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Comment by blastonico | Hacker News Reader

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I think it will take several months to know if that's the case, since we don't know (or choose to ignore) the ramifications for the economy as a whole.

19kg of Fentanyl got smuggled from Canada into the US in 2024, not even 1% of the total. Yet POTUS decides to impose a 25% tarrif on all canadian goods because of it. Even if it was a bluff, 100+ years friendship, solidarity and good will was just flushed down the toilet and it will probably take decades to fix. But hey, good job!

How are those egg prices coming?

In 2024 Canada had those tariffs on US goods:

  - milk: 270%
  - cheese: 245%
  - butter: 298%
  - poultry: 238%
  - eggs: 163%

Tell me again how good of a friend Canada is to US.

People freak out about Trump's proposed tariffs as if other countries do not already have tariffs on US.

Worth noting, Canada doesn't actually charge 270% tariffs on milk. The base tariff for milk is 7.5%:

> Canada’s whole system is built to avoid a surplus -- hence its name, “supply management.” [...] Within quota, the tariff is 7.5%. Over-quota milk faces a 241% tariff. [1]

I also have to agree with Derek Holt here:

> Derek Holt, an economist at Scotiabank, said in a research note. “Better judgment would question whether an entire trading relationship needs to be jeopardized in order to appeal to dairy farmers in Wisconsin.” [1]

[1] https://www.farmprogress.com/management/does-canada-really-c... https://www.farmprogress.com/management/does-canada-really-c...

A country that tears up an agreement it renegotiated and signed four years earlier over spurious claims* isn't a friend and isn't to be trusted.

Sure, the dairy carveouts - which the US and Trump agreed to, again, just four years ago - are stupid artifacts of a farmers lobby group, but threatening to blow up our economy on a whim makes the US unfriendly and untrustworthy. Doing all that while the leader repeatedly says they want to annex our country by economic force and make us a state turns things from untrustworthy to adversary.

If trump wanted free trade to end, he may have gotten it, because a huge amount of the trust that underlay the north american economy is gone now. If you're cheering that on because the number of eggs your dairy farmers are able to export is under a quota, then I can only say your point of view is far too limited.

* The effectively null amounts of fentanyl & migrants crossing the border.

Even if those numbers are true, you do understand that is a very different situation than 25% tariff across the board, and 10% on energy for completely disingenuous reasons.

If it wasn't for oil, natural gas, power Canada would be at a trade surplus with the US. Oil and Natural gas are not things are not easy to find replacement US based sources.

https://economics.td.com/ca-canada-us-trade-balance

source?

> 19kg of Fentanyl got smuggled from Canada into the US in 2024, not even 1% of the total.

I realize this is the Liberal's talking point, but it just doesn't add up. For starters they are talking about detected/caught smuggling, which is a terrible metric to use.

Then there's the problem of how much is being produced domestically. Just in Q4 of 2024, in Canada found:

* Super lab with 55 kilograms of fentanyl, 390 kilograms of methamphetamine, 35 kilograms of cocaine, 15 kilograms of MDM - https://globalnews.ca/news/10840910/largest-drug-superlab-bu...

* 30 tons of precursor chemicals - https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/30-000-kilog...

* 31 kg of fentanyl and 7.6 tons of precursors - https://edmontonjournal.com/news/crime/merchants-of-death-to...

So that leaves us in a very awkward position with three possibilities:

* Canada has busted virtually every lab in Canada within the span of one quarter and was consuming amounts of fentanyl domestically that would render every Canadian an addict.

* Somewhere in Canada, someone is stockpiling absurd amounts of fentanyl just for fun.

* Canada is catching a negligently small fraction of what their crime syndicates are smuggling into the US.

I know which seems more likely to me.

What confuses me, is that when I cross the border from Canada back into the US, it's the US customs folks I deal with, not Canadians. And it's the other way around when heading into Canada.

Isn't it the job of the US to catch drugs coming into the country?

Oh give the “goodwill, friendship and solidarity line” a rest. Canada has opposed the US many, many times (as is its right), so no need for the “but our feelings are really hurt” line.

Canadians aren’t stupid. They’ve been living next to the US for centuries and experienced the ebb and flow of its decisions.

It comes across as just so whiney.

Nobody is talking about feelings. By adding sanctions the US just reneged on the USMCA that Trump signed on his watch no less.

How do you know the exact figure of fentanyl smuggled into the US from CAN?

I doubt even the cartels could give you an exact figure as they aren't the only ones smuggling the drugs or the precursors.

Are you saying we only intercepted 19kg? How wouldn't that make sense to you considering the disparity of population density at the borders, as well as the infrastructure and staffing at each border??

Canada already Tariffs many products coming from the USA, many even exceeding 200%. The political theater and kindergarten understanding of geo-politics would explain your take on "100 years of friendship flushed down the toilet" lol.

He is doing what he said he would do, hard to argue with that.

Hard to say at the moment if anything he is doing is "great" or not. I choose to observe instead of emoting about it. Half the world is convinced the sky is falling, and half are cheering.

I'm the person in the middle of the (probably) not-overlapping venn diagram.

I don't think it's hard to argue with "He is doing what he said he would do".

He said on day one he'd lower grocery prices. He said he had nothing to do with Project 2025 and on day one he signed a stack of executive ordered hand written by the Heritage Foundation. etc.

Don't forget he said the Ukraine was would already be over as well. MAGA has moved the goalpost so far from 'get away from being warmongers on day one' to 'Annex Canada, annex Greenland, go to war with Panama, send troops to take out the Cartels'. Truly 1984 stuff going on.

I must be the only dumbass that sees billionaires running the world and compare things to atlas shrugged instead of 1984. Hell, Brave New World fits better than 1984.

And yet Guantanamo Bay is still open.

Yeah, he hasn’t done everything he claimed, and I imagine he won’t, most politicians don’t. He was very clear about all the things he has done so far, and this is hard to argue.

Making a bad-faith argument about one specific point doesn’t negate the argument.

Project 2025 is crazy when you read off the items

In the inland northwest we are sending a lot more fent/mexi's north than are coming south. BC bud was an issue...back before Washington legalized.

Also the deals announced were deals already done prior to this administration.

Mexico and Canada agreed to do something... They were already doing with Biden.

"Hook, line and sinker", heh?

Mexico agreed to an additional 10,000 troops.

The question is was their level of support already maxed out without the threat of tariffs? Previous agreements were already pretty substantial. (And fly in the face of a conspiracy of an "open border" where both sides are just looking the other way)

https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/presidents-us-mexico-...

a great job of what?

honestly all i see is incompetence and creating situations only to solve them and claim victory, while letting some loon terrorize and try to dismantle the bureaucracy

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