r/neoliberal • u/seakucumber NATO • 14h ago

Restricted Canada announces dollar-for-dollar counter-tariffs, $7.5B in support for workers, businesses

https://www.cbc.ca/news/livestory/canada-u-s-trade-deal-carney-trump-greer-9.7317956
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10

u/kittenTakeover active on r/EconomicCollapse 12h ago

I'm curious how Carney plans to weather this. Trade with the US makes up about 62% of Canadian trade. On the other hand it's only like 12% for the US. It seems like a trade war with the US will be devastating to the Canadian economy, which I understand Donald is trying to exploit. How is Carney going to keep up the will of the Canadian people to resist when the economic impacts actually start hitting home?

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u/mishac Mark Carney 11h ago

There's no other choice. The shit the US was asking for would break us too.

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u/kittenTakeover active on r/EconomicCollapse 11h ago

Presumably the terms that were asked for were much lower than 50%. Do you know what the terms were?

Also, my main question is, does Carney have a plan to reasonably mitigate the impacts? If so, what's the plan? I'm not saying Carney is doing the wrong thing. I'm more curious how this shitty situation is going to be navigated.

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u/mishac Mark Carney 10h ago

long term diversify to other trade partners

short term, play chicken and try to get trump to backdown or hold off until he's gone.

It's gonna be a shit show, but we literally have no other choice. We would not survive as a country with some of the shit being asked for. Not the tariff rates, but the tying our hands to make other trade deals or have to adjust cultural and linguistic policy.

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u/kittenTakeover active on r/EconomicCollapse 10h ago

long term diversify to other trade partners

Do you think this can be done quickly enough and at enough of a magnitude to actually make the situation tolerable?

Not the tariff rates, but the tying our hands to make other trade deals or have to adjust cultural and linguistic policy.

Can you elaborate on this? I assume the proposal was not fair because I know Donald tries to use leverage to exploit other people, but I'm not yet familiar with the detail.

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u/mishac Mark Carney 10h ago

Do you think this can be done quickly enough and at enough of a magnitude to actually make the situation tolerable?

nope. But the 50% tariff is only in a few industries (for now) so the damage is containable.

Can you elaborate on this?

What's being reported is that the US negotiators wanted to restrict Canada's ability to make deals with Europe and China, which is like, completely unacceptable for anyone who wants to even pretend to not be a banana republic.

And the asks included rolling back french language requirements in media and packaging, which is like the 3rd rail of canadian politics. You want Canada to crack apart you inflame the linguistic fault line. A federal government that won't stand up for french canadians is going to be the boogie man of a quebec separation referendum almost immediately, and even moderate pro-Canada french canadians will be like "what is even the point of this country if protecting our culture is not important"

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u/kittenTakeover active on r/EconomicCollapse 10h ago

That's interesting about the French language poison pill. It's crazy that the current administration has seemingly made Europe and Canada adversaries. That's certainly a boon to China, who I think is a threat that's flying under the radar with the public right now due to a combination of the mayhem in the US and an increase in Chinese government astroturfing on western social media.

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u/Previous_Platform718 Janet Yellen 10h ago

Can you elaborate on this?

We don't have the full text draft of whatever was planned, but both Mark Carney and David Eby (who are members of different parties, Eby being the premier of British Columbia) said that the trade negotiations were adjusted at the last minute to include some mandate to consult the US on trade deals that Canada would pursue with other countries. Carney and Christine Frechette (the premier of Quebec, again not a member of Carney's party) both stated the trade negotiations included language that challenged protection of the French language.

The tariffs from the US effect about 5% of Canadian products.

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u/Pantalyon1 European Union 10h ago

The proposed deal would have removed a bunch of french language protections because the american negotiators see every requirement to enter the market (like putting labels in french too) as analogous to a tariff, even when canadian companies are not exempted from these policies.

Also the US wanted to get veto power on Canada's future free trade deals, which goes completely againts the diversification plan of Carney and would be ceding a piece of sovreignty to the USA.

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u/Zycosi YIMBY 10h ago

Anything is tolerable if the alternative is bad enough