Canada proposes 100% tariffs on Tesla | Hacker News Reader

Canada proposes 100% tariffs on Tesla

electrek.co

92 pointszfg82 comments

"A Canadian candidate for Prime Minister" does not equal "Canada".

Make it 1000%. I, too, love these targeted reprisal tariffs. Go Canada.

Even better suggestion in the comments:

> Remove the 100% on Chinese EV's, but impose 100% on Tesla no matter where it comes from.

Have them stop buttressing a protectionist scheme and let their citizen get access to affordable EV from companies who care about making affordable ones.

[flagged]

As a Canadian, I prefer China to the US simply because China isn’t threatening to annex us. I hope we will strike a deal with China for military containment of our enemy, the US.

As a Canadian also I want you to know that you absolutely do not speak for all of us, and I strongly hope that you don't represent anything remotely like a majority here

Canada-US relationships may be strained right now but the USA is not our enemy, and neither are Americans

I'm going to walk the middle ground here as another Canadian.

The US has been our 'closest friend and ally' for 70+, hell nearly 100 years now. We've sought economic and military integration, to our benefits certainly, but also to our detriment.

It has gone too far, and all it takes is a bully being elected to slap on unjustified tariffs and destabilize the relationship with the goal to squeeze more out of allies rather than negotiating a fair deal for all. Hell he's doing it a second time, and now with the more nefarious undertones of political annexation which the vast majority of Canadians do not want.

Our goal moving forward should be to continue being polite and friendly as we are to most other counties, yet also to divorce our military and economy from American control at every step.

Does that mean in some cases trading more with China? Yes, but we should focus on commonwealth and European integration with like minded countries that value democracy and their citizens.

> The US has been our 'closest friend and ally' for 70+, hell nearly 100 years now

Yes, which is why it's absolutely idiotic to start calling them our enemies after a couple of months of President Trump

We will weather this rocky part of our friendship with America and come through it later

Enemies define themselves by a actions.

This administration is an enemy to Canada, all Americans are not.

But it shows we need to reevaluate this friendship and move apart going forward.

The US is 100% the biggest existential threat to Canada purely based on Geography and adminstration.

The American people really need to do something about their current adminstration if they want to maintain a positive relationship with Canada

In 2023, China's export to Canada was 45.1 billion dollars.

China's export to the US was 501 billion dollars.

So why is the US propping up China's authoritarian dictatorship? Is this "Only the US gets to prop up dictators in the world, Canada should just follow orders!" kind of deal?

Also, out of all the countries out there the devastation the US has caused in the global south has no comparison.

The UK, Portugal and Spain are surely up there.

Yep!

China may be an issue and I am not downplaying that. But: we live in one planet, and the tarrifs on Chinese EVs is absolutely slowing down adoption for the sake of propping up legacy automakers who couldn’t be bothered to be serious about EVs.

Canada has no domestic car manufacturers. It has branch plants from several companies, but that’s all they are, branch plants. All the tarrifs do is protect the interests of other countries, one of which is getting increasingly hostile to it’s northern neighbor.

Well out of Trump, Biden, Harris and Xi Jinping, only one is actively and explicitly hostile towards Canada, and it’s not Winnie-the-Pooh-man.

If you want allies in supporting democracy and human rights, the obvious approach is to not attack said allies.

Xi Jinping is a dictator. His very existence is hostile to all democracy in all countries everywhere

This may be the worse regime America has ever had but let's not pretend it's as bad as regimes in countries that have actual active concentration camps right now

> Xi Jinping is a dictator. His very existence is hostile to all democracy in all countries everywhere

This is true, but three difference (1) Xi has proven himself to not be stupid and (2) he isn't an autocrat pretending to be pro-democracy, and (3) he isn't in the thrall of a hostile foreign power.

China is exactly what it appears to be, which is much safer than whatever mess America is right now.

> he isn't in the thrall of a hostile foreign power.

He is a hostile foreign power

He is an obvious hostile foreign power, no one doubts that Xi Jinping is beholden to Xi Jinping, he doesn't have a secret relationship with Putin or Kim Jong Un.

The hard fact is that China is less _dangerous_ to Canada than the US’s current posturing makes it appear to be. The US has squandered soft power built up over the course of a century or so in a couple of months at this point. China (and the EU, and probably India, though who knows with Modi) will absolutely attempt to fill the gap; how could they not?

