Summary

Donald Trump launched a trade war against Canada by imposing a 25% tariff on nearly all Canadian goods, including a 10% levy on energy products.

His action, intended to pressure Canada to curb fentanyl flows, contradicts official trade figures and ignores that most deficits result from American demand for cheaper Canadian oil.

The tariffs, set to remain until Canada complies, could cost billions to Canada’s economy and disrupt $800 billion in annual trade.

Canada is expected to retaliate, forcing Prime Minister Trudeau to respond amid escalating cross-border tensions.

  • ReallyActuallyFrankenstein@lemmynsfw.com
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    16 hours ago

    His logic is actually flawless. Let me explain with a metaphor:

    Trump has an imagined pain in his foot, so to cure it, he’s going to open the hood of the family car and kick the engine as hard as he can. So you see, this will break his other foot and severely damage the car.

    Hopefully that helps.

    • IninewCrow@lemmy.ca
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      15 hours ago

      Can we leave him with his broken foot in the engine and under hood while I start the car?

    • 9488fcea02a9@sh.itjust.works
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      14 hours ago

      that metaphor assumes that these tariffs are going to hurt america more than it hurts canada…

      i’m pretty sure we’re the foot in your analogy. we’re getting fucked

  • otp@sh.itjust.works
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    12 hours ago

    His action, intended to pressure Canada to curb fentanyl flows,

    During the pandemic, when we (Canada) closed the borders, we saw an increase in fentanyl-related deaths.

    Rather than being caused by mental wellbeing issues, it was believed to be caused by poorer drug supply (more impurities).

    So if closing the border made our drugs worse-quality, isn’t the US the problem?

    This is like the US closing the border because they’re worried about all the illegal guns crossing into the US from Canada…

        • AJ1@lemmy.ca
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          12 hours ago

          I’m also a dual citizen, and as soon as people find that out, all they want to talk about is “your president”, as if I voted for the motherfucker. I’ve lived in Canada for 16 years and will never go back to that shithole, and everybody wants me to take responsibility for what D-bag does. I didn’t vote for him, I don’t live in the US, and all they want to do is yell at me every time he does something idiotic (which is of course every single day). Needless to say I stopped telling people where I’m from. I’ve gotten really good at the Canadian accent, I sound like I was born & raised on the Prairies. Nobody could pick me out… except for the fact that I don’t have a German surname and I’m not Mennonite

  • Nougat@fedia.io
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    15 hours ago

    Before Trump imposed his tariffs, the Canadian government said U.S. gas prices could jump some 75 cents US a gallon overnight if he went ahead with tariffs.

    Higher fuel prices are going to make the consumer cost of everything go up.

      • Corkyskog@sh.itjust.works
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        7 hours ago

        Dont worry, soon you will only make transactions in Doge and get paid in Bitcoin.

        Why else would they be going out of their way to kill the dollar?

    • FiveMacs@lemmy.ca
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      15 hours ago

      They think they will continue to earn sales when things go up. I’ve already stopped buying anything but food, so honestly…I don’t care. Everything can skyrocket 300% and I wouldn’t give a flying fuck

      In my mind, it’s time to teach ALL companies a lesson and stop consuming. I mean full stop, but literally nothing. Kill them financially. I know this won’t happen because the majority of smooth brained idiots who can’t help but buy dumb shit over and over

  • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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    15 hours ago

    Implementing a tariff without giving businesses an alternative is a self-inflicted wound in a trade war.

    • LifeInMultipleChoice@lemmy.world
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      15 hours ago

      Being that we cut regulations over and over the number of refineries to oil in the U.S. decreased drastically over the years. It is why we had shortages while having loads of crude oil laying around. A quick search shows that building a refinery takes 3-5 years. So unless we can use the refineries we have to produce the fuel we need, we may hit years of higher prices. (Our lifting costs are much higher)

        • LifeInMultipleChoice@lemmy.world
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          15 hours ago

          I’m looking forward to not being able to afford to live anymore soon. It currently costs me $20 a day to go to work. Just the .75 cents on gas would cost me $120 a month extra right now. Food costs are already outrageous. Certainly going to need a lot more ramen. I have chickens for eggs, but I should figure out some good ways to can/preserve vegatables this season for next winter. I can’t just throw everything in the freezer, not enough room.

    • Savaran@lemmy.world
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      15 hours ago

      What makes you think it’s supposed to help anyone? This is them speed running tearing the US down to the nails and selling it off for pennies to themselves.

    • vastard@lemmynsfw.com
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      15 hours ago

      He’s hoping he’ll hurt us (Canada) enough that suddenly his offer to “save” us by becoming a US territory is appealing. Any sort of fentanyl or national security reasoning is just an excuse.

