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Wiped out: US faces surging toilet paper prices amid trade war with Canada

theguardian.com

81–90 of 121 posts

Re: Wiped out: US faces surging toilet paper prices amid trade war with Canada

#81

Or maybe the price increase is related to the fact that a communist burned down a massive warehouse storing paper products back in April.

Wiki cites https://www.insurancejournal.com/news/west/2026/04/08/864876... which reads: "loss of the warehouse could impact 3% of sales [for Kimberley-Clark] in the West Coast region", which seems like a long way away from what's being discussed.

Also even though the fire was in Ontario CA, it was Ontario California not Ontario Canada.

Re: Wiped out: US faces surging toilet paper prices amid trade war with Canada

#82
post #11

> The US accounts for more than 20% of global tissue consumption despite having only 4% of the world’s population. The average American uses 141 rolls of toilet paper per year, making them No 1 for No 2s globally, just ahead of Germans, each using an average of 134 rolls annually. Wastefulness is a national pastime.

[deleted]

Re: Wiped out: US faces surging toilet paper prices amid trade war with Canada

#83
post #11

> The US accounts for more than 20% of global tissue consumption despite having only 4% of the world’s population. The average American uses 141 rolls of toilet paper per year, making them No 1 for No 2s globally, just ahead of Germans, each using an average of 134 rolls annually. Wastefulness is a national pastime.

Those numbers sound insane to me. This is almost half a roll per day, for a single person? Can any average american or german person comment on how this actually works? Do you wipe like 15 times per visit, or is it just a very high amount (folded?) of sheets per wipe?

[deleted]

Re: Wiped out: US faces surging toilet paper prices amid trade war with Canada

#84
post #11

> The US accounts for more than 20% of global tissue consumption despite having only 4% of the world’s population. The average American uses 141 rolls of toilet paper per year, making them No 1 for No 2s globally, just ahead of Germans, each using an average of 134 rolls annually. Wastefulness is a national pastime.

Those numbers sound insane to me. This is almost half a roll per day, for a single person? Can any average american or german person comment on how this actually works? Do you wipe like 15 times per visit, or is it just a very high amount (folded?) of sheets per wipe?

They assume a roll ways 90g, and just compute from that. It's a silly measurement that means nothing.

That's only about 50% more than Japan uses, and that's a country that's the most famous user of bidets.

Re: Wiped out: US faces surging toilet paper prices amid trade war with Canada

#85
post #55

Why did Republicans pick a fight with Canada? Same energy as a 13-year-old boy bullying his little brother just because of his own hormone-driven insecurity.

I think it’s fairly well established that Trump treats trade as a zero sum, single play, game.

China is the long term winner here.

Re: Wiped out: US faces surging toilet paper prices amid trade war with Canada

#86

All this is making the current administration less popular with no benefit. This is what you get when you hire a guy who has no brains.

I wonder if Trump even cares - he's now a lame duck president trying to make a legacy for himself by building ballrooms and putting his name on everything (or tearing it down in a huff if not allowed to - Kennedy building).

Insiders say he's bored of being president, bored of his Iran war, and has no interest in going out stumping for others in the midterms since there is nothing in it for himself.

The only enjoyment he's got left is trying to get a rise out of the press and get some adulation from his base with playground antics like his "Lake America".

At this point it's not just that he started out stupid (even his own mother said so), but that he's pretty seriously suffering from dementia - I'm sure any nursing home staff recognize the symptoms.

Re: Wiped out: US faces surging toilet paper prices amid trade war with Canada

#87
post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, Canadian dairy prices were always higher than US prices, probably by 10-20 percent or so. There's an internal quota system, and a prescribed allowable volume for imports with very high tariffs on imports above that prescribed limit. Canada did this to protect its dairy industry, and to ensure there's a level of self sufficiency to their food production. Canada has the same issue in many industries, where the nee…

Got it, so really Canada has historically instituted protectionist policies to protect certain industries and ensure self-sufficiency for items deemed important to national security/national welfare and the result at least in part is consolidation into monopolistic entities in Canada. I'm curious what options Canada has to break up these monopolies and lower prices with respect to their ongoing protectionist policies…

Honestly, most of the incentives aren't aligned with breaking them up or trying to lower prices. If the large corporate entities were broken up, they wouldn't have the scale to compete against their much larger American counterparts. They'd either get pushed out or bought up. And low prices aren't the goal for a company that is protected by government policies - they'll aim to maximize profits within the policy framework instead, and the framework itself does the job of preventing competition from smaller upstart rivals.

Think of the Canadian aircraft manufacturer Bombardier. Canada wants to keep a domestic aircraft manufacturer around so they have a backup in case of US shenanigans (like what just happened with the F-35) so the government ensures there's ongoing contracts for those domestic aircraft as well as subsidies for things like manufacturing plant expansion or modernization. But Canada's population only needs so many aircraft, so why would they waste government resources on a new upstart rival aircraft manufacturer? Bombardier knows this too, so why would they spend their own resources on R&D or modernization when they know they can get the government to pay for it instead? It's a feedback loop, and not necessarily a good one.

Re: Wiped out: US faces surging toilet paper prices amid trade war with Canada

#88

Or maybe the price increase is related to the fact that a communist burned down a massive warehouse storing paper products back in April.

The person in the video was asking for higher pay. "Pay us enough to live". Not very communist of them. Did you see something different? It's hard to know with all the AI generated fakes out there, so I understand if you were misled.

Re: Wiped out: US faces surging toilet paper prices amid trade war with Canada

#89
post #72
post #55

Why did Republicans pick a fight with Canada? Same energy as a 13-year-old boy bullying his little brother just because of his own hormone-driven insecurity.

My guess: to weaken Canada's economy, limit Canada's international standing, bankrupt the sovereign state, cause rise of populism and voters thereof, have its people overthrow the government, then absorb the former country as a state to extract its natural resources, to fulfill manifest destiny. Other than the current tariff narrative, it's fairly standard CIA play when we look at what they did to Latin America alrea…

You are overthinking this.

Donald Trump wants to make the USA bigger. It will put him in the history books. He also wants a lot of chaos so he can be bribed to stop(he won’t).

There is no master plan, just greed.

Re: Wiped out: US faces surging toilet paper prices amid trade war with Canada

#90
post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Got it, so really Canada has historically instituted protectionist policies to protect certain industries and ensure self-sufficiency for items deemed important to national security/national welfare and the result at least in part is consolidation into monopolistic entities in Canada. I'm curious what options Canada has to break up these monopolies and lower prices with respect to their ongoing protectionist policies…

Honestly, most of the incentives aren't aligned with breaking them up or trying to lower prices. If the large corporate entities were broken up, they wouldn't have the scale to compete against their much larger American counterparts. They'd either get pushed out or bought up. And low prices aren't the goal for a company that is protected by government policies - they'll aim to maximize profits within the policy frame…

De Havilland is another Canadian aircraft manufacturer, and is expanding massively right now. But I suppose they serve a different, simpler market than Bombardier.
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