worse for it
The US has tried this kind of economic reasoning before. It was called the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act and it was the biggest contributing factor towards the worst economic crisis in US history, the Great Depression.
First off the Great Depression happened before the smoot-hawley act. That act was an attempt to mitigate the effects of the Great Depression.
I am willing to concede that things will get messier before they get better. However, repatriating business to the US through tariffs or whatever other means can only be a net positive in a longer time horizon. I don’t think that anyone would argue that the systematic offshore shoring of business since the 1990’s has help workers wages, national security through self sustaining manufacturing, or any other number of metrics. Countries including Canada should and hopefully will be more self sustaining so that a threat from a foreign actor, like the US pulling its businesses, won’t derail it’s economy.
Big asymmetry. For 2025:
Canada's side: ~72% of Canada's goods exports go to the US; ~59% of its imports come from the US.
The US side: Total US-Canada goods+services trade was about $872 billion (goods ~$715.5B + services ~$156.8B). Total US trade with the whole world was about $7.77 trillion ($3.43T exports + $4.33T imports). That puts Canada at roughly 11% of total US trade — about 12% of US exports and 10% of US imports.
So the dependency runs almost entirely one direction: Canada sends roughly 7 in 10 export dollars to a single country, while the US sends only about 1 in 8 export dollars to Canada, out of dozens of major trading partners. That's the structural reason the tariff fight is so lopsided in terms of leverage — a disruption that's a rounding error for the overall US economy is close to existential for large parts of the Canadian economy (lumber, autos, energy, agriculture).
The 1930s recession started in October 1929, but it was Smoot Hawley that turned it into a depression.
>Unemployment was 8% in 1930 when the Smoot–Hawley Act was passed but the new law failed to lower it. The rate jumped to 16% in 1931 and to 25% in 1932–1933.
The entire article is worth a re-read. The parallels with today are amazing.
Canada mostly exports commodities that the whole world demands, mostly importantly oil. Canada was generally happy if the US bought from them, but if the US stops buying, it's not as if there's no more market for those goods. Canada will just sell to Europe or China instead.
Canada won't lose their exports. They'll just change who they export to.
You left out the whole last part:
Unemployment was 8% in 1930 when the Smoot–Hawley Act was passed but the new law failed to lower it. The rate jumped to 16% in 1931 and to 25% in 1932–1933.[24] There is some contention about whether this can necessarily be attributed to the tariff.[25][26]
-> The Great Depression was already in motion before Smoot-Hawley, mainly due to financial instability, falling demand, and poor banking practices. However, the tariff worsened the crisis by shrinking global trade, hurting farmers, and reducing employment in export-dependent industries. Had it not passed, the Depression still would have occurred, but perhaps with less severity.
I won’t argue that the smoot hawely act didn’t hurt things more but it also can’t be argued that the depression wasn’t already an inevitability
The tariffs initially appeared to be a success; according to historian Robert Sobel, "Factory payrolls, construction contracts, and industrial production all increased sharply." However, larger economic problems loomed in the guise of weak banks.
One could maybe argue if it wasn’t for a weaker global
system the tariff act would have been better received
When the Creditanstalt of Austria failed in 1931, the global deficiencies of the Smoot–Hawley Tariff became apparent.
We are in a different economic time now. For one when these tariffs were enacted we were in a way better position than we were in the 1930’s.
The US has spent the last 50 years exporting dollars and building up a service industry while simultaneously eroding our manufacturing capabilities.
Whether other countries like it or not or whether the relationships with those countries need to be rebuilt we can’t keep doing it. The US has hit the end of the road on this experiment. Just look at the global bond market and you will see multiple governments needing to change their economic trajectories.
In our political news world, it is beyond shocking at this point, to the point of sadly expected, that certain news sources would be celebrating harming our closest neighbor and one of our best trading partners.
The sadness at the state of things knows no bounds.
>"While the administration continues to secure fair and reciprocal trade deals with our trading partners, Canada, unlike other partners and allies, continues to retaliate against the United States for its efforts to rebalance trade and protect U.S. industry in national-security sensitive sectors,” Greer said.
That's an interesting way of saying "we can keep tariffs on everyone and change them on a whim despite pre-existing agreements, but they aren't allowed to defend themselves. Oh, and also they can't regulate US tech companies, or try to make US companies actually pay taxes, and they have to adjust their safety standards to favour US practices".
It feels like the entire trade doctrine has been reduced to a single blunt tool: threatening double-digit tariffs on every partner across the board. When unilateral duties become the only economic play in the book, real structural issues like productivity, domestic infrastructure, and wage growth get completely ignored
Before this administration, it was pretty common for certain items to cross the border multiple times before being finished. Not sure if that's the case here, though.
the real truth here is that the work is being outsourced. Its just to expensive for businesses to operate in Canada and this company has been struggling for years now. This isn't the only work getting outsourced due to costs.
So maybe those jobs will go to America. Maybe. But what about companies in America that do business around the world? Are those jobs safe inside America when they will need to export to countries that now tariff American goods, or worse, boycott American goods? The end result of these trade battles is isolationism. There will be American companies doing business in America and international businesses doing business everywhere else. If a company does than 50% of their business in America they are going to want to be elsewhere. That is a dramatic shrinking of the market for American businesses. The few small wins will not make up for the massive loses and American media will not cover those losses in anything by monthly stats of job loses.
This is another good point. How much is America willing to sacrifice for jobs it doesn’t really need. Is this the best way to generate prosperity for Americans? Considering the cost is higher prices for many things the answer is certainly no.
The most obvious example of this is the automotive industry. Yes, maybe Trump will be successful in getting companies to close the few remaining assembly plants in Canada. But Canada is a significant export market for US assembly plants, and there's zero reason to buy a US-assembled vehicle over one made in Mexico, Korea, or Japan if the industry no longer employs Canadians.
AND Canada had a tariff regime that favored CUSMA countries above others. If there is no CUSMA auto sector to protect American manufacturing will lose that favored access to 1/9 of their North American market.
This is already happening with a limited number of Chinese cars Canada has allowed to be imported as a direct response to trumps actions. But he doesn’t understand it’s a response to his actions. He sees it as a “trade irritant” and uses it as an excuse to escalate further.
The whole thing is just one dumb move after another.
Notice how a US media company that likely has never heard of this company before, is headlining this, as Trump heads into disastrous mid terms with the Iran war, the bond market, the Epstein files and the cost of inflation/gas at home?
But no no, let's talk about a plant of 200 workers.
I wonder how many companies will just be using these tariffs as an excuse to lay off people - even if they are in unaffected industries. Sort of like how they did during COVID.
