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The Tariff Cost: analysis of the costs to Americans from new tariffs on Canada

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Re: The Tariff Cost: analysis of the costs to Americans from new tariffs on Canada

#111

Post by declan_roberts »

mthoms wrote: post #82
declan_roberts wrote: post #52

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 b…

>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). htt…

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...

Re: The Tariff Cost: analysis of the costs to Americans from new tariffs on Canada

#112

Post by thisisit »

maxglute wrote: post #83

LBH, Canada has always been real economy loser with respect US trade with ~80b goods / services deficit AFTER discounted energy - cheap crude sales to US to fuel US refinery mismatch. US doesn't have strategic domestic energy self sufficiency without Canadian crude, CAN sludge should be selling at premium (same with VZ but we see how that went). In an ideal world Canada could be making more refining and selling high…

They know the stick is huge but with how everything is going with US and the TACO mentality they feel US will be back on the table once the reality starts hitting.

The whole story about why the talks failed:

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/25/world/canada/trump-carney...

US having veto over Canada trade negotiations, dictating language policy which could cause Quebec to cede from Canada, and stop the "buy Canadian" policy put after the last tariff round etc. It not even a stick anymore it is a proper gun which blow in the face of any Canadian who agrees to these terms.

Re: The Tariff Cost: analysis of the costs to Americans from new tariffs on Canada

#113

Post by b112 »

A_D_E_P_T wrote: post #64
afavour wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's no longer any need for an NGO, media nonprofit, or lobbying group to build such things; the effort required has been reduced to near-zero Right but actually creating the thing is only half the story. You need to fact check it (especially with LLMs) promote it, approach journalists to bring it to their attention, etc etc etc. In many ways making a web site has always been the easy part.

> You need to fact check it (especially with LLMs) That's true... but with every day that passes it's increasingly less true. Today's best high-end LLMs are highly optimized towards fact checking themselves and each other. The winning move is to get a report from Claude and have both Kimi K3 and GPT-5.6-Pro adverserially review it. Then synthesize a fixed version with any one of them. Then adverserially review it aga…

Every time I check facts with Claude, it looks at web pages to get stats!

With no humans publishing semi reliable data, there is nothing for Claude to quote.

Re: The Tariff Cost: analysis of the costs to Americans from new tariffs on Canada

#114

Post by thisisit »

declan_roberts wrote: post #52

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 b…

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.

Re: The Tariff Cost: analysis of the costs to Americans from new tariffs on Canada

#115

Post by SmirkingRevenge »

lenerdenator wrote: post #4

I'm trying to think of the number of people I (an American) know who considered trade with Canada to be a real issue. The answer I keep coming back to is I know zero people who considered that. Does the US have a trade imbalance that causes problems, particularly in our manufacturing sector? Yes. Can tariffs kind of help with that? Also yes. Really, you need to instill some sort of sense of duty to country in busines…

I mostly agree, except that trade imbalances are not problems and don't really cause problems.

Buying and selling don't need to be equal between buyers and sellers, and it's really just an incoherent idea.

Re: The Tariff Cost: analysis of the costs to Americans from new tariffs on Canada

#116

Post by Mezzie »

lenerdenator wrote: post #9
apercu wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But does America have a trade imbalance with Canada? Canada has things that our economy needs desperately (e.g. potash).

I'd say that the cultural links are so strong that any actual accounting for trade imbalance is just not worth thinking about. Some things are bigger than money. ... which, come to think of it, is something that the current administration doesn't understand, at least from a "personal net worth" standpoint, and explains why this is happening to begin with.

That's one thing that I find so confusing about this. Even if we assume that the administration genuinely doesn't care and does want to annex/culturally subjugate Canada, it's really not easy to separate the two cultures and escalating this to a certain degree is going to prompt domestic backlash.

I was born in America. About half of my ancestors lived in Canada on both sides of my family, I know my Canadian cousins, I spent time in Canada growing up/was taught Canadian history as well as American history, I have a Canadian education and half of my professional network is Canadian, etc. I'm eligible for dual citizenship and am pursuing it now, as are other members of my family, whereas we never bothered before because the separation never seemed to matter. With the recent change in Canadian citizenship laws, I'd estimate at least 25% of the Great Lakes population is eligible for dual citizenship at this point.

One of my parents and some of my siblings are Ojibwe/Anishinaabe. My paternal cousins are all French Catholic. (My dad's parents were Protestant but my aunt married into an old French Catholic family and converted.)