> let's not pretend it's as bad as regimes in countries that have actual active concentration camps right now

Do you know what's going on in Guantanamo right now?

USA has actual active concentration camps right now.

> Xi Jinping is a dictator. His very existence is hostile to all democracy in all countries everywhere

Yes, that's simultaneously true with what I posted. It's a shame Trump is driving people into the arms of dictators.

Completely agree that dropping the tariffs on Chinese EVs instead would be the sensible move. Turning EVs into a culture war effigy was a horrible development for the future of the planet when the right did it, and it's no different now that the left is getting in on it. We have a technology that would be a key part of switching to clean energy, and should be doing everything possible to embrace it, but the political class has turned it into a football for their culture war game instead. Depressing stuff.

That would be totally amazing for Canadians, they are facing rising prices in so many things. The Chinese cars are half the price. I saw that BYD expects to sell 100k vehicles into Mexico this year, that's double the 50k they sold last year.

https://motorillustrated.com/byd-targets-100000-ev-sales-in-...

The long range PHEVs china has been building would also be ideal for Canada. Plenty of daily range even in winter and no range or infrastructure anxiety when you need more distance.

I've recently become aware of a distinction between PHEV and EREV. The PHEV doesn't have enough power alone in the electric motors to go pure EV all the time. There a mechanical transfer case where both ICE and electric motor combine their torque. The EREV is a serial combination, more like the Diesel electric trains in current use. Some examples of EREV's are the Volt, BMW i3, and the Ram charger coming out this year.

Incorrect.

PHEV have plenty of motor power to go electric only for extended periods; the only limit is battery capacity. The key distinction is the plug in part of phev.

Mild hybrids cannot go electric only

Hybrids can go electric only for very short distance.

PHEV can go electric long distance and use wall power. Most can mechanically couple the combustion engine to the wheels and do so in certain circumstances, like long distance highway use.

EREV is an emerging term for vehicles that have a combustion engine not mechanically connected to the wheels that only drives a generator. BMW i3 is one of the oldest examples. Volt is not; it can put mechanical power to the road.

Fun fact on i3. California zero emissions rules offered more credit for vehicles with more battery range than gas, so bmw artificially limited the tank using software for i3 sold in North America. Owners can flash the euro firmware to unlock physically present tank space as usable.

I’d make sure a tariff on Tesla includes both parts on service so that existing owners aren’t benefitting from increased residual value. (I’d expect that the residual value would be offset given appropriately higher maintenance costs.)

And it's flagged...

Any story about Musk gets flagged, although sometimes dang restores them.

Actually I love this. Saves the American people from most of the bad decisions but targets the oligarchs.

Why save the American people from their bad decision?

Because you care about people? What, should we just give up on people addicted to drugs for example? Or should we help save them from their bad decision to use dangerous drugs?

We take drug addicts to rehab. We don’t just give them money so they don’t need to steal to get high. But we can’t take them to rehab until they admit to themselves that they have a problem.

Some are worth saving. Not all, but some.

I believe parent-poster intended something more like: "The subset of Americans who opposed the nonsense."

The purpose of the deterrent pain response is ultimately to change American policy, and that means influencing people whose positions can changed by it into a positive direction.

Why doesn’t Canada just go nuclear and proliferate nuclear technology to any country which the US imposes tariffs upon? If you’re a country with free will, play the game all the way.

Canada already made that choice, sided with the British and provided plans and materials to the United States that initiated and sustained the Manhatten Project.

They are the OG's of nuclear weapons proliferation.

https://ahf.nuclearmuseum.org/ahf/location/canada/

https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/canada-and...

There's also the Avro CF-105 Arrow fighter jet cancelled, it's widely understood, under US pressure in 1959:

<https://toronto.citynews.ca/2023/09/19/long-secret-canadian-...>

<https://theaviationgeekclub.com/magnificent-failure-the-stor...>

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avro_Canada_CF-105_Arrow>

Because we don't want to throw gas on an already rough situation?

There is no need to go scorched earth immediately, it hasn't even been a day yet

Powering down the North Warning System seems like another option?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Warning_System

The endest-endgame should probably be avoiding a nuclear apocalypse, and distributing nuclear arms would go counter to that.

Because Canada is an NPT signatory as are most other countries which grants them access to most nuclear technology.

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