How about Canada drop their tariffs? Canada had tariffs long before Trump came around. And nobody is seriously threatening to annex Canada.
Why would anyone even think it’s funny?
Or massive farm subsidies?
You need to expand your view beyond the latest talking points.
It's like trying to joke about touching little kids -- why are you even thinking about that?
USMCA is also up for renegotiation in 2026, so if the US is upset about tariffs on things like dairy, the appropriate venue would be to negotiate at that time. The US already agreed to the existing tariff structure when the first USMCA deal was signed in 2018 under the previous Trump administration.
To specifically address dairy tariffs, US dairy in Canada is actually currently tariff-free because there is a volume cap and the tariffs only apply when that volume cap is exceeded. Currently the US is only using about 40% of that cap.
Finally, the U.S. President is extremely serious about his annexation threats. He said this multiple times, it's not a joke. We do not treat it as a joke in Canada. Please do not insult us by trying to gaslight us.
I am not sure why we're supposed to treat this as a "bad joke"
Canadian tariffs on American imports pre-Trump.
Please explain to me why a 0.98% average effective tariff rate justifies retribution in the form of 25% to 50% tariffs.
Please also explain why it's justifiable, again, for a 0.98% effective tariff rate, to threaten to economically destroy a country and force it to be annexed. To be clear, even with massive economic damage to Canada, we will not be willingly annexed, ever. If you want our country, you must invade. That is ultimately what the annexation threat is. It is a threat of invasion.
To be fair, setting up any kind of serious supply chain with that hard limit on growth isn't going to be a terribly appealing investment on either side of the border. Not approaching the cap now does not imply that volume wouldn't increase if all tariffs were eliminated.
In the meantime, the US has total dominance over our economy and food supply, and ownership of most of our large companies, resources, products. (As a lot of us are finding out now as we try to boycott...)
So, what exactly is the problem? A few small bits of our economy that the US doesn't have total and complete control over and now they just need to go for the jugular?
What, exactly, are you referring to? A statement of observance does not imply there is a problem, and it most definitely does not imply that one would take in interest in talking about problems. Was there something in particular in the comment you replied to that mislead your understanding – that can be fixed to not confused others in the future?
And let's be crystal clear for the Americans: Canada uses supply management for dairy and poultry. We don't allow for free trade in, but we also don't want free trade out. The whole point of supply management is that we only produce for domestic consumption.
So when we sign free trade agreements, we exclude those things, or at most offer a quota. In the case of USMCA we gave the US 4X the quota to send to Canada than in reverse. Meaning those poor Wisconsin dairy farmers got a billion in extra exports, with marginal new imports competing with them.
And within the quota the tariff is 0.00%. Precisely the same for the 1/4 allocation of imports of dairy the US gives Canada. BOTH have largely the same tariffs if you exceed that.
And in the hypothetical that Canada were enticed to remove dairy quotas, no we wouldn't just get flooded with massively subsidized dairy from the US. In reality we'd pull a New Zealand and go wild with production and absolutely devastate your agriculture industry. It would not be the outcome you want. We have the land, the means and the capacity to absolutely take the knees out of US dairy.
So what the US really wants is unrestricted free trade in...but also keep supply management so you don't compete with our industry. ROFL. Nah.