I question what some of these companies were even doing this past year. We knew Donald's plan since day one. If you are still doing the majority of your business with the US to the point where you have to close your facility the day the tariffs go into effect you're doing something wrong.
I feel like some of these businesses are just sitting around hoping that tariffs will go away. The world is constantly changing, you need to adapt to it.
RYAM bought the failing Tembec for 1.1 billion CAD in 2017. Now, not even 10 years later, the company has nothing to show for it. Mind you, the plant was failing already, but 50% tariffs make turning a profit impossible.
North American paper production is uncompetitive against South American and Asian players. With the amount of debt RYAM have from their failed acquisition, they'll either join Tembec in the history books or live as small fish in the isolated American pond Trump is building for them.
That place had some of the worst management Ive ever seen. Not to mention everything was falling apart in that place from neglect. Sure thing the tarrifs didnt help after management let the place go to shit after sucking all the money out of the place
Perspective- it is a whopping 400 positions. Do much for 'mass layoffs.' And the company is citing tariffs as an excuse because that is more PC than they are being replaced by AI.
I don't know what type of paper they made but I went to 6 different stores this weekend trying to find Canadian wrapping paper. If you work for a paper company that sells wrapping paper work on getting your paper at shoppers drug mart and Indigo (both Canadian companies) because it seem like they only sell usa paper which is ridiculous.
Meanwhile my company that spent the years since his first term's tariff idiocy building closer relationships with our Canadian customers and vendors is looking at its best year in over a decade. The tariffs to/from the USA will hurt but in low double digit percentages instead of mortally.
Businesses that remained complacent and assumed the American market will always be open to them, after the USA already demonstrated it will destroy our trade on a whim, are foolish. You have to Always. Be. Selling.
Yes but no, Americans have always been willing to stretch things to make Buy American work, all the way back to their illegal softwood lumber tariffs that first started suing Canada over it in 1982. Clinton, Biden, Obama were the same but realized that the more money Canadians made selling into the USA the more money they would spend buying American goods.
Trump is just the same but worse, imposing tariffs without any plan for the consequences to consumers and letting industry benefit from the reduced competition.
If you're a company in Canada that sells primarily to the US you should have been looking for new clients a year ago. Canadians are more than willing to shop Canadian, you just need to make your products available to us. Tod Moffin is doing a series right now on Social media where he profiles small Canadian companies and a lot of the companies have been blown away with the amount of sales they have done since their videos have came out.
What we're seeing should no longer come as a surprise to anyone at this point. Trump is actively attempting to un-wind the last 50+ years of economic globalization efforts.
Yes, tariffs are inflationary and will costs foreign jobs. Duh, that's the whole point. He doesn't care about the plight of foreign workers as they are not his base. If those foreign jobs are extinguished and come back to America, he'd consider that a win.
But you say tariffs will increase the price paid by Americans for foreign goods? Duh, that's the goal. He's attempting to decrease American attraction to foreign goods by increasing those prices and in the process make American alternatives more attractive to U.S. residents.
Will this strategy be painful? In the short to medium term, you bet. You can't undo 50+ years of globalization without pain being felt even to parts of his base like farmers.
What deleterious long-term implications will this strategy have? TBD. I can see some potential positives from the strategy to some swaths of the American electorate but also lots of negatives. It's also unclear what tertiary effects the strategy may cause (e.g., national security, environmental, etc).
There is 0 long term win from this. The US is a GLOBAL hegemon due to GLOBALIZATION LED BY THE USA. What is to gain with an isolated US? US companies will dwindle. The car industry is already about to be shaken by EV and Chinese's energy revolution.
Most places in the world are seeing continuous EV adoption and green energy adoption; except US of course.
You're conflating Trump's strategy with isolationism which I disagree with. It's more akin to protectionism which almost every economy engages in. Trump is simply leveraging Western dependence on the American economy to enact more protectionist policies.
At the end of the day he posits nations will have to choose which of the 2 superpowers to align with. China or the U.S. Trump is probably betting Western nations will select the U.S. even if the terms are less favorable than before.
How is the current brand of protectionism going to lead to anything other than isolationism?
Every country that has the ability to rely less on the US is currently working on doing so.
Energy is trading more and more outside the dollar.
Canada has proposed and is working on funding for a pipeline to move its oil west to sell to China so that they don’t have to sell to us.
Canada removed its 100% tariff on Chinese cars so that they don’t have to buy cars from us.
China has set up permanent relationships in Brazil and Argentina to buy their soybeans. 2026 purchases from US farmers will be about 10% of their 2024 numbers.
ASML, one of the most geopolitically important companies on the planet, has been shifting orders to non-US companies. All it takes is a couple EUV machines getting reallocated elsewhere to put our chip manufacturing back years.
The smartest kids on the planet no longer want to come here. Look at the share of Chinese academic competitors who are no longer coming to the US. Or the large drop off in foreign applications to our nations best schools. Then also look at the sharp uptick in US kids applying to go to schools in Europe. Those gifted kids won’t be here advancing products or starting companies. The impact of that will be felt for a generation.
The list goes on, but I don’t feel like spending my whole day creating a list that should be obvious already.
>How is the current brand of protectionism going to lead to anything other than isolationism?
Is this how you would characterize Trump's foreign policy with trade negotiations & his interventions in Venezuela, Iran? I'm not sure some of you know what isolationism means.
Per Britannica: isolationism, national policy of avoiding political or economic entanglements with other countries.
Per Wikipedia: Isolationism is a political philosophy advocating a foreign policy that opposes involvement in the political affairs, and especially the wars, of other countries. Thus, isolationism fundamentally advocates neutrality and opposes entanglement in military alliances and mutual defense pacts. In its purest form, isolationism opposes all commitments to foreign countries, including treaties and trade agreements.
>Second, you are defining political isolationism. A little reading comprehension would tell you that I was obviously discussing economic isolationism.
A bit of reading comprehension from you would see the definitions I've provided literally have the phrases "economic entanglements" & "treaties and trade agreements" in them.
The main issue I take here- and this isn't necessarily saying what you described isn't a goal, but at the very least it's a goal done very poorly- is that the US has been simultaneously taking steps to undermine themselves when it boils down whether or not they should be chosen.
The strongest and most reliable approach would be positioning one's self on the expectations that others are measuring the relative benefit of a strong and positive relationship with China/negative relationship with the U.S. or vice versa. In other words, deciding which one you would rather be in the friend/foe dynamic.
And yet lately, it seems like siding with the U.S. brings a very strong probability that you will just end up on the bad side of both. Siding against China, only for the US to turn against or otherwise drop you when the next thing comes along. Trump's most recent Twitter rant about cutting off trade if interest levels don't go where he wants opens the door for even the possibility that you might get screwed even if you do everything the US wants.