      • AJ1@lemmy.ca
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        12 hours ago

        at some point they’re gonna want our water, and it’ll be much easier if we’re a US territory when they finally make the decision to take it

    • tal@lemmy.today
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      15 hours ago

      I don’t know if it’ll do much from a policy standpoint – I doubt that Canada is simply not pulling easy-to-pull levers related to fentanyl. Also, he didn’t aim to negotiate, but just said that he’d impose tariffs, and didn’t announce concrete goals. But it might benefit him politically.

      I imagine that a lot of his domestic agenda is not going to be all that popular with a lot of people who voted for him. If people are talking about him taking extreme actions aimed at dealing with fentanyl – an issue of widespread political concern – that’s probably preferable.

  • Someone@lemmy.ca
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    16 hours ago

    We need at least a 25% export tax on all energy exports. Clearly they need it or it wouldn’t have set a lower rate. 100% of proceeds can go towards building our own refineries to reduce reliance on the US in the future, in Alberta if that will be what it takes to stop their whining.

    • Windex007@lemmy.world
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      14 hours ago

      All AB has ever wanted is scaled access to global markets. Canada gets hosed on oil prices because the US is the only meaningful importer and they know we can’t move it to other markets. They’ll always be in the prime negotiation position as long as they’re the only material customer.

      • Someone@lemmy.ca
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        12 hours ago

        And BC’s 2 biggest issues with allowing a pipeline (depending on whether you’re talking to the province or the people) are that we’d be taking the risk of shipping crude oil through our islands and remote coastlines, and that we wouldn’t really see any local benefits. Building refineries, whether in Alberta, BC, or otherwise, would alleviate our reliance on the US, lower prices (or at least isolate us from major fluctuations from the exchange rate), and make the product less toxic (figuratively and literally) to those opposed to pipelines.

        • Windex007@lemmy.world
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          12 hours ago

          I think you’re missing the sheer scale of production capacity, and severely underestimateing how it actually makes the primary issue (logistics) so much worse. Refinement turns the raw inputs into MANY output products, and you can’t mix them, so suddenly you have the same volume of products, but suddenly you need even more complex logistical frameworks to move them. The suggestion of putting refineries in AB when we’re already bottlenecked is the industrial equivalent of hiring a pro athlete to teach a newborn infant to run. There isn’t a conspiracy as to why refineries are all geographically positioned for maximal logistical efficiency: they’re extremely sensitive to logistics.

          If we were going to put a refinery anywhere, it should be in BC. If they’re more comfortable putting other refined petroleum products on ships, sweet. The construction is big money infused into the economy, so is the operation. So is the increased shipping activity.

          Like, Canada is one country, and now more than ever it HAS to be operating at the national level of economic interests. Canada HAS to integrate it’s energy with the rest of the world.

  • j4k3@lemmy.world
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    16 hours ago

    Americans suffering from pain that are not serviced by a corrupt medical system, and the most peaceful way to punch one’s own timecard is under attack in a way that will increase the cost of goods and services to average serfs, peasants, and wage slaves in the USA.

  • Riskable@programming.dev
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    15 hours ago

    Canada will probably just cut off the pipelines into the US and partner with Europe to get all that oil shipped there.

    • Windex007@lemmy.world
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      14 hours ago

      Canada (as a federal unit) has pretty desperately been trying to allow itself to trade oil on the global stage, but the infrastructure to allow that just isn’t there. To get meaningful quantities to Canadian ports required pipelines through to the west coast, and that was politically unpalatable to the people living there.

      Really sucks that Canada just plainly didn’t build the infrastructure to expand to global markets. Most intercontinental trade of Canadian petroleum is via Florida. It’d be great if Canada could flood the European and Asian markets to kneecap Russias war machine funding. But the infrastructure isn’t there.

    • Jimmycakes@lemmy.world
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      15 hours ago

      That’s exactly what they want and what all this is about. America has access to all the oil it needs but there are too many pesky laws and environmental exclusion zones. This will create a “shortage” so they will need to start up new drilling operations in the gulf, in Alaska, fracking, national parks, any other shit they got cooked up. We can become a net exporter in the short term so these ghouls can get richer quickly and they will have all their money and it will be someone else’s problem to fix

  • StopTouchingYourPhone@lemmy.world
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    15 hours ago

    O weird… Across every platform, I kept reading this would never happen and was just a distraction from some other terrible thing - or if it did happen it’d be our fault for paying attention in the first place (and Daddy drinks because you cry) - and here we are again. Murka doing exactly what they threatened to do.

    Looking forward to Trudeau’s response at 6. And the fuck Trudeau brigade can get bent.

    [edit bc nobody needs more allcaps]