What ultimately influenced U.S. President Donald Trump’s decision last week to delay the tariffs he planned to impose on Canadian imports was arguably Canada’s announcement of targeted retaliatory tariffs on U.S. exports, strategically designed to affect Republican-leaning states the most. But the measures that may be enough to make Mr. Trump pause may not be enough to make him back off permanently.
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Consequently, unless retaliatory measures pose a significant economic threat to the United States, Mr. Trump is likely to proceed with imposing tariffs on trading partners with which the country has large trade deficits, such as China (US$350-billion), Mexico (US$130.6-billion), Canada (US$100-billion) and the European Union (US$200-billion).
The key challenge for Canada – and other U.S. trading partners – is clear: to design a package of retaliatory tariffs and countermeasures that maximally affect U.S. economic interests. One effective strategy to do so is targeting the U.S.’s massive and rapidly growing service trade surplus.
I think Canada, Mexico, & EU should coordinate so that a tariff on any of us is a tariff on all of us. Hit back dollar for dollar on any tariff affecting any of our economies.
The average Canadian buys $8,381 worth of US imports ($352 billion, 42 million people, with some rounding). The average US citizen buys $1,246 worth of Canadian imports ($431 billion, 346 million people, again some rounding).
Canadians are being taken advantage of by the US, and then the US government is demanding more? We already buy more than 6.5 times as much of their imports, how much more is expected to “make it fair”?
He doesn’t understand that. He sees “trade deficit” and thinks he’s being ripped off because he’s a fucking idiot and doesn’t like to be corrected, so new information literally cannot enter his brain the same way as for us.
This is a man who famously stiffs everyone he hires. He thinks he’s being ripped off because he believes anyone who actually pays for the things they purchase are suckers and idiots.
Gas prices. That’s the weak spot. If Americans’ gas pump prices go waaaay up they can and will oust this administration sooner or later. We need to impose absolutely punishing export fees on oil and gas, using the revenues gained to protect any other sectors they slap tariffs on (currently steel and aluminum). The big oil companies can absorb the hit, they make insane profits, no sympathy for them – we should pass emergency regs to prevent them from passing on the expense by laying off workers. If they want to do business in Canada and access our resources, they also need to help defend Canada in our time of need.
I’m an American. Please do this!
I’d like to add something here: any retaliatory action has to be something that will be felt by the US population during the next four years. Because Trump really doesn’t care beyond that.
Retaliation that will be felt slowly, peaking in 5 or 6 years? That’s the Republican dream, as it will keep them in power and make Canada the enemy.
Here’s a different take: measures that affect the population don’t matter at all. He’ll spin it one way or the other, blame somebody and the trollfarm-fed inbred dimwits won’t know any better. It’s useless, elections don’t matter anymore.
Targeting the billionaires, especially in the services industry, will cause them to put the brakes on trump in a SECOND, and halt him in his tracks.
Forget tariffs. Strop sending him oil and electricity. Completely. Immediately.
Hold a press conference that all the comedians will cover.
Or even just stop sending ANY aluminum or steel. They cannot just replace it easily. Their economy would skip the tracks. If you don’t want to stop sending it, put a 50% export tariff on before it even gets to them.
People will notice that.
I feel like Canadians would back our government and Americans would not.
It would all be over in our favour fairly quickly.
I’m of the opinion nearly the opposite. Frankly speaking, he doesn’t care how much the people suffer. Half the population could starve to death and he’d just shrug and say “skill issue”.
I do agree that what we do needs to hurt quickly, but the target are the oligarchs that Trump listens to, not the common people. I mean, unless if you’re trying to incite a civil war over there, but Jan6 couldn’t even be considered anything close to such a thing, and I doubt they’ll reach that point in 4 years no matter how badly they run things into the ground short of publicly executing entire protest marches.
Sensibly: Encourage inter-provincial trade, remove hurdles to opening to other markets, negotiate new trade deals with Europe, Asia, and South America.
Morally: Drop the federal assistance to purchase Teslas EVs as a bare minimum. No one wants to buy those anymore anyway. Consider putting a hefty tariff on every single product made by one of Musk’s companies.
Hell, we should be tariffing everything from Musk’s companies at this point considering he spends more time coming up with those executive orders than Trump does reading them.
Though many other American services would be more difficult since there’s a serious lack of alternatives to many of them, especially those not also from the US.
Canada also needs to encourage interprovincial trade, and continue the diversification of trade partners besides our neighbours to the South.
Oil is the big one, immediate effect and wide spread. Make the local producers sell to Europe and Mexico. They won’t want to because so much of it is shale oil, but it’s better for everyone, even after Trump is gone.