To be pushing for a definite Us/Them decision at all could be a risky but arguably necessary step. To do it while undermining the case for 'Us' through unforced errors seems reeeeally dumb, if their goal actually matches what you say.
And let's be clear, this isn't me saying there isn't a strong case of concern against China. But for such a critical, make-or-break issue, it's a little disconcerting if the US is treating themselves as 'too big to fail,' and counting on other countries to just march quietly in lockstep.
First: tariffs are pretty much a form of subsidies to US corporations paid by the US consumers. That tends to provoke a stagnation in these industries: why develop R&D when you are protected? We already saw that in a lot of industrial equipment where the cost of shipping help them compete (like mobile crane).
Second; it will provoke a drop in exports. Sure, the US market is large, but it will limits expansion of the US firms. Especially with the trade imbalance that tariff will cause: by nature, droppings imports will make the USD rise, making tariff less efficient over time and making US export even more struggling than they were
Third: soft power drop. The US had mainly two arms to keep its hegemony: armed force and economic strength. Going isolationist on trade will decrease their economic strength and leverage significantly over time, leaving only its capacity to do violence to sustain it.
>First: tariffs are pretty much a form of subsidies to US corporations paid by the US consumers. That tends to provoke a stagnation in these industries: why develop R&D when you are protected? We already saw that in a lot of industrial equipment where the cost of shipping help them compete (like mobile crane).
I agree. Once protectionist policies are in place they are hard to remove.
>Second; it will provoke a drop in exports. Sure, the US market is large, but it will limits expansion of the US firms. Especially with the trade imbalance that tariff will cause: by nature, droppings imports will make the USD rise, making tariff less efficient over time and making US export even more struggling than they were
Perhaps. The devil is in the implementation detail here. China has protectionist policies and their exports far outweigh their imports. Trump and team seem to believe the U.S. has enough economic levels at their disposal to avoid material adverse effects on exports. I neither agree or disagree here.
>Third: soft power drop. The US had mainly two arms to keep its hegemony: armed force and economic strength. Going isolationist on trade will decrease their economic strength and leverage significantly over time, leaving only its capacity to do violence to sustain it.
How does one objectively measure "soft power"? More importantly how does one objectively measure a decrease in "soft power"? Also I've previously stated I believe Trump's policies are protectionist and not isolationists.
Why do people pretend that Don could even began to understand or care? He’s not trying to fix anything. He has no long term plan. He’s raiding everything he can before leaving. That was always the plan.
There will be a lot of this happening, and you could point the finger at either side, but i invite you rather to point the finger at both sides for being absolute morons. They should put families and workers first. Neither side has been working on a real trade agreement so we are starting from ground zero. Pathetic excuse for humans.
Ah yes, the Canadians are dumb for not signing an agreement that would give US control over internal Canadian infrastructure projects and control over Canadian foreign trade agreements.
So dumb. Dumb dumb Canadians. Dumb for not wanting to become a US vassal state.
Both side are to blame. Trump shouldn't have demanded that Canada not make trade deals with other countries, and Canada shouldn't have said "no." Obviously.
Both side are to blame. Trump shouldn't have demanded that Canada not make trade deals with other countries, and Canada shouldn't have said "no." Obviously.
UmpireDapper1757 | 17 hours ago
>The American paperboard manufacturer RYAM said it is closing its facility in Témiscaming, Quebec, as a direct result of U.S. tariffs.
Trump just can't stop winning. He's even making US businesses fail in other countries! Incredible power projection
more_than_just_ok | 17 hours ago
This isn't new to Trump. US companies often lobby to have other US companies harmed by trade decisions, to their advantage. Most of Canada's industrial economy is owned by US multinationals. The softwood lumber dispute has lots of examples of new tariffs on specific products that one American company makes in Canada that another American company operating in Canada doesn't make in Canada, but they do make something else in Canada.
When the competitor is forced to close, the successful lobbyist's American plant now has less competition for customers and their Canadian plant now has more suppliers willing to accept less for the inputs. So win-win, but only for the winner.
thx1138inator | 11 hours ago
The history of Cuba is similar. US had its economic tentacles thoroughly gripping Cuba before the revolution.
ArthurWoodhouse | 10 hours ago
Havana casinos and race tracks ran by the American mob under Batiste.
tommytraddles | 9 hours ago
Michael, we're bigger than U.S. Steel.
Procruste | 10 hours ago
Another prime example of Canada screwing the US. Bastards! \s
leeps22 | 17 hours ago
To be fair that is step 1 of what the tariffs are supposed to do in order to bring manufacturing back home. That is, make it unprofitable to have off shored operations.
The problem is we wont get past step 1. There is no confidence that this business climate will persist past this administration. Building out infrastructure would take time and we have demonstrated that you can only plan out 4 years at a time. The debt markets have been crowded out by AI cap ex and it looks like interest rates are increasing again. Debt servicing would be impossible on a low margin product. There just isn't any situational awareness.
Impossible_Angle752 | 15 hours ago
Lots of people forget, or refuse to acknowledge, that part of the advantage of doing business in Canada is the exchange rate.
in2the4est | 15 hours ago
And the healthcare
Grouchy_Chard8522 | 8 hours ago
And I believe in the US employers pay unemployment. Whereas in Canada the government pays it out but funds via deductions from workers' paycheques. So another savings for US companies operating here.
pinkpanther80050 | 15 hours ago
Our healthcare is no advantage
gm0ney2000 | 14 hours ago
Canada's healthcare system reduces the costs of employer-paid medical insurance.
pruplegti | 14 hours ago
It is a huge advantage, don't belive /spread the health misinformation
FlyAroundInternet | 14 hours ago
Sure it is. Companies can provide fewer benefits and cheaper plans.
pinkpanther80050 | 14 hours ago
You’re either American or haven’t needed Canadian healthcare in many years then…
10081914 | 14 hours ago
Our healthcare is the direct result of underfunding and the allowance of mistreatment of health care workers resulting in low human resources.
A private system is not better and just increases prices. It does not inherently all of a sudden increase the amount of resources that exist within the system.
Part of the reason also is the bottleneck in number of spots in the health care schools.
Impossible_Angle752 | 13 hours ago
I'll just tack on that healthcare is managed by the provinces.
Any-Lavishness-2473 | 13 hours ago
Underfunded???lol.
10081914 | 13 hours ago
Yes. To use Ontario as an example, per capita spending, when adjusted for inflation, has basically remained the same as 2005 levels.
At the same time, our population is aging, demand is increasing and illnesses are more complex to treat.
Funding into infrastructure has also lagged behind. Number of hospital beds has increased at half the rate of the population of the last 20 years.
