‘No room left for Mexico or Canada’ to make a deal, Trump says
U.S. President Donald Trump says his long-threatened trade war is going ahead with tariffs on Canadian goods set to take effect just after midnight and there’s nothing Canada can do to stop them.
Speaking to reporters at the White House, Trump said the United States has been “a laughingstock for years and years” and he needs to take trade action against its continental neighbours.
He said Canada has allowed fentanyl to flood into the U.S. despite data that shows the claim is false.
“Very importantly, tomorrow, tariffs, 25 per cent on Canada and 25 per cent on Mexico, and that will start. So, they’re gonna have to have a tariff,” Trump said.
Just so I’m clear, if/when Trump imposes tariffs on Canadian goods entering the US, Canada plans reciprocate with equal Teriffs on US goods entering Canada?
I/we know and understand that teriffs are basically an import tax, paid to the government by the companies which are bringing the product in, and generally that cost is passed down to consumers in the form of a higher price tag on goods.
Is the end goal here is to bolster our own economy by making US goods prohibitively expensive for Canadian citizens to buy, in turn making Canadians more likely to purchase Canadian goods (which is what we are trying to do anyway)?
What is stopping this from hurting out economy the same way it will likely hurt the US economy?
I feel like I need a stronger understanding of the situation.
There are other options than tariffs! Export taxes. Changes in regulation. Contract cancelations.
Canada has many options. We could, for instance, withdraw from bilateral copyright agreements. Or limit the amount of electricity that’s permitted to be exported.
Cory Doctorow suggests that we could establish Canadian app stores with a 5% cut and mandate that all phones sold in Canada be configured to use them. Lots of ideas, on a scale from good to bad, but there’s options.
The main factor is that our tarrifs are likely to be more targeted, because we have a reasonably functional government
Just put 100% tariffs on Teslas and either the tariffs will be gone tomorrow or we’ll get invaded.
The end goal of retaliatory tariffs are to make US businesses lobby their government to have our tariffs removed so that they can resume sales.
We should put export tariffs on energy and other critical goods that US needs in order to raise US inflation without cost to Canadian consumers, and with a boost to Canada revenues. It is the US consumer impact that would affect popular opinion against the tariffs.
FFS, we should make sure China buys our agriculture instead of US agriculture.
Canadian tariffs are targeted in a number of ways. One of the ways is targeting American goods that have Canadian alternatives. So the goal is to make American products less attractive by making them more expensive, damaging the US economy while bolstering our own.
There aren’t really winners in trade wars but the goal is to minimize our pain while maximizing theirs.
I feel like it’s often missed that it isn’t a binary Buy US/Buy Canada dilemma. Most goods have substitutes - there are other countries that can produce most consumer goods. It’s only when you start getting into high-value-added goods like turbines, flash memory, missiles and planes that there’s difficulties in import substitution. A 25% retaliatory tariff doesn’t mean your canned tomatoes are definitely going up by 25%, but you’ll likely start seeing Mexican, Peruvian, etc. canned tomatoes on Canadian shelves that weren’t there before.
And while patriotism is great and all, buying goods from other countries that we don’t have strong established trading ties with is a good way to make the case for closer bilateral cooperation and even future free trade agreements that exceed most-favoured nation benefits conferred by the WTO. When countries start building export-driven industries that give dignity and economic self-sufficiency for their citizens, that’s a future tiger worthy of negotiating a free trade agreement with.
One beneficial side effect of the informal US products boycott in grocery stores is that many stores have already started trying to source other products. It’s tough to change on short notice, and businesses often aren’t very…future focused. The boycott has already started to push grocery stores in my area. There were Moroccan oranges advertised for sale last week. That means there’s already a Moroccan exporter/importer already set up to clear customs, who is probably already increasing capacity.
The other thing to consider is where in the production chain the tariff is applied. Canada is unlikely to tariff the inputs into Canadian producers, just finished products with Canadian or friendly alternatives.
Thank you for the response! I haven’t seen a lot of specifics about the Canadian tariffs, but maybe I just haven’t been looking in the right places. It makes a lot of sense to target particular items which have Canadian alternatives, and to put pressure on Red states as u/IslandLife mentioned below.
Edit: I was wondering why the word “Teriff” didn’t look right. Apparently my phone decided that was the proper way to spell Tariff.
You can find a general list of the types of products covered by the initial $30B tariffs here. There’s a very detailed list released by the government here.
I don’t think they’ve released the details of the second wave of tariffs (~$155B) yet.
Fantastic, thanks again! Looks like I’ve got some reading to do.
yea, Tariffs suck for everyone, especially when applied unilaterally… however its the best weapon we have, a tit for tat.
I hope to see some SHARP tariffs, 100% of starlink and Teslas.
Unfortunately I think a tariff on starlink could hurt Canadians more with the number of rural areas with poor Internet. I could totally get behind a tesla tariff though, there’s plenty of other options there
Agreed. But most of the measure were actually targeted, like removing alcohol from red states. I think Canada should also straight up ban X/Twitter and have a roadmap to ban everything Meta, too. Yes, people could still access them via VPN, but Meta not doing business here would prevent them from getting ad revenue. Also, the target most prone to falling for fake news (boomer and dumb people) probably can’t get a VPN to work, so we kill 2 birds with one stone.
Have you met people? Most people use the default wifi password on their router.
Country-wide censorship is not the answer.
They have been talking about tariffs on oranges, Harley Davidson, Jack Daniel’s. Tariffs like this specifically target red states putting pressure on the people who voted for Trump. Ontario alone accounts for 45% of all American liquor exports.
Thanks for your reply! That makes a lot of sense to me.
Astounding that Ontario buys that much US liquor, and reducing that market will certainly have an impact on the US economy!
As an aside, other than oranges I won’t miss any of those items, and I know there are alternative options for oranges!
The lcbo is one of the largest liquor purchasers on the planet, brings in $2.5 billion as of last year to the Ontario government.
The CBC has published a website to explain things, you may find it useful.
https://newsinteractives.cbc.ca/features/2025/tariff-explainer/#intro
Oh that does look very useful, thank you!
This is your guy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LzrIoJ0Wo2U