Canada has suspended trade negotiations with the United States, Prime Minister Mark Carney said, after last-minute changes to Washington’s proposed terms were deemed “unfair” and “uneconomic”, a day after US President Donald Trump had said that US "should be able to have a deal with Canada."
The problem in that scenario is that dollar for dollar will hurt the Canadian economy way more, as the American economy is literally 10 times bigger, it will also only hit USA 10% as much relatively.
We all need to boycott USA, because USA has become a rogue nation without respect for international law, and an international menace even to their “former” allies.
Yes, but the USA is having this fight with so many more countries, including the EU. They are pinching themselves in the face and calling it winning.
The USA has power due to its size but if it tries to use that to its advantage against too many countries at once, it doesn’t work.
If they don’t honour deals they have in place, other countries don’t both negotiating a new deal.
EU gave in pretty early on, and has accepted US tariffs without retaliation. But since that Trump has made threats on a couple of occasions, where EU has responded with threatening to escalate if USA doesn’t stand by the agreement made last year.
Even threatening to not respect US IP. This has made Trump pull back and not escalate any further.
Yes. The EU accepted a deal they didn’t like to buy time and pivot away from the US. Whichntheybare increasingly doing. People saw it as capitulation. The beurocrats saw it as not cutting off your nose to spite your face.
Most have learned that caving doesn’t work. Standing up does. So they do.
There was quite a bit of disappointment when the deal was made, but EU had made the negotiation position of the negotiators impossible.
I think considering the madness on the other side, it was probably for the best, although it was a bad deal. And for sure in the long run, it will be bad for USA, because it is a significant part of why Europe is moving away from USA at double speed now.
Personally I would very much like to have our old friend (USA) back. But I don’t think that will happen anytime soon. Because the distrust is not only in Trump, but in the American population. Which for some reason pisses many off when I state that in no uncertain terms here on Lemmy.
Yep, people suck. It’s why the get the day you voted for meme resonates. Trump didn’t break the system. The system allowed and promoted Trump.
The alternative is the long term eroding of our ability to make sovereign trade and policy decisions.
We’re in this precarious spot because we relied on a single, stable majority trade partner for 30 years. The cost to prevent worse will not be nothing.
It’s only natural to have the biggest trade relations with the countries closest to you. In that regard Canada is in a very bad spot geographically.
Canada has done very well fending for their interests, and I think the Canadian people has been a significant part in this, sanctioning American goods like Whiskey.
At least trade between EU and Canada is very good from what I hear, with Canada and EU making trade agreements that have been years in making, but were pushed forward by USA behaving like a maniac.
There has even been talk that Canada should be welcomed as an EU member if they want. 😎
I don’t think that will happen. But I would be positively surprised if it does.
Canada has many friends around the globe, Canada is an extremely trusted country in basically all matters, very much unlike USA.
The US economy is AFAIK doing much worse than Canada, and the US dollar as a global reserve currency is declining rapidly. If that fails, it will be extremely expensive for USA, and you can easily add a couple of percentage points to their already high national bond yields. Making the US federal debt a HUGE burden for the economy.
we’re fine hurting ourselves short term for long term gain
now, what I expect to happen is it’ll get fucked up anyways, but hey that’s gonna happen no matter what we do. can’t negotiate with a hostile nation
Absolutely, the determination is way bigger in Canada. And AFAIK the Canadian economy is doing better than USA.
USA keep threatening allies but are shooting themselves in the foot.
The US has been rogue since WWII, they have just had CEO’s and presidents who hid it better. Trump has no concept of this - he’s a bully elected by his country to make America first. If anyone read Project 2025 they are in no way surprised by this avaricious and corrupt approach. The guy bankrupted five casinos. CASINOS!!! They’re made to make money and he fucked up five of them.
So toe-to-toe is like wrestling a pig, you both end up muddy and pig enjoys it.
We need to maximize our impact by going after the things only Canada can cost effectively provide: oil, LNG, tar, potash, lumber, water, financial products. And dump the F35 like a rock. It can only be used against us anyway; better we partner with the EU.
MAGA:
Make America Go Away.
A small boat can maneuver better than a large ship.
It’s more feasible for Canada to stop buying products from the US because it’s possible to source products from elsewhere. Factories in Asia and Europe might have to hire some more people and put on an extra shift to meet the moderate increase in demand coming from changes in Canadian trade policies.
The US doesn’t have that option in many sectors. It wouldn’t be just hiring some more people to meet a shift in demand, it would require building whole new factories, establishing new mining operations, etc. That takes a lot of time. And given Trump’s instability, no one wants to make long-term investment based on any of his policies. So Americans will just have to pay the tariffs on a lot of things.
US economy is bigger than 10x. Canada cannot survive a trade war with the US, anyone who thinks this is delusional.
There’s the issue of determination, and in that regard Canada also has 10 times the determination of USA.
In Canada this is supported by the population, in USA it is not.
But yes it will cause more hurt on the Canadian side than the US. No doubt about that.
On the other hand, Canada is a much respected country globally, and has made many new trade deals with other countries.
While USA is being shunned by basically the entire world now. Nobody likes USA anymore. In fact most traditional allies think China is more reliable than USA.
Short term this may hurt Canada more than USA, but long term USA will be the one that has to give in, disregarding their bigger economy.
It’s just too bad that Canada has to suffer this idiocy in the meantime.
IMO Canada should go harder than dollar for dollar. Also because trump is a bully, and the only thing a bully fears, is a victim that hits back harder.
Drop in the bucket. Canada US trade is $1.3T , a few deals with EU and China is barely 10% of that. Y’all need to consult a globe. There is no way we can replace US trade with other countries simply due to geography. There is no way we could deliver goods to Europe or Asia without massive shipping costs.