You take all these metrics as a whole, healthcare spending has lagged behind. Or in other words, underfunded.
randomlyrandom89 | 14 hours ago
A great many of the horror stories you often hear are rare, overblown, and most often by people who don't advocate for themselves.
Take the people who claim to have been on a wait list for a family doctor for years. They get their name on the list and then do nothing else. No looking for doctors, no research, no advocating for themselves. When my old family doctor retired I had a new one within 2 months. My dad had one in a few weeks.
Our healthcare isn't perfect, it definitely has lots of problems. But the tripe you often see that our healthcare is crumbling and terrible, it's total horseshit.
Source: I'm Canadian, my wife is in healthcare
pinkpanther80050 | 14 hours ago
I’m one of those who was on the list looking for a family doctor for 8 years before I finally said fuck it. I was also looking actively so please tell me the name of a doctor who would take me on gladly as fast as you claim….
whiskybottle | 13 hours ago
What province are you in?
Puzzleheaded_Fold466 | 14 hours ago
Whether it’s good or bad to patients is irrelevant. It’s about the cost to employers.
You’re taking an economic issue and making it about cheap politics.
UwUAlpacas | 12 hours ago
100% the cost of paying for Healthcare for Americans has lost them contracts vs the cost of paying for Healthcare for Canadians.
infomer | 11 hours ago
Well for sure the negotiator doesn’t understand math.
Careless_Injury9137 | 14 hours ago
...and that we would buy those cars. Looks like BYD gonna be huge in Canada.
Early_Macaroon_2407 | 11 hours ago
I would be astonished if Carney weren’t working on a deal to set up EV manufacturing in Canada with BYD etc. to replace the forthcoming job losses in the auto industry.
slimkay | 9 hours ago
Why would BYD manufacture cars in Canada, when those cars will be banned from the US, and Mexico is a lower cost producer a few thousand miles south?
Careless_Injury9137 | 7 hours ago
They've already expressed interest in purchasing the Stillanis plant in Burlington. They want in the Canadian market. And if you haven't noticed, there's 40 million people in Canada and less than 1/2 of those people are interested in setting foot in the US. With that number getting lower everyday.
It will also be cheaper to build them in Canada and Ship them to the UK. If they replace the US auto jobs, Carney will completely open the Canadian market to BYD for any model made in Canada to be sold in Canada and set a high Tariff on US Autos. US auto isn't going to get to take the jobs and still reap the profits.
joebalooka84 | 7 hours ago
Most of the Japanese car makers have operations in different SE Asian countries. Those countries may have a higher population than Canada, but they don't have higher incomes or auto ownership. There is a market there, even if they can't export.
Rocinante24 | 7 hours ago
Because Canada might ask.
Trump is threatening to nuke the vehicle market, the Chinese offer a more reliable deal and im sure would be happy to take any partner away from the US.
infomer | 16 hours ago
Potus is playing stupid games and we will pay for the stupid results for at least a decade after he leaves.
Sintax777 | 3 hours ago
Companies aren’t refusing to build factories because Trump might be gone in four years. They’re refusing because factories last decades, while his tariffs can change by tweet or proclamation and repeatedly tax the imported components American factories need. Erratic tariffs raise those costs repeatedly, while immigration restrictions tighten the construction and manufacturing labor supply. With no reliable way to calculate costs or supply chains, companies delay investment, or more intelligently, keep production abroad and pay the tariff once on the finished product.You cannot justify a multibillion-dollar plant when neither its input costs nor its trade rules are predictable. The four-year concern is a symptom of this administration’s instability, not an independent business-cycle problem.
VolutedPrism | 13 hours ago
TO BE FAIR? there is no plan or politic here, just ideology and corruption.
UmpireDapper1757 | 13 hours ago
Traditionally, governments use tariffs to punish the foreign competitors of domestic manufacturers. I think it's unprecedented of a government to use tariffs with the goal of punishing its own companies' foreign operations.
BrittanyBrie | 16 hours ago
I have a theory that tariffs would be more impactful if Trump used them retroactively against countries with tariffs on US goods. They base the tariff amount on trade imbalance between two economies across all sectors combined, instead of isolating sectors apart from eachother. This causes sweeping tariffs on the country as a whole rather than address the tariff imbalance per sector per country.
Big_Sheepherder_3764 | 8 hours ago
The tariffs are not about onshoring manufacturing. The tariffs are about how the game of Monopoly ends. The game was supposed to actually be a lesson.
Separate_Football914 | 15 hours ago
Tembec’s factory had up and down for decades, and was even closed for a while in 2024.
ferwhatbud | 14 hours ago
Man, hate to see that kind of economic pain his my favourite named named “city” (actually more like a cluster of towns) - it’s almost always referred to by it’s full name: Abitibi-Témiscamingue.
It’s just delightful to say.
Other close contenders: St Louis de Ha!Ha!, Dildo and Spread Eagle (which are across the bay from each other), and of course, a special shout out to Regina, which is a staple of every Canadian schoolchild’s playground vocabulary.
ddrober2003 | 16 hours ago
It used to be he bankrupt his own businesses. Now he is bankrupting other people's businesses.
Open_Pollution_8038 | 11 hours ago
And yet it’ll be the Canadian workers who are hit the hardest.
Master_Megalomaniac | 5 hours ago
Are you proud of the US trying to be an economic parasite and steal jobs from Canada?
UmpireDapper1757 | 11 hours ago
The Canadian workers will be fine. Canada has a labour supply shortage, dontcha know?
Whereas, the American business owners will lose everything they own in Canada
Open_Pollution_8038 | 10 hours ago
A labor shortage with 6.4% unemployment? You guys really buy anything your government tells you don’t you lol.
UmpireDapper1757 | 10 hours ago
There it is: I knew you didn't give a shit about Canadian workers
1baby2cats | 4 hours ago
Unfortunately, workers in that Canadian factory still lost their jobs
InvestigatorThin5027 | 10 hours ago
I understand what you think you’re saying, but it still sucks for us. Those are Canadians that are losing their jobs at the end of the day.
Elegant-Age1794 | 5 hours ago
I’m no Trump fan but the US economy is currently going gangbusters.
All I read is how poor the Canadian one has been for the last decade.
nickilous | 13 hours ago
Also, maybe they will open a facility here in the US and employ US workers now. Why should a US company operate in another country and employ no US people who pay non US taxes.
Responsible_Sea_2726 | 13 hours ago
Because they are using Canadian wood to produce it. Good luck replacing that.
nickilous | 13 hours ago
They probably considered sources of wood when closing the shop yeah?
