Doubling down on his trade wars, Trump is threatening to raise taxes on many goods from Canada, hike his universal tariff on imports from around the world and punish Brazil for prosecuting his friend, the country’s former president.
On Saturday, Trump announced more tariffs still, this time on two of the United States’ biggest trade partners: the European Union and Mexico, at 30% each.
Former U.S. trade negotiator Wendy Cutler said that Trump’s recent moves “underscore the growing unpredictability, incoherence and assertiveness’’ of his trade policies. “It’s hard for trading partners to know where they stand with Trump on any given day and what more may be coming their way when least expected,’’ said Cutler, now vice president at the Asia Society Policy Institute.
It seems he’s learned that the problem with tariffs is that other countries will tariff back.
So now his current strategy is to levy tariffs and threaten countries with more tariffs if they reciprocate.
Same has it’s always been, maybe he’ll TACO or maybe he’ll crash the world economy.
Meanwhile in Canada, it’s become easier to identify products from the US because stores have to put them on discount to try to entice people to buy them. Stores aren’t making money by selling US products at a discount so every time I go to the grocery store, there’s new products made in Canada (or at least non-US countries) replacing the US products.
Happy to report I can now get a head of iceberg lettuce from Quebec in both grocery stores I go to, seems all of our lettuce came from the US before. I had to get crazy expensive hydroponically grown lettuce (or some weird black lettuce) for months. But now I can get iceberg lettuce (“normal” lettuce to me) produced in Canada. It was weird for a bit with some products, but it’s becoming more and more easier and normal to avoid US products. Merci to Quebec for growing lettuce! Hopefully the stores will source lettuce from the EU in the winter.
Not sure how Trump is solving the trade deficit “problem” with this though. Are Americans in the the Midwest buying less oil from Canada (which is THE cause of the trade deficit)? Gonna have to spend a lot of money building pipelines to get oil from the “Gulf of America” and refitting refineries to process that oil. Or God forbid, do a Green New Deal in the Midwest. Otherwise you’d be selling less oil overseas, which would impact trade balance with other countries. But then Canada would sell to those countries instead. But go ahead, fill your boots, I’m good with oil companies having to pay a lot of money refitting refineries as that will just be another version (though less efficient) of a carbon tax.
Canadians are buying less products from the US and it seems unlikely the US is going to buy less oil from Canada any time soon, so it seems Trump’s efforts are just increasing the trade deficit. Carney could put reciprocal tariffs on the US or not, either way Canadians are going to be buying less and less from the US going forward.
Trump is fucking over Americans more than anyone else.
Seems to me that it’s time for other nations to make the best of the prisoner’s dilemma and drop tariffs with each other while sanctioning the US. After all, the US at this point has broken almost all its treaties and trade agreements. There’s no reason for the rest of the world to honour what no longer exists.
It’s because he’s an imbecile pedophile with dementia. Let me break it down for you he wants a bribe or a child to rape.
dementia donvict.
Policies? What policies? What negotiation? It’s haphazard short attention span theater that American taxpayers ultimately pay for.
These countries need to walk away from the table until someone stable can take over negotiations. Why would anyone sign a trade deal with someone, knowing they are never going to honor the conditions they just agreed to? By next week, Trump will have completely forgotten that he signed anything…so why bother?
Stop negotiating and play hardball. Thank you, where’s my 6 digit salary?
its trrying to distract the media from THE EPSTEIN files.
Nah the tariff stuff started many news cycles ago. Trump just really believes tariffs work.
It’s impossible to negotiate with these guys, because they have no clear demands. They just want what “looks” like as much as they can get away with…
Trump consistently plays the game “heads I win, tails you lose”
So, no shit Sherlock…
…when was the last time you negotiated with a shitgibbbon…
As a Canadian I think we shouldn’t even be entertaining the thought of trade with the regime (yes I know how difficult that would be and realistically it’s not immediately possible. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be working toward it) Unfortunately we have a conservative banker in liberal colors as PM and that’s never going to happen.
Edit: and the same type of brain rot citizenry raised on American exceptionalism who will argue that our PM has our best interests in mind. That they believe he’s smarter than the average bear and we couldn’t ever comprehend his tactics because we are just dumb pleebs.
If the current trade agreements with Canada, Mexico and Japan are so terrible then whoever it was that signed them is probably unfit to try negotiating new ones. Oh wait, that was also Donald Trump.
They should just cut off trade entirely.
There are trade negotiations actively running between US an EU, and Trump simply ignored it when he rolled the dice for new Harrods.
I’m about to write something that I, with no international politics nor trade education but plenty of opinions shaped by social media, thinks world leaders should take note of.