Carney never should have even negociated. Any deal would have lasted a month, tops. We should kick the ball forward until the mid terms when Trump gets his balls cut off, or dies. If Carney didn’t realize he was getting played than Canada is fucked. Trump’s trade chaos benefits his inner circle of cronies, he doesn’t want stability.
That is true, but shipping at sea is not that expensive, there’s a reason Japan could capture car markets in both USA and Europe already in the 60’s from factories in Japan.
Trade with EU and China each have the same economic potential as USA.
Trade relations need to be built, and that takes time. But there is a strong potential for growth in global trade between Canada and other countries in the world than USA.
You say look at a globe, I live in Denmark, and USA is the biggest export market for us. So it is possible to have very significant trade across the Atlantic.
Part of that trade btw is shipping itself, where Mærsk the biggest global container shipping company in the world is headquartered in Denmark.
Sea shipping is incredibly efficient which really helps make such surprising things possible with a strong enough comparative advantage. That said, it’s still an added friction, does take time and adds in some more risks. Being close counts for quite a lot if that trade is more or less freely allowed.
Looking at this World Bank data for Denmark in 2023 (latest year it was tabulated for), it actually has next door big neighbor Germany as getting ~13.7% of Denmark’s total exports followed by Sweden, the Netherlands and Norway before getting to the US’ ~5.0%. Somewhat more distant European heavyweights like the UK, Poland and France follow not terribly far behind before you get to enormous economy China. Swap it to import and again neighboring big economy Germany is providing a whopping ~20.3% followed by Sweden and the Netherlands before you get to China’s ~6.5%, then Poland, then the US’ ~4.6%. Not far behind trails Norway at ~4.5%. So Norway has a relatively similar share of Denmark’s trade going either way compared to what the US has, despite having an economy multiple hundreds of times smaller than that of the US. That proximity really helps!
The US in the same data is importing roughly the same ~14% share from each of neighboring Mexico and Canada as well as giant super focused on exporting China, and going the other way US exports are double to both Mexico and Canada what they are to China. Despite the Mexican and Canadian economies even combined together being like a fifth of China’s economy.
Also most of Canada’s population is distributed pretty near to the very lengthy border with the US, intermittently broken up by challenging terrain and only a comparatively small fraction is coastal. This has had the effect of encouraging parallel north-south trade corridors going across the border. If those flows instead are directed east-west to Canada’s ports which are also already stretched then the existing infrastructure can also potentially be limiting even with Canada signing a ton of amazing trade deals. Check out this picture of Canada’s road networks and see that there are some rather surprising bottlenecks.
All that said Canada should absolutely seek the best trade deals it can get with as many countries as possible in the circumstances. But I think it may be difficult to find enough low-hanging fruit still left to make up for such a huge gap, surely if it were that easy to expand trade so massively it wouldn’t have been ignored prior to this point of crisis?
Very informative, maybe what I heard was that USA is the biggest outside EU. But in this regard it should also be considered that EU has completely frictionless trade, it’s almost like selling between 2 states in USA. So that is also a huge factor.
But I won’t deny that a huge wealthy economy right next door is the obvious trade partner. But when that economy is governed by madness, shipping by sea is absolutely an option. How else would an island economy like Japan be able to be one of the leading economies in the world?
Mark Carney also clearly expressed that Canada is in a way better situation today than 18 months ago in negotiating with USA, very much because Canada has made multiple new trade agreements.
Traditionally however there hasn’t been much shipping from Canada to these trade partners, because for some reason that transport has gone through USA, which is not an option anymore. So these shipping lines need to be established, and maybe Canada even needs new port facilities and transportation hubs for this new expanding trade to not have to pass USA, which should absolutely be avoided in case of US tariffs.
Carney has been saying you can’t trust the US well before these trade negotiations. He said an agreement with the US isn’t worth the paper is written on.
Obviously the point of negotiations is to buy time. That and you go full-Trump and make big threats and do things without a plan, things tend to go bad. And when things go bad it’s hard to explain to people you didn’t even try to negotiate.
Carney has made deals with countries all over the world. If Trump kills auto production, we can replace deals with Ford, GM, and Stellantis with deals with manufacturers in other countries. Even China. I don’t care if it’s Gonna, Hyundai or BYD that owns the factories in Canada. If it employs Canadian workers is all good.
But these kinds of contingencies take time to prepare. If negotiating means more time to prepare, then you negotiate.
You don’t have to worry about whether Carney was preparing for this. Would’ve been nice to have more time, but here in Canada we all knew this would come someday.
Do you think the US has done anything to prepare for a trade war with Canada? I’m all likelihood we’ll Bunce back and forth between tariffs and TACO for about a month before anything takes effect because I’m pretty sure the US side of this trade war doesn’t know what they’re doing.
Why would they have to survive a trade war with the US? They’re diversifying their trade partners daily. Lol soon they won’t be visiting here, buying our products or investing in our companies but sure, we’re in control lmao
The US-Canada border is $1.3T in annual trade, even with new deals , the rest of the world is barely 10% that.
For now
Nah just people who understand economics. Americans have the bully mentality which makes them think bigger = stronger, and generally think of economics in a backwards way.
I’m not going to be paying Trump’s tariffs, Americans will be. That big economy can’t resolve the tarriffed products, so Americans just have to pay. Even the price of non-tarriffed products will increase in price because there’s not enough non-tarriffed products to meet demand.
Canada, being a smaller economy, will be better able to find substitutes for US made products elsewhere.
Is also less costly for a smaller economy to retool. Which means less investment dollars needed.
So I hope Americans enjoy the inflation their dear leader is creating with his antics.