UmpireDapper1757 | 13 hours ago
They won't open a US facility: the US has a huge shortage of loggable forests, which is why American lumber is much more expensive than Canadian lumber
nickilous | 12 hours ago
the US actually has massive timber capacity, and the American South specifically is one of the largest wood-supply regions on the planet. There are real regional constraints (federal land restrictions in parts of the Pacific Northwest, for example), but that's a regulatory/geographic issue, not a nationwide shortage.
The actual root of the price gap, and the reason this dispute has run since the 1980s, is how the two countries price timber. About 90% of Canadian forest land is provincial/government-owned, with stumpage fees set administratively rather than by market auction. In the US it's the reverse — roughly 90% private land, priced competitively. The US has argued (with mixed success at the WTO) that Canada's system amounts to a subsidy. So it's a structural/pricing story, not 'Canada has wood and we don't
Moon-bass-Alpha | 8 hours ago
https://forisk.com/what-would-be-required-for-the-u-s-to-be-self-sufficient-for-softwood-lumber/
Exactly. The US can, with additional investment in sawmills and logistics, be fully capable of displacing all softwood imports.
UmpireDapper1757 | 12 hours ago
The US lot owners charge a higher competitive price because the lumber is in shorter supply. If they had a greater supply, the market price would be lower, like it is in Canada.
Canadian lot owners (i.e. the Provinces) charge a nominal price because that is the market price in Canada because the supply is functionally unlimited. It's not like loggers are competing to log the same patch of forest. There's more than enough forest for everyone to log to their heart's content. And after it's logged, it regrows.
nickilous | 12 hours ago
Canada explicitly manages timber as a limited resource. Each province sets an Annual Allowable Cut, a yearly harvest quota, which only makes sense if the supply is finite and needs to be managed sustainably. That's the opposite of unlimited.
The actual dispute, going back 40 years, is about how the price is set on that quota-limited resource. In the US, timber rights are sold competitively at auction, so the price reflects real-time supply and demand. In Canada, stumpage fees are set administratively by government staff — and the concern (backed by multiple WTO/ITA rulings over the decades finding subsidy margins in the 3-18% range) is that officials have an incentive to keep those fees low to keep their provincial industry competitive, independent of what an auction would actually reveal about scarcity. Notably, BC itself moved part of its system to auction-based pricing in 2006, specifically to demonstrate its prices reflect the market — which only makes sense if the prior administrative system didn't reliably do that.
So it's not 'US scarce, Canada abundant.' It's 'US price-discovered via auction, Canada price-set by bureaucrats on a resource that's explicitly quota-limited, not unlimited.
UmpireDapper1757 | 11 hours ago
The quotas are never met, because it's set higher than what Canadian loggers could ever use: a functionally unlimited level. The only reason it really exists is so that the loggers know the upper limit of what the forests can support and so that the government can point at the quota system when being challenged by environmentalists: "we're protecting 99.9% of our forests; see, only 0.1% of our forests are available for logging." In BC and Ontario, the actual harvest is usually about half of the quota and in Quebec, the actual harvest is usually about 70% of the quota.
Additionally, in the "non market" system, the loggers also need to bear additional costs such as building their own roads and replanting the forests when they're done. In the "market" system, the lot owner pays all of those costs, so the costs to the loggers end up ~ the same either way. Loggers seem more or less indifferent between paying "market" rates and "non market" rates, which is itself very strong evidence that the "non-market" rate actually is the market rate.
>Notably, BC itself moved part of its system to auction-based pricing in 2006, specifically to demonstrate its prices reflect the market — which only makes sense if the prior administrative system didn't reliably do that.
No, they did that because they were sick of the Americans complaining and wanted to call them out on their bullshit. So they implemented a market-based system, and SURPRISE, the Americans didn't stop complaining. Because the Americans didn't actually believe their own bullshit
nickilous | 11 hours ago
Fair enough, we will see how this all plays out over the next few years. America will either come up with the wood, or an eventual agreement will be made, or I guess we will go without paper. Either way, I am weirdly optimistic. I think it will work out for the US in the long run. Only time will tell though.
nickilous | 12 hours ago
So, US landowners will make more money, paper industry will employ more US workers, more US workers will pay into taxes etc… I will pay some amount more for paper but the US economy in the longer term should wind up better for it
UmpireDapper1757 | 11 hours ago
You forgot the part where every US business that relies on those outputs (e.g. carpenters, home builders, retailers, etc.) face higher costs and lower profits and pay less taxes and the part where other economies retaliate so US exporters make less money, employ fewer workers, fewer US workers will pay into taxes, and you will pay some amount more for everything and the US economy in the longer term should wind up worse for it
The US has tried this kind of economic reasoning before. It was called the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act and it was the biggest contributing factor towards the worst economic crisis in US history, the Great Depression.
nickilous | 11 hours ago
First off the Great Depression happened before the smoot-hawley act. That act was an attempt to mitigate the effects of the Great Depression.
I am willing to concede that things will get messier before they get better. However, repatriating business to the US through tariffs or whatever other means can only be a net positive in a longer time horizon. I don’t think that anyone would argue that the systematic offshore shoring of business since the 1990’s has help workers wages, national security through self sustaining manufacturing, or any other number of metrics. Countries including Canada should and hopefully will be more self sustaining so that a threat from a foreign actor, like the US pulling its businesses, won’t derail it’s economy.
Big asymmetry. For 2025:
Canada's side: ~72% of Canada's goods exports go to the US; ~59% of its imports come from the US.
The US side: Total US-Canada goods+services trade was about $872 billion (goods ~$715.5B + services ~$156.8B). Total US trade with the whole world was about $7.77 trillion ($3.43T exports + $4.33T imports). That puts Canada at roughly 11% of total US trade — about 12% of US exports and 10% of US imports.
So the dependency runs almost entirely one direction: Canada sends roughly 7 in 10 export dollars to a single country, while the US sends only about 1 in 8 export dollars to Canada, out of dozens of major trading partners. That's the structural reason the tariff fight is so lopsided in terms of leverage — a disruption that's a rounding error for the overall US economy is close to existential for large parts of the Canadian economy (lumber, autos, energy, agriculture).
UmpireDapper1757 | 10 hours ago
The 1930s recession started in October 1929, but it was Smoot Hawley that turned it into a depression.
>Unemployment was 8% in 1930 when the Smoot–Hawley Act was passed but the new law failed to lower it. The rate jumped to 16% in 1931 and to 25% in 1932–1933.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smoot%E2%80%93Hawley_Tariff_Act
The entire article is worth a re-read. The parallels with today are amazing.
Canada mostly exports commodities that the whole world demands, mostly importantly oil. Canada was generally happy if the US bought from them, but if the US stops buying, it's not as if there's no more market for those goods. Canada will just sell to Europe or China instead.
