After decades of unfair treatment of U.S. businesses who export to Canada, the Great White North has escalated fears of a trade war by levying more tariffs against U.S. manufacturers.
For Canada, tariffs of 10 percent are being imposed on about $12.5 billion worth of U.S. products. Starting Sunday, a wide range of U.S. staples were hit, including chocolate, ketchup, yogurt, beef, caffeinated roasted coffee, orange juice, maple syrup, salad dressing and soups.
While Canada and some in the U.S. media blame the trade row on President Trump who has promised to renegotiate unfair trade deals, Canada’s ridiculous tariffs on American dairy products are at the center of the disagreement.
“Canada charges the U.S. a 270% tariff on Dairy Products!” Trump tweeted in June. “Not fair to our farmers!”
Canada charges the U.S. a 270% tariff on Dairy Products! They didn’t tell you that, did they? Not fair to our farmers!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 8, 2018
Canada also signaled last week that it was losing interest in a fair trade agreement saying that it doesn’t think the renegotiation of NAFTA will happen.
Trump said Friday that he didn’t see a deal happening on NAFTA until after the November mid-term elections.
As both the U.S. and Canada back away from NAFTA over the dairy tariffs, Trump has offered Canada a simple solution: free trade.
In a press conference after the June G7 meetings, the Trump administration said they had offered a true free trade proposal to the entire group, which includes Canada.
“Zero tariffs, zero non -tariff barriers, zero subsidies,” Trump’s National Economic Council Director Larry Kudlow said.
If Canada is willing to drop all tariffs against the United States and its internal subsidies, the Trump administration has proposed to do the same. Instead, Canada has chosen to escalate a trade disagreement further towards a trade war.
The ultimate answer may be the cancellation of NAFTA and two independent trade agreements: one between Canda and the U.S. and another between Mexico and the United States.
“After decades of unfair treatment of U.S. businesses who export to the Canada…Canada’s ridiculous tariffs on American dairy products are at the center of the disagreement.”
Really?…this has to be the height of American myopic self-interest.
It’s pretty convenient to point out something like dairy…all the while ignoring the economy of scale;
This allows a country like the United States that has a population 10 times that of Canada and an economic base even more so…to simply come into countries like Canada and out muscle smaller local businesses.
And they don’t do it with better service or products..they do it with ‘Financial Economics’. In other words they simply have the financial backing on a larger scale to push out smaller businesses.
The United States, not just in Canada, have expanded so many businesses into other countries. One big way it is done is through the franchise;
There use to be many fine local hardware/lumber yards…Home Depot got rid of those.
And if they don’t push them out, they buy them out; and in the case say of Tim Hortens…degrade the product.
I no longer drink that stuff…so what do I do?…ok Starbucks..wait that’s American based…the local coffee shop besides them went out of business even though they had better coffee..they just didn’t have the finances to compete.
The irony behind all this evident with China and Mexico….It was Americans who moved their companies to these countries to take advantage of things like lower wages and re-import them back into the country.
Now, put up tariffs so those whose careers are centered around those businesses are out of luck?
How about go ahead and put up the Tariffs but at the same time turn over those businesses and the assets of those business to the locals in those countries of those business.
Now we are talking something that is more fair.
While my knowledge is no better than Jay’s, perhaps my memory is…..or perhaps I’m just old enough to know that in the early 1980’s the Canada’s tariffs on dairy products rose to the point that large American Dairy Companies selling to Canada stopped buying milk from the small, independent family owned dairies. These were ones that generally had 25-100 producing cows. They LOST EVERYTHING….
Then there was the ‘mad cow’ scare where, dispite the fact the source was located and controlled, ban all beef products from the USA for over a year…
Companies locating their headquarters AVOID high tariffs….and until recently it included high taxes here. When a product is made out of country it is not “re-imported”, it is simply ‘imported’ at a lower cost to the USA….and sold in the country of origin (Mexico) with no extra cost added.
Each fall we experience a large influx of Canadian ‘tourist’ (primarily in the Southern States. They come for low cost/better medical service and LOW COST goods. They buy “USED’ product to lower the duty imposed when taking it back to Canada.
GW Bush, Vicente Fox and Trudeu Sr. met in Canada to discuss making Canada, Mexico and, yes, the USA into a SINGLE AMERICA and Junior is still working on it.
New trade tariffs may well be tough (for awhile) but will pay off…
BUY AMERICAN