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Comment by declan_roberts | Hacker News Reader

Canada is very unfortunately caught in the trade war between the USA and China. It's pretty easy right now for certain goods to bypass the US tariffs by being transshipped through Canada and enter the USA without tariff because of minimal processing. Chinese steel is a notable example of this.

And a lot of Canada's trade MOUs with other countries basically requires they have this special privilege. So there's gonna be fallout everywhere.

I wouldn't personally want to own Canadian dollars right now but I think they'll get this figured out.

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>It's pretty easy right now for certain goods to bypass the US tariffs by being transshipped through Canada and enter the USA without tariff because of minimal processing.

This talking point keeps getting repeated on HN. Always without sources because the only source is a dubious White House "report" that is nothing more than a manufactured reason for buying an expensive new AI system (probably from a big donor). https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/The-Gr...

That same report equally names the European Union, India, Israel, Japan, Mexico, South Korea, and Taiwan alongside Canada. So literally every modern western economy is making this "pretty easy"? Yeah, ok.

I haven't personally seen it on HN but it has been an issue at least since the beginning of tariffs, and there's significant rules in the original NAFTA agreement to try and curb it. So it's not new, and definitely predates that report.

Here's a NYT article from April about the difficulty in preventing transhipping.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/07/us/politics/tariffs-trade...

Where does it say "it's pretty easy" to do this via Canada? Canada isn't even mentioned in your source. Only Asian countries are. Please stop repeating as fact nonsense you vaguely half-remember hearing somewhere. It's very Trumpian. The whole world isn't out to get you.

I'm not saying trans-shipping doesn't happen. I'm sure it does. But your framing was entirely baseless.

>Canada is very unfortunately caught in the trade war between the USA and China.

canada is very unfortunately caught in the trade war between the USA and canada

No, Canada is just the last in line of this US administration's mission of alienating and pissing off every single ally while bending to enemies and Israel.

Canada generally doesn't have much problem coordinating with the US on tariffs on Chinese goods. A primary example is Chinese Vehicles. The trouble is that by launching a trade war against Canada, the US has lost the willingness of Canadians to participate in such coordination.

Re: Canadian dollars, it's the US dollar that I believe is the more salient concern [0]

[0] https://www.morningstar.com/news/dow-jones/20260825307/bitco...

Chinese vehicles are a little more conspicuous in their origin than rolled steel and aluminum.

If steel and aluminum is imported to Canada, they face Canadian tariff rates. If the US and Canada coordinate their tariff regimes (as I illustrated with the EV example), the rolled steel and aluminum will be tariffed at a rate the US government deems adequate.

If you're suggesting that Canada is facilitating the covert smuggling of Chinese steel and aluminum then I'd require a bit more evidence. It's become fashionable for the US government to level such accusations, but as we saw with claims about fentanyl, it's all bunk.

CAD vs USD is rather stable, varying between 0.70-0.73 the last 12 months though trending down from 0.8 in the last 60 months.

> Canada is very unfortunately caught in the trade war between the USA and China

Ottawa is fighting Anchluss. The MAGA wing is entirely serious about annexing Canada.

Carney, for a change, is right. Canada is being attacked.

[spelling] EN:Anschluss https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anschluss

>The MAGA wing is entirely serious about annexing Canada.

Wow, that's some amazing propaganda you've bought in to there...

Donald Trump has said exactly this, repeatedly, for two years straight.

He posted a picture of him taking over Canada and arresting Carney today.

That is not propaganda. And if you say it's "joking", if you threaten to shoot your friend multiple times, you'll find they don't consider it a joke.

Canada is being attacked because it has become a (willing?) pawn for the CCP.

Ukraine was used as a pawn to anger Russia. What did Russia try to do and continue to do so?

Canada has been used as a pawn to threaten America by China, and Canada is trying to pivot from the USA to China?

Canada is being attacked because its leadership are mobsters who attack everyone around them and then do insider trading to make themselves rich

> Ukraine was used as a pawn to anger Russia. What did Russia try to do and continue to do so?

Ukraine is a sovereign country, free to decide for themselves which military and economic bloc best suits them.

Russia rolled tanks into Ukraine after denying they were planning to attack, airdropped special forces into Kyiv after denying they were planning to attack, repeatedly threatened the use of nuclear weapons even though they're not willing to admit to being at war and Ukraine doesn't have nukes, tried to assassinate then candidate-PM Yushchenko in 2004, annexed Crimea, committed a bunch of warcrimes while doing so, and they did all this even though Ukraine only gave up its nuclear arsenal under the condition that its sovereignty would be respected.

> Canada has been used as a pawn to threaten America by China, and Canada is trying to pivot from the USA to China?

Canada's primary pivot is away from the USA, not towards China, e.g. Canada also deepening ties with the EU.

I think MAGA would be okay with the...fly over provinces..is that what they would be called?

The rest is too woke, too British, and too CCP oriented to work with.

It is more than Chinese steel: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/25/world/canada/trump-carney...

Asking them to change French programming laws, and stopping the "Buy Canadian goods" law etc.

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