Canada won't lose their exports. They'll just change who they export to.
nickilous | 10 hours ago
You left out the whole last part:
Unemployment was 8% in 1930 when the Smoot–Hawley Act was passed but the new law failed to lower it. The rate jumped to 16% in 1931 and to 25% in 1932–1933.[24] There is some contention about whether this can necessarily be attributed to the tariff.[25][26]
-> The Great Depression was already in motion before Smoot-Hawley, mainly due to financial instability, falling demand, and poor banking practices. However, the tariff worsened the crisis by shrinking global trade, hurting farmers, and reducing employment in export-dependent industries. Had it not passed, the Depression still would have occurred, but perhaps with less severity.
I won’t argue that the smoot hawely act didn’t hurt things more but it also can’t be argued that the depression wasn’t already an inevitability
The tariffs initially appeared to be a success; according to historian Robert Sobel, "Factory payrolls, construction contracts, and industrial production all increased sharply." However, larger economic problems loomed in the guise of weak banks.
One could maybe argue if it wasn’t for a weaker global
system the tariff act would have been better received
When the Creditanstalt of Austria failed in 1931, the global deficiencies of the Smoot–Hawley Tariff became apparent.
nickilous | 9 hours ago
We are in a different economic time now. For one when these tariffs were enacted we were in a way better position than we were in the 1930’s.
The US has spent the last 50 years exporting dollars and building up a service industry while simultaneously eroding our manufacturing capabilities.
Whether other countries like it or not or whether the relationships with those countries need to be rebuilt we can’t keep doing it. The US has hit the end of the road on this experiment. Just look at the global bond market and you will see multiple governments needing to change their economic trajectories.
thatgibbyguy | 18 hours ago
In our political news world, it is beyond shocking at this point, to the point of sadly expected, that certain news sources would be celebrating harming our closest neighbor and one of our best trading partners.
The sadness at the state of things knows no bounds.
ZipBoxer | 14 hours ago
This is the stupidest administration in the history of the United States, rivaling Mao's Great Leap forward in economic stupidity
MightyHydrar | 17 hours ago
>"While the administration continues to secure fair and reciprocal trade deals with our trading partners, Canada, unlike other partners and allies, continues to retaliate against the United States for its efforts to rebalance trade and protect U.S. industry in national-security sensitive sectors,” Greer said.
That's an interesting way of saying "we can keep tariffs on everyone and change them on a whim despite pre-existing agreements, but they aren't allowed to defend themselves. Oh, and also they can't regulate US tech companies, or try to make US companies actually pay taxes, and they have to adjust their safety standards to favour US practices".
Sounds totally fair to me.
Individual_Limit_701 | 18 hours ago
It feels like the entire trade doctrine has been reduced to a single blunt tool: threatening double-digit tariffs on every partner across the board. When unilateral duties become the only economic play in the book, real structural issues like productivity, domestic infrastructure, and wage growth get completely ignored
Exotic_Release2979 | 17 hours ago
I like to call it “Dotard economics”.
Wonderful_Trick_4251 | 18 hours ago
A paperboard manufacturer?
I assume that this is to do with their market being an export market to the US? Wouldn't think it's a 'raw materials'/import issue.
thefastslow | 18 hours ago
Before this administration, it was pretty common for certain items to cross the border multiple times before being finished. Not sure if that's the case here, though.
Chipay | 2 hours ago
It's a US company producing for US markets in Canada because of cheaper resources and cheaper wages. Now they're bankrupt instead.
GroundbreakingRun90 | 8 hours ago
the real truth here is that the work is being outsourced. Its just to expensive for businesses to operate in Canada and this company has been struggling for years now. This isn't the only work getting outsourced due to costs.
spidereater | 18 hours ago
So maybe those jobs will go to America. Maybe. But what about companies in America that do business around the world? Are those jobs safe inside America when they will need to export to countries that now tariff American goods, or worse, boycott American goods? The end result of these trade battles is isolationism. There will be American companies doing business in America and international businesses doing business everywhere else. If a company does than 50% of their business in America they are going to want to be elsewhere. That is a dramatic shrinking of the market for American businesses. The few small wins will not make up for the massive loses and American media will not cover those losses in anything by monthly stats of job loses.
Dic3dCarrots | 17 hours ago
Even if the jobs did come to the US, our unemployment is at 4%, we dont have the excess labor capacity to start making literally everything here.
spidereater | 16 hours ago
This is another good point. How much is America willing to sacrifice for jobs it doesn’t really need. Is this the best way to generate prosperity for Americans? Considering the cost is higher prices for many things the answer is certainly no.
exeJDR | 16 hours ago
Do you actually believe the lastest employment numbers?!
Dic3dCarrots | 14 hours ago
If a whole 1% of the economy lost their jobs in the last year, we wouldnt need bls data to know.
Microtom_ | 17 hours ago
There's a ton of bullshit jobs though. However, let's be real, with how fast AI is progressing, jobs will start disappearing left and right.
Caracalla81 | 15 hours ago
Doesn't matter if they're bullshit. It only matters if they're better than working in a paper mill.
Dic3dCarrots | 17 hours ago
Surely, Any day now...
dcdem1163 | 17 hours ago
Oh yes. We can throw up a factory in a week🤦♀️
exeJDR | 16 hours ago
They are not.
Select_Historian6269 | 12 hours ago
There's already articles about American companies moving to Canada because of this.
Trains_YQG | 9 hours ago
The most obvious example of this is the automotive industry. Yes, maybe Trump will be successful in getting companies to close the few remaining assembly plants in Canada. But Canada is a significant export market for US assembly plants, and there's zero reason to buy a US-assembled vehicle over one made in Mexico, Korea, or Japan if the industry no longer employs Canadians.
spidereater | 8 hours ago
AND Canada had a tariff regime that favored CUSMA countries above others. If there is no CUSMA auto sector to protect American manufacturing will lose that favored access to 1/9 of their North American market.
This is already happening with a limited number of Chinese cars Canada has allowed to be imported as a direct response to trumps actions. But he doesn’t understand it’s a response to his actions. He sees it as a “trade irritant” and uses it as an excuse to escalate further.
The whole thing is just one dumb move after another.
NavyDean | 16 hours ago
Notice how a US media company that likely has never heard of this company before, is headlining this, as Trump heads into disastrous mid terms with the Iran war, the bond market, the Epstein files and the cost of inflation/gas at home?
But no no, let's talk about a plant of 200 workers.
Mysterious_Umpire684 | 13 hours ago
I mean, journalists report news.
