Trade Wars

[highfigh]

My experience is if you oppose the left by having a consistent pattern of such, I'd have to assume your right of center.

Let's stop assuming and inferring.

 

[Trell]

The war expands. PM Carney is interrupting his election campaign to hold cabinet meetings to discuss a response.
Trump going ahead with 25% tariffs on autos | CBC News

How long will it take before this round of Trump tariffs are "paused" again?

 

[Trell]

You seem to imply that any right wing views that someone holds somehow invalidates any centrist views that they might express. Most people are not that black and white.

I do have on a number of occasions published links to the conservative The Bulwark with several of the staff (former) Republicans. So it depends very much on what kind of "right wing views" are aired, and the same goes for the "left". And in my opinion the bothsidesism some practice is a kind of fake centrism (not that I accuse you of that in any way, just a general comment).

Both otherwise your point is taken.

 

[Mikado463]

I do have on a number of occasions published links to the conservative The Bulwark with several of the staff (former) Republicans. So it depends very much on what kind of "right wing views" are aired, and the same goes for the "left". And in my opinion the bothsidesism some practice is a kind of fake centrism (not that I accuse you of that in any way, just a general comment).

Both otherwise your point is taken.

LOL, I think you bruised your brain with that reply !

on a serious note, I get your point.......

 

[Trell]

LOL, I think you bruised your brain with that reply !

on a serious note, I get your point.......

Don't worry as it's encapsulated in kevlar.

 

[Eppie]

How long will it take before this round of Trump tariffs are "paused" again?

That's anyone's guess. U.S. automakers are lobbying against tariffs but I don't know if they have any sway with the president. It will take years to readjust the supply chains, so are American manufacturers willing to play the long game? Some of the investments announced were already negotiated by the previous administration, but I'm sure Trump will claim credit for those as well.

We went through this many decades ago. Canada actually imposed tariffs and forced car manufacturers to build plants in Canada but those imported vehicles were entirely made in the U.S. and Canada needed some domestic supply. Very different economic times from what we have now. Canada manufactures a lot of automotive parts because we have the skilled labour and American companies benefit from the significantly lower Canadian dollar. When they move manufacturing to the States, can they find the trained workers? Unemployment is actually low, is it not? Prices will naturally increase somewhat as those parts and wages are then paid in U.S. dollars.

Canada will naturally respond by trying to increase its own domestic supply but the economies of scale might not be there. Another issue is that Trump states that the tariffs will pay for these initiatives. Tariffs only create a temporary source of government revenue, though. Tariffed imports tend to dry up pretty quickly and then the revenue is gone.

 

[j_garcia]

Not sure how long before paused, but he is trying to "fix" his mistake of not understanding where US cars are made. And it still won't work... This guy is a complete genius. Throws stuff out based on the recommendations of the idiot cronies he hired who also don't grasp how things work and then has to try something else.

The Cheeto thinks this will somehow work in our favor, but it sure feels like it is going to strengthen the global positions of other major countries who do work together, the opposite of what he was looking to do. Some of those auto manufacturers are already announcing price increases to combat the tariffs.

This graphic I think is also wrong, Tesla makes plenty of vehicles in China and they said the only way they could make a sub-$30k car to sell in the US was if they made it in China and shipped it here. They aren't doing that AFAIK, but it speaks to how things really work.

 

[mtrycrafts]

That's anyone's guess. U.S. automakers are lobbying against tariffs but I don't know if they have any sway with the president. It will take years to readjust the supply chains, so are American manufacturers willing to play the long game? Some of the investments announced were already negotiated by the previous administration, but I'm sure Trump will claim credit for those as well.

We went through this many decades ago. Canada actually imposed tariffs and forced car manufacturers to build plants in Canada but those imported vehicles were entirely made in the U.S. and Canada needed some domestic supply. Very different economic times from what we have now. Canada manufactures a lot of automotive parts because we have the skilled labour and American companies benefit from the significantly lower Canadian dollar. When they move manufacturing to the States, can they find the trained workers? Unemployment is actually low, is it not? Prices will naturally increase somewhat as those parts and wages are then paid in U.S. dollars.

Canada will naturally respond by trying to increase its own domestic supply but the economies of scale might not be there. Another issue is that Trump states that the tariffs will pay for these initiatives. Tariffs only create a temporary source of government revenue, though. Tariffed imports tend to dry up pretty quality and then the revenue is gone.

