Canada hits back at 'punitive' U.S. tariffs in 'turning point' in relations

I'm in the same situation, and I agree. On some level it could be good for Canada to have all the TN folks back. Maybe bad for us in the short term, but the effects could ripple.

If NAFTA talks don't work out, folks like you and me with our TNs are actually going to start worrying about how we're going to keep our jobs.

And here I thought Canada wasn't one of Trump's "shithole countries".

Seems easy to do since he's refused to separate himself from his business interests when he assumed the presidency.

I am finding it difficult to accept this is the reality we live in:

"the President can be successfully engaged, and countries like Ukraine, China, and Qatar have demonstrated this. When they want something from the United States, they skip the State Department, and even the White House staff. Instead of approaching their problem state-to-state, they go state-to-man. These countries focus on what Trump wants on a personal level – to enrich his family. So Beijing granted Ivanka trademarks, Qatar invested in one of Jared’s office towers, and Ukraine, with Slavic candor, simply wired half a million dollars to the President’s personal lawyer Michael Cohen."

If the trade wars continue escalating, I don't see how this is going to end well.

Retaliatory trade sanctions have worked against America but it took almost a year for the reprecussions to bubble up and make the President change his mind after the 2002 steel tariffs were enacted by the Bush administration. The Trump specific sanctions do seem like a ripe target for a more immediate response this time.

What a fantastic idea.

That's exactly what the US does to folks (e.g. Putin's friends) when they do stupid, I'm surprised that no nations have considered doing the same with Donald and his friends/family.

That sounds a whole lot more like a national security issue than the tariffs.

Could also use tariffs to try and hit the states that voted for Trump the hardest.

The way to "negotiate" with the Trump administration involves contributing to the Trump businesses.

The US when it was industrializing? China now? Protectionism can be good for large nations/markets catching up to other nations/markets.

Tariffs on corn prompted a guy called James Wilson to create The Economist, of course you may or may not regard that as a positive outcome: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Economist#History

Canada has been arguing with the US about dairy for a while. Protecting that industry, you could argue, actually is a national security issue and tariffs are needed because of the massive production of the US.

IIRC haiti allowed tariff free dairy and now pretty much don't have that industry anymore.

I can't point to any specific examples, but tariffs are generally more effective, or at least less harmful when targeted on luxury goods.

Tariffs on general goods like steel, food, or oil just increase costs for the whole population.

Tariffs can be good for big companies and other special interests in a country, but never for the country as a whole.

So when you ask if they result in "better economic or social outcome", you have to be careful to think about "for who?".

Seems to be working for china.

I believe Ecuador had a short run where they closed up some of their economy and it paid off for a bit, but they were hardly operating like a large global trading nation before that...

Why would Germany invade Canada?

More seriously, I will be pretty surprised if this particular stupidity escalates to any kind of military action.

Protective tariffs are a good idea for protecting nascent industries from essentially foreign competition. Many countries in Asia essentially locked foreign goods from certain industries during the later half of the 20th century to help build their own industries post WW 2. They ended up opening their economy once their domestic players hit a critical stage where they could compete with international players. For example, India closed off their soda, car, and other markets to spark a homegrown industry. In the 1990s they liberalized the economy and opened it to the international megacorps, but many of the domestic companies still remain in some form and there are large manufacturing plants still from that era. So it is entirely possible that protective tariffs can help for long term growth when done strategically.

However, I highly doubt any of Trump's tariff's are strategically smart.

Canada's dairy industry has had a long history of protection. It is likely that this industry would not exist without this protection.

I think you mean sanctions, not tariffs or quotas. There is not a single country that does not apply tariffs or quotas.

Not quite.

When 2 nations are each protective, it's bad for both.

If they are both open, it's generally good for both.

But - if one protects in a sneaky way, and the other is open - the it's amazing for the protectionist country.

So nations strive to be 'open' but then to sneak in stuff, or rather, sometimes they are open, but really are not.

It's impossible for American companies to sell into Japan for many reasons, arguably quality, but the way Japanese business syndicates work, they'll keep America out, irrespective of what the government says.

This was a huge thing in the 1980's and is the 'memory' that gripes Trump.

As for China - we don't have open trade with them.

America is considerably more open than China.

+ China has massive state-owned agencies, the subsidized markets

+ They have a 100% politically controlled currency

+ They have political capital controls

+ They require foreign entities to hand over key IP

+ They have any number of barriers (some on purpose, some not so much) to foreign participation.

+ China does not pursue those breaking IP rules.

China has had these advantages for some time, it's just that when they were poor, nobody really cared, but as they get powerful, it becomes an issue.

So the only choice is to play 'hardball' with such nations - because these nations won't react to anything else, and they'll only react to threats that are credible.

As for Europe, it's a different bag, but America has some decent beefs with Germany in particular.

As for NAFTA - that's a tough one. I don't think America has such a huge advantage, but wages are weaker in Cana/Mex which gives big opportunities in some ways ... but it also keeps Can/Mex standard of living lower in many ways. So the NAFTA gripe is more difficult to understand.

Put another way - the US has been having a 'trade war' with China for 30 years, it just wasn't ever a big deal.

And there are some issues (cars) that America has a reasonable beef with on Germany, for example.

I think Trump is a douche but he's not 'all wrong' on these things.

Well, HN is meant for quality discussions of things we find interesting. Sometimes politics is relevant to us (or at least to enough of us to qualify).

The trick is to keep it a quality discussion, rather than letting it degenerate into a flame war. That's not easy. But if it can't happen here, where can it? (And if the answer is "nowhere", well, I'm not sure that the answer is wrong, but that's one of the most cynical statements possible about the current state of politics.)

So don't participate.

Besides: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

There was an episode on planet money about precisely this with sugar tarrifs and how it had unintended consequences on the candy industy which had to move overseas. Very complicated topic.

His stated goal seems to be related to “bringing back American jobs” but it’s really all marketing for himself as usual since while this action will cause more American job loses than it creates, that doesn’t actually matter because it’s just about optics.

Also the authority he invokes is specifically for national security so increasing jobs or any other non national security reason shouldn’t even be a factor. His comments that it’s a negotiating tactic also prove there’s no actual national security rationale.

“...the Trump administration promised its voters more big action on trade. Further WTO challenges could take years, so to make policy more quickly, Trump invoked section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962, which grants the US the ability to impose trade restrictions in the name of national security.”

https://www.google.com/amp/s/qz.com/1221853/donald-trumps-ta...

There is a general consensus that the world produces too much steel, with a large part of that being Chinese overproduction. I don't have the actual statistics in front of me, but the amount of new steel production that were brought online in China in the past 5 years is on the order of the entire world surplus of steel production.

Which is why it's so confusing that Trump didn't just slap anti-dumping duties on China, which quite frankly everyone agrees with. The best guess is that Trump thought that he could use the steel tariffs as an easy way to wring concessions out of trade partners... and declaring the tariffs a matter of national security is the one way he can do that without having to get Congress's approval (as even many Republicans in Congress are horrified by this).

I believe it, but would like a source to see the criteria and who is rating.

That implies an equal number of each party or general affiliation - it wasn't. 9 of the 166 respondents considered themselves conservative.

Trump is not a good president, don't get me wrong, but that's just not good science.

They also have to play to domestic audience - where it likely won't fly. Lying passive in response to what many perceive as bullying, won't get any politician far.

That would sort of prove Trump's point though. "See, they knew their trade practices were unfair - they're not even fighting back".