Here's a Canadian media company that has likely never heard of these two small businesses before headlining a move to Canada:
https://www.thestar.com/business/faced-with-donald-trump-s-tariffs-this-u-s-company-is-moving-north-of-the-border-and-it-s-not-the-only-one/article_74bd6032-b9d7-4965-827c-937d3a2f6590.html
squirrelcat88 | 15 hours ago
This Canadian just looked up how many people live in that town. In 2021 it was less than 2400 people.
Closing down a plant that affects 425 people would be a big deal.
Nevertheless we Canadians shall prevail as Trump runs the US into the ground.
losemgmt | 13 hours ago
I wonder how many companies will just be using these tariffs as an excuse to lay off people - even if they are in unaffected industries. Sort of like how they did during COVID.
Taitertottot | 10 hours ago
I question what some of these companies were even doing this past year. We knew Donald's plan since day one. If you are still doing the majority of your business with the US to the point where you have to close your facility the day the tariffs go into effect you're doing something wrong.
I feel like some of these businesses are just sitting around hoping that tariffs will go away. The world is constantly changing, you need to adapt to it.
Chipay | an hour ago
RYAM bought the failing Tembec for 1.1 billion CAD in 2017. Now, not even 10 years later, the company has nothing to show for it. Mind you, the plant was failing already, but 50% tariffs make turning a profit impossible.
North American paper production is uncompetitive against South American and Asian players. With the amount of debt RYAM have from their failed acquisition, they'll either join Tembec in the history books or live as small fish in the isolated American pond Trump is building for them.
DesertFart | 11 hours ago
That place had some of the worst management Ive ever seen. Not to mention everything was falling apart in that place from neglect. Sure thing the tarrifs didnt help after management let the place go to shit after sucking all the money out of the place
tigrovamama | 11 hours ago
Perspective- it is a whopping 400 positions. Do much for 'mass layoffs.' And the company is citing tariffs as an excuse because that is more PC than they are being replaced by AI.
jfwelll | 6 hours ago
400 positions in a small community is a huge impact. Lets not pretend all of this isnt hurting both countries
Taitertottot | 10 hours ago
I don't know what type of paper they made but I went to 6 different stores this weekend trying to find Canadian wrapping paper. If you work for a paper company that sells wrapping paper work on getting your paper at shoppers drug mart and Indigo (both Canadian companies) because it seem like they only sell usa paper which is ridiculous.
_Sauer_ | 15 hours ago
Meanwhile my company that spent the years since his first term's tariff idiocy building closer relationships with our Canadian customers and vendors is looking at its best year in over a decade. The tariffs to/from the USA will hurt but in low double digit percentages instead of mortally.
Businesses that remained complacent and assumed the American market will always be open to them, after the USA already demonstrated it will destroy our trade on a whim, are foolish. You have to Always. Be. Selling.
Illustrious-Film4018 | 13 hours ago
> Businesses that remained complacent and assumed the American market will always be open to them
I mean, this was a reasonable assumption. It took the most extreme circumstances of an R'tard felon being voted in twice for this NOT to he the case.
Deaddin | 7 hours ago
Yes but no, Americans have always been willing to stretch things to make Buy American work, all the way back to their illegal softwood lumber tariffs that first started suing Canada over it in 1982. Clinton, Biden, Obama were the same but realized that the more money Canadians made selling into the USA the more money they would spend buying American goods.
Trump is just the same but worse, imposing tariffs without any plan for the consequences to consumers and letting industry benefit from the reduced competition.
Taitertottot | 10 hours ago
If you're a company in Canada that sells primarily to the US you should have been looking for new clients a year ago. Canadians are more than willing to shop Canadian, you just need to make your products available to us. Tod Moffin is doing a series right now on Social media where he profiles small Canadian companies and a lot of the companies have been blown away with the amount of sales they have done since their videos have came out.
lord_xl | 16 hours ago
What we're seeing should no longer come as a surprise to anyone at this point. Trump is actively attempting to un-wind the last 50+ years of economic globalization efforts.
Yes, tariffs are inflationary and will costs foreign jobs. Duh, that's the whole point. He doesn't care about the plight of foreign workers as they are not his base. If those foreign jobs are extinguished and come back to America, he'd consider that a win.
But you say tariffs will increase the price paid by Americans for foreign goods? Duh, that's the goal. He's attempting to decrease American attraction to foreign goods by increasing those prices and in the process make American alternatives more attractive to U.S. residents.
Will this strategy be painful? In the short to medium term, you bet. You can't undo 50+ years of globalization without pain being felt even to parts of his base like farmers.
What deleterious long-term implications will this strategy have? TBD. I can see some potential positives from the strategy to some swaths of the American electorate but also lots of negatives. It's also unclear what tertiary effects the strategy may cause (e.g., national security, environmental, etc).
anal-itic_prober | 16 hours ago
There is 0 long term win from this. The US is a GLOBAL hegemon due to GLOBALIZATION LED BY THE USA. What is to gain with an isolated US? US companies will dwindle. The car industry is already about to be shaken by EV and Chinese's energy revolution.
Most places in the world are seeing continuous EV adoption and green energy adoption; except US of course.
lord_xl | 16 hours ago
You're conflating Trump's strategy with isolationism which I disagree with. It's more akin to protectionism which almost every economy engages in. Trump is simply leveraging Western dependence on the American economy to enact more protectionist policies.
At the end of the day he posits nations will have to choose which of the 2 superpowers to align with. China or the U.S. Trump is probably betting Western nations will select the U.S. even if the terms are less favorable than before.
bacchus_the_wino | 15 hours ago
How is the current brand of protectionism going to lead to anything other than isolationism?
Every country that has the ability to rely less on the US is currently working on doing so.
Energy is trading more and more outside the dollar.
Canada has proposed and is working on funding for a pipeline to move its oil west to sell to China so that they don’t have to sell to us.
Canada removed its 100% tariff on Chinese cars so that they don’t have to buy cars from us.
China has set up permanent relationships in Brazil and Argentina to buy their soybeans. 2026 purchases from US farmers will be about 10% of their 2024 numbers.
ASML, one of the most geopolitically important companies on the planet, has been shifting orders to non-US companies. All it takes is a couple EUV machines getting reallocated elsewhere to put our chip manufacturing back years.
The smartest kids on the planet no longer want to come here. Look at the share of Chinese academic competitors who are no longer coming to the US. Or the large drop off in foreign applications to our nations best schools. Then also look at the sharp uptick in US kids applying to go to schools in Europe. Those gifted kids won’t be here advancing products or starting companies. The impact of that will be felt for a generation.
The list goes on, but I don’t feel like spending my whole day creating a list that should be obvious already.
lord_xl | 15 hours ago
>How is the current brand of protectionism going to lead to anything other than isolationism?
Is this how you would characterize Trump's foreign policy with trade negotiations & his interventions in Venezuela, Iran? I'm not sure some of you know what isolationism means.