And what will happen when the next administration negates this tariff and back to where it was before? That is a whole lot of waste all around.

 

[mtrycrafts]

Not sure how long before paused, but he is trying to "fix" his mistake of not understanding where US cars are made. And it still won't work... This guy is a complete genius. Throws stuff out based on the recommendations of the idiot cronies he hired who also don't grasp how things work and then has to try something else.

The Cheeto thinks this will somehow work in our favor, but it sure feels like it is going to strengthen the global positions of other major countries who do work together, the opposite of what he was looking to do. Some of those auto manufacturers are already announcing price increases to combat the tariffs.

This graphic I think is also wrong, Tesla makes plenty of vehicles in China and they said the only way they could make a sub-$30k car to sell in the US was if they made it in China and shipped it here. They aren't doing that AFAIK, but it speaks to how things really work.

Are all Tesla car parts made in the US? Trump is imposing or will, tariff on imported parts.

 

[j_garcia]

Are all Tesla car parts made in the US? Trump is imposing or will, tariff on imported parts.

Parts should mostly come from US, nothing like a vehicle can be 100% sourced here anymore though. Raw materials already are not 100% sourced from the US.

 

[lovinthehd]

You crap on comments from others, but don't offer anything that might help. If you're going to tell someone that they suck, don't leave it there, say "You suck and here's why".

I think they're too fascinated by seeing their names in the media to see what they created.

Help what, though? It's obvious what sucks.

 

[GO-NAD!]

And what will happen when the next administration negates this tariff and back to where it was before? That is a whole lot of waste all around.

You're assuming the next administration won't be the same administration. I admire your optimism. But seriously, a lot of damage can be done to trade relations over the next 46 months. It may not be as simple as waving a wand and reverting to 2024 conditions.

 

[GO-NAD!]

The U.S. waged a trade war against Canada before. Here’s how it ended - The Globe and Mail
Article is paywalled. So, here it is.

On an early-fall afternoon in 1890, Sir John A. Macdonald stood before a large crowd at a picnic in Halifax and delivered an impassioned speech that sounds eerily familiar in 2025.

The topic? Tariffs. The threat? Annexation.

“The fact is that the United States covet Canada,” Macdonald said.

The prime minister’s blunt words were prompted by the McKinley Tariff Act, a new U.S. law that would deliver crippling tariffs of up to 50 per cent on Canadian exports to the United States. The law was sponsored by Ohio congressman and future U.S. president William McKinley, so notorious a proponent of steep tariffs that he was nicknamed “the Napoleon of Protection.” The tariffs were ostensibly designed to protect U.S. manufacturers; Macdonald believed there was a more sinister motivation.

He warned that our neighbours were turning up the tariff screws to force Canada to accept not merely a commercial union with the United States, but a political union. The United States wanted what Canada had, he said, and was angling to remove the border to take it.

If history doesn’t exactly repeat itself, it certainly echoes, even across a 135-year canyon. Macdonald faced an economic and political threat that was, in many ways, remarkably similar to our current national predicament.

And like the current federal Liberals, Macdonald’s Conservatives entered their tariff crisis as a long-entrenched government that appeared to have outlived its usefulness.

Macdonald was 75 when he delivered his Halifax speech; his health in 1890 hadn’t been great. He was nearing the end of his fifth mandate, having governed for 18 of the 23 years since Confederation. In his private correspondence, Macdonald himself wondered whether he and his government had long passed their best-before date.

But the tariff fight reinvigorated the prime minister and turned his party’s fortunes. The Conservatives won the 1891 election, in which they campaigned as the country’s defender against the tariffs and the threat of annexation. On his campaign posters, Macdonald appeared waving the flag.

Mind you, the Canada of 1890 was quite different from the Canada of today. The country was just a generation old; while unquestionably rich with natural resources, its manufacturing industries were in their infancy. The country still relied on a kind of maternal protection from Britain, and constantly looked over its shoulder at its rapidly growing and endlessly ambitious neighbour to the south. The U.S. Civil War a quarter-century earlier had, despite its horrors, catapulted that country into a major industrial power; now, the U.S. was increasingly interested in expanding its global footprint as a political power, too. In this climate, a young Canada could never get too comfortable about its future.

While U.S. president Benjamin Harrison (unlike the current resident of the White House) never publicly threatened Canada with annexation, other senior U.S. government officials did little to hide their designs on Canada. Harrison’s secretary of state, James Blaine – who co-authored the tariff bill with McKinley – openly talked about his desire to unite Canada with the United States. Privately, he told the president that in the face of high tariffs, Canada would “ultimately, I believe, seek admission to the Union.”