I don't even really know how I would separate out the two nations' influence, and that's true of a lot of people, especially those of us whose families have lived here since before America and Canada existed.

Re: The Tariff Cost: analysis of the costs to Americans from new tariffs on Canada

#117

Post by kps »

Throaway826 wrote: post #84
ericmay wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone else shared this article [1] and I was reading a quote I thought was interesting: “[Canada] has a large dairy producing constituency that it wants to protect, so they put a cap on imports that can be accessed at a competitive rate. That's what we call a ‘TRQ’ (tariff rate quota),” says Becky Rasdall Vargas, senior vice president of trade and workforce policy at the International Dairy Foods Association. Under…

The main reason the Dairy Supply quota is in place is to stop US dairy producers from dumping dairy into Canada. That's why the USA has never reached the tarriff limit. The big producers there would just dump 20 million litres at once if they could. They aren't interested in 1 or two. And if they were able to do that, the Canadian producers would go under. So its kinda simple, the Dairy Supply system is there to prot…

> The main reason the Dairy Supply quota is in place is to stop US dairy producers from dumping dairy into Canada.

Yet the same rules apply to European cheese: limited quantities that can only be imported through an established dairy cartel member. Anti-Americanism is a convenient marketing tool, along with the nostalgic myth of the independent family farm. The reality is oligarchs like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saputo_Inc.

Re: The Tariff Cost: analysis of the costs to Americans from new tariffs on Canada

#118

Post by SmirkingRevenge »

lenerdenator wrote: post #78
ajmurmann wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every side benefits from a trade. That's why the trade is made. The US is able to afford a trader imbalance because the USD is the world's reserve currency. Other countries are subsidizing our trade imbalance. It's a huge win for the US. Tariffs will not bring back manufacturing. They increase prices of inputs, reduce incentive for competitiveness and invite retaliation. Look how well tariffs have worked for Brazil a…

> The US is able to afford a trader imbalance because the USD is the world's reserve currency. Other countries are subsidizing our trade imbalance. It's a huge win for the US. The geopolitical calculations regarding China and the socioeconomic conditions of working class people in the Midwestern and Northeastern United States would beg to differ. You need to have at least some control of your own manufacturing destin…

Also FWIW - the US is the second largest manufacturer in the world, only behind China due to it's larger population. Our productivity per worker blows China away (though they are catching up) and is the best in the world. We manufacture plenty and do it well.

This idea that we have lost manufacturing and we need some push to onshore it all again is... well... another manufactured problem that isn't.

Re: The Tariff Cost: analysis of the costs to Americans from new tariffs on Canada

#119

Post by senderista »

carefulfungi wrote: post #73
lenerdenator wrote: post #4

I'm trying to think of the number of people I (an American) know who considered trade with Canada to be a real issue. The answer I keep coming back to is I know zero people who considered that. Does the US have a trade imbalance that causes problems, particularly in our manufacturing sector? Yes. Can tariffs kind of help with that? Also yes. Really, you need to instill some sort of sense of duty to country in busines…

As an American, I don't see see how you can separate this trade talk from the constant, explicit threats to Canadian sovereignty by Trump - threats he's carried out in reality against Iran, Venezuela, and Cuba. And now economically against Canada. It isn't just "which Americans consider trade with Canada to be a real issue," it is "which Americans think Canada should become a territory of the United States." It's jus…

I don't believe that annexing Canada is really a MAGA issue, even though they may claim to support it. I think it's just an inexplicable Trumpian obsession like Greenland.

Re: The Tariff Cost: analysis of the costs to Americans from new tariffs on Canada

#120

Post by tensor »

ericmay wrote: post #6

> And Canada is taxing you back This seems illogical. You can't simultaneously claim that the US is paying higher prices for Canadian goods because of US-imposed tariffs and then turn around and say only that Americans are paying a tax on buying Canadian goods on Canadian-imposed tariffs. Both countries are either paying higher prices or paying higher taxes. Canada's tariffs must also be viewed as America is taxing C…

Agreed that "Canada is taxing you back" doesn't make sense. But "America is taxing Canada" makes even less sense. Sorry, just no. America is taxing Americans, Canada is taxing Canadians, these taxes harm exports and imports.

Also, we've never had fully free trade. You can whine about dairy, we can whine about unfair lumber tariffs. These are all part of CUMSA, an agreement that has been illegally violated every damn day under Trump's regime. Let's just cut to the chase. If Trump won't honour CUMSA why make any deal with him? There is no reason he'll honour any new agreement either. He was the one who negotiated CUMSA in the first place.

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