Per Britannica: isolationism, national policy of avoiding political or economic entanglements with other countries.
Per Wikipedia: Isolationism is a political philosophy advocating a foreign policy that opposes involvement in the political affairs, and especially the wars, of other countries. Thus, isolationism fundamentally advocates neutrality and opposes entanglement in military alliances and mutual defense pacts. In its purest form, isolationism opposes all commitments to foreign countries, including treaties and trade agreements.
bacchus_the_wino | 13 hours ago
First, I said “lead to”, not current.
Second, you are defining political isolationism. A little reading comprehension would tell you that I was obviously discussing economic isolationism.
lord_xl | 13 hours ago
>Second, you are defining political isolationism. A little reading comprehension would tell you that I was obviously discussing economic isolationism.
A bit of reading comprehension from you would see the definitions I've provided literally have the phrases "economic entanglements" & "treaties and trade agreements" in them.
bacchus_the_wino | 9 hours ago
Yes, political platforms include economic policy. That doesn’t mean that what I’m discussing isn’t economic isolationism.
Can we be done arguing definitions and semantics?
NeutralLock | 15 hours ago
Sounds like you think Trump is playing chess when he's really having a thumb war with himself.
There will be nothing good that comes with it. The end result will be similar to the original agreement minus all the pain caused along the way.
Everyone loses to wind up at the same spot.
lord_xl | 14 hours ago
That's a lot of bias for someone with neutral in their name. /JK
NeutralLock | 14 hours ago
I am a lock first, neutral second.
But always a lock first.
anal-itic_prober | 15 hours ago
Thanks for answering. And I agree with you here. Although I think the gamble would've worked if Trump would've been gradual or obfuscated his moves.
By being such a belligerent I think it will accelerate the west to adopt the east instead.
For most western countries, China has never been an aggressor even with proxies; rarely acting belligerent too.
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2026/07/27/canadians-and-mexicans-now-view-china-more-positively-than-the-us/
Ok_Cabinet_3072 | 14 hours ago
It's not protectionism when they can't produce what he's putting tariffs on, he's just isolating the states lol.
Cool-Watercress-3943 | 13 hours ago
The main issue I take here- and this isn't necessarily saying what you described isn't a goal, but at the very least it's a goal done very poorly- is that the US has been simultaneously taking steps to undermine themselves when it boils down whether or not they should be chosen.
The strongest and most reliable approach would be positioning one's self on the expectations that others are measuring the relative benefit of a strong and positive relationship with China/negative relationship with the U.S. or vice versa. In other words, deciding which one you would rather be in the friend/foe dynamic.
And yet lately, it seems like siding with the U.S. brings a very strong probability that you will just end up on the bad side of both. Siding against China, only for the US to turn against or otherwise drop you when the next thing comes along. Trump's most recent Twitter rant about cutting off trade if interest levels don't go where he wants opens the door for even the possibility that you might get screwed even if you do everything the US wants.
To be pushing for a definite Us/Them decision at all could be a risky but arguably necessary step. To do it while undermining the case for 'Us' through unforced errors seems reeeeally dumb, if their goal actually matches what you say.
And let's be clear, this isn't me saying there isn't a strong case of concern against China. But for such a critical, make-or-break issue, it's a little disconcerting if the US is treating themselves as 'too big to fail,' and counting on other countries to just march quietly in lockstep.
teddy1245 | 12 hours ago
So he’s even more stupid than first thought.
Separate_Football914 | 15 hours ago
There is a few issues in long term.
First: tariffs are pretty much a form of subsidies to US corporations paid by the US consumers. That tends to provoke a stagnation in these industries: why develop R&D when you are protected? We already saw that in a lot of industrial equipment where the cost of shipping help them compete (like mobile crane).
Second; it will provoke a drop in exports. Sure, the US market is large, but it will limits expansion of the US firms. Especially with the trade imbalance that tariff will cause: by nature, droppings imports will make the USD rise, making tariff less efficient over time and making US export even more struggling than they were
Third: soft power drop. The US had mainly two arms to keep its hegemony: armed force and economic strength. Going isolationist on trade will decrease their economic strength and leverage significantly over time, leaving only its capacity to do violence to sustain it.
lord_xl | 14 hours ago
>First: tariffs are pretty much a form of subsidies to US corporations paid by the US consumers. That tends to provoke a stagnation in these industries: why develop R&D when you are protected? We already saw that in a lot of industrial equipment where the cost of shipping help them compete (like mobile crane).
I agree. Once protectionist policies are in place they are hard to remove.
>Second; it will provoke a drop in exports. Sure, the US market is large, but it will limits expansion of the US firms. Especially with the trade imbalance that tariff will cause: by nature, droppings imports will make the USD rise, making tariff less efficient over time and making US export even more struggling than they were
Perhaps. The devil is in the implementation detail here. China has protectionist policies and their exports far outweigh their imports. Trump and team seem to believe the U.S. has enough economic levels at their disposal to avoid material adverse effects on exports. I neither agree or disagree here.
>Third: soft power drop. The US had mainly two arms to keep its hegemony: armed force and economic strength. Going isolationist on trade will decrease their economic strength and leverage significantly over time, leaving only its capacity to do violence to sustain it.
How does one objectively measure "soft power"? More importantly how does one objectively measure a decrease in "soft power"? Also I've previously stated I believe Trump's policies are protectionist and not isolationists.
teddy1245 | 12 hours ago
Why do people pretend that Don could even began to understand or care? He’s not trying to fix anything. He has no long term plan. He’s raiding everything he can before leaving. That was always the plan.
WaffleTacoFrappucino | 17 hours ago
There will be a lot of this happening, and you could point the finger at either side, but i invite you rather to point the finger at both sides for being absolute morons. They should put families and workers first. Neither side has been working on a real trade agreement so we are starting from ground zero. Pathetic excuse for humans.
Resigned1431 | 15 hours ago
Ah yes, the Canadians are dumb for not signing an agreement that would give US control over internal Canadian infrastructure projects and control over Canadian foreign trade agreements.
So dumb. Dumb dumb Canadians. Dumb for not wanting to become a US vassal state.
Popular-Ordinary5110 | 17 hours ago
Dumb
Caracalla81 | 15 hours ago
Both side are to blame. Trump shouldn't have demanded that Canada not make trade deals with other countries, and Canada shouldn't have said "no." Obviously.
lilchileah77 | 16 hours ago
Mmm MAGA koolaid tastes good eh? F off with the both sides are equally bad lies
Caracalla81 | 15 hours ago
Both side are to blame. Trump shouldn't have demanded that Canada not make trade deals with other countries, and Canada shouldn't have said "no." Obviously.