Egging Harrison and Blaine on was Andrew Carnegie, the ultrarich U.S. industrialist who had the president’s ear on tariff matters (among other things). “If Canada wants the advantage of the American market, it must become American,” Carnegie wrote in a letter to William Gladstone, the past and future British prime minister.

But Macdonald wasn’t any more attracted to the prospect of being absorbed into the U.S. zeitgeist than the Canadian leadership of today. In his Halifax speech, he said that Canadians would prefer to “enjoy the magnificent country that God has given us, and look with philosophic eyes at the struggles of a fierce and discordant democracy” – setting off a prolonged round of applause.

Of course, the McKinley tariffs neither forced an economic union or annexation, nor did they destroy the Canadian economy.

In the five years after the imposition of the tariffs, Canada’s goods exports to the U.S. fell nearly 50 per cent compared with the five years prior; at the same time, exports to Britain more than doubled. Trade with other markets – chiefly the Caribbean – also doubled.

During those five years, Canadian exports overall grew more than 20 per cent. The U.S. tariffs hadn’t dissuaded Canadian trade; they had only rerouted it.

Meanwhile, the protectionist pursuits of Harrison’s Republicans had given the party scant cover politically. The Democrats steamrollered the Republicans in the midterm congressional election of November, 1890, winning 72 per cent of the contested seats. Two years later, a deeply unpopular Harrison lost the White House to Grover Cleveland, who had nearly double the incumbent’s electoral college votes.

In the second half of the 1890s, the Republicans led by Mr. McKinley – who succeeded Mr. Cleveland as president in 1896 – grew increasingly dissatisfied with the economic efficacy of tariffs. By 1901, the former great champion of tariffs had become an advocate of “reciprocity” – what we talk about now as bilateral free trade. He had come to believe that the United States could not expect to expand its industry into foreign markets unless it granted trading partners fair access to its own market.

“We must not repose in fancied security that we can forever sell everything and buy little or nothing,” the president said in a speech at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo in September, 1901.

The next day, McKinley was shot twice in the abdomen during a public meet-and-greet. Eight days later, he was dead.

 

[highfigh]

My experience is if you oppose the left by having a consistent pattern of such, I'd have to assume your right of center.

It's OK to dislike what one's own side does- it's our duty to be critical of ALL bad acts, lans, laws, bills and to be honest, I oppose a lot of what the Right is doing, planning and has done. That's part of being in the inenviable position of not aligning with either party.

As an example, I mentioned the plans for Medicaid- I like the fact that it's an attempt to prevent the massive defrauding of the program, but I don't like how it's being done.

 

[Eppie]

Why experts think Trump’s new auto tariff plan 'defies logic' | About That:

 

[lovinthehd]

Why experts think Trump’s new auto tariff plan 'defies logic' | About That:

Or is he encouraging massive fraud by misdeclaration and reward of immunity?

 

[Mikado463]

Why experts think Trump’s new auto tariff plan 'defies logic' | About That:

summed up at the 10 minute mark quite well, translation.......stand by

 

[Eppie]

Or is he encouraging massive fraud by misdeclaration and reward of immunity?

That all depends on enforcement, doesn't it? Given the complexity of the matter, I don't think the administration has a clue as to how much bureaucracy is involved to enforce this. It's all a simple stroke of the pen (or thick black sharpie for the egotistical).

 

[dlaloum]

That all depends on enforcement, doesn't it? Given the complexity of the matter, I don't think the administration has a clue as to how much bureaucracy is involved to enforce this. It's all a simple stroke of the pen (or thick black sharpie for the egotistical).

Yes and DOGE is busy dismantling and neutering all enforcement mechanisms... basically setting the stage for a massive growth of corruption and smuggling

 

[Mr._Clark]

That all depends on enforcement, doesn't it? Given the complexity of the matter, I don't think the administration has a clue as to how much bureaucracy is involved to enforce this. It's all a simple stroke of the pen (or thick black sharpie for the egotistical).

As a practical matter it would be almost impossible.

I find myself wondering if the administration doesn’t really care because they just want to say they caused more production in the U.S. even if it’s based on inaccurate data.

On the other hand, your hypothesis (the administration is clueless) is consistent with all available evidence (sardonic humor alert).