Summary
Trump announced that 25% tariffs on imports from Canada and Mexico will take effect on February 1, though a decision on including oil remains pending.
He justified the move by citing undocumented migration, fentanyl trafficking, and trade deficits.
Trump also hinted at new tariffs on China.
Canada and Mexico plan retaliatory measures while seeking to address U.S. concerns.
If oil imports are taxed, it could raise costs for businesses and consumers, potentially contradicting Trump’s pledge to reduce living expenses.
I’m sad seeing all these “Enjoy the collapse, losers!” comments.
Most people on most Lemmy instances, especially here, probably made it VERY clear we didn’t want this pathetic handbag-hobgoblin in charge. Yes, a lot of our countrymen voluntarily gave up their brains for his bullshit, but not all of us, by a long shot.
Policy stopped being directed by the will of the people a long time ago. We aren’t levying tariffs. He is. We , human beings just like you, are trying to keep it together as a grotesque parody of the fall of the Roman Empire plays out around us.
Stop falling for that tribalist nonsense. Love has no borders, and hate is too busy drawing them. Support your brothers and sisters on this Earth, because when the evil wealthy masters of this world set their sights on your democracy, it could happen to your home just as easily, don’t be fooled.
Edit: I’ve gone over my comment multiple times…where the heck did I even insinuate I didn’t vote? We only get one, and like many others, I said a prayer and ticked the box for Kamala’s half-hearted efforts to stopgap and buy us more time to fix this thing. For all the friggin’ good it did.
I’m sorry you’re getting the thoughts you didn’t vote, but I’ll admit I’m very much in the “Enjoy the collapse, losers!” territory so at least I’ll express mine, hopefully it helps make sense, and honestly, I appreciate your feeling to try to do better. If you figure out a way to move forward, fantastic. I just remember the top post of a comment when Trump won however and it so truly fits, “I’m tired, boss.”
I have been fighting to get people to vote for years, trying to keep them involved. Not trying to get to vote every 4 years, but every year, local stuff, this shit is important, people need to stay up on it. I’m considered a news hound amongst people I know… I listen to the morning news on the 30 minute commute to work, that’s how much time I put in to the news, that’s it. It’s not hard. Some days I say fuck it and listen to an audiobook.
People I’ve known who vote R, lets be honest, they went through the last Trump era and learned nothing. I remember back in the W. era people saying it should be illegal to speak against the president, who turned around and called Obama a muslim who should be deported. End of Trump era I knew republicans who were just starting to get it, maybe healthcare is fucked, maybe a lot of big corpo things are the problem… but immediately turned around and jumped right back in to Trumps circle the moment it came around “I couldn’t just vote for Kamala” just like “I just couldn’t vote for Hillary” and so on. Hell my state voted to repeal the strictest abortion ban and make abortion legal in the state, but still voted pretty much straight R despite a history of the party overturning ballot initiatives “Because the voters didn’t know what they were voting for.” So yes… after years of this, there’s the tribal “If you’re republican, you can go fuck yourself with a pineapple” especially as this collapse is coming.
On the non-voters. I’m sorry, I consider them just as culpable. In 2016 at least Trump was a… well anyone who paid fifteen minutes of attention knew what he was about but fuck it, I’ll give the people who said “Fuck it lets try something new” a bit of a pass. This time, there were no surprises on the table. You had Kamala, which yes was about as dead standard democrat as you got, and you got Project 2025 Trump back with a vengeance. Those that say “I didn’t vote for Trump” but by doing so stayed home gave their voice to “meh” and whatever happens they agreed to it. People I directly know who were in this, I know of one at least in a gay marriage, a few hispanic workers, and a trans individual, all who were “I’m just not interested in politics.” Well, suddenly they’re REALLY interested in politics. And many wanting to “rise up”, well I’m not going to trust someone who couldn’t be faffed to even do the basic fucking minimum to try to prevent things to watch my back when shit hits the fan.
So yes, we’re all hosed and anyone who didn’t see it coming had their heads so far up their own asses in the past 8 years they’ve proven they can’t be taught. I’m sitting in the fire too, I’m not going to like the collapse. But after years of the fighting and still witnessing the apathy, my empathy is dead. The tribalism is useful, these were the people who were willing to do the basic minimum to resist, so maybe we can actually help each other. I’ll help them as I can. The others I expressed about, no, I don’t want bad to happen… but at least the schadenfreude can be a little bit of light through some very dark times coming. Don’t weep for the stupid, you’ll be crying all day.
You should have voted then lmao
Nowhere in my post did I say I didn’t vote.
Were you responding to someone else maybe, or you just clownin’?
You didn’t vote. So enjoy the collapse
Nowhere in my post did I even hint that I didn’t vote.
Your vivid imagination can be put to better use than inventing reasons to heap smugness on internet strangers.
(Not enjoying the collapse BTW thx. 👍👍)
May the American people enjoy the fruits of their voting and sitting on their asses.
It wouldn’t be so bad if we didn’t get fucked by proxy of America electing an old senile fascist.
I am Canadian and I will feel Trump’s presidency for a while
This massively violates the USMCA that he signed
You mean the “amazing deal” that is 95% the same as NAFTA lmao
He doesn’t give a fuck about anything. It’s so tiring that people assume that he is rational and he cares.
Someone make this into that Gru meme:
- Slap a 25% tarrif on goods coming from your 3 biggest economic allies
- Economy will strengthen due to American consumers preferring American made alternatives
- There are no American made alternatives
- There are no American made alternatives
Here you go
lol thank you so much
If they really wanted this to work it should be something like a steadily increasing tariff over time instead of 25% right off the bat. But I don’t think they really care about it working as intended.
i gotta be honest, i’m not entirely sure what is intended. this decision doesn’t make sense to me!
And even if there were American made alternatives, they’d still be more expensive than importing.
Enjoy your higher prices, suckers.
Just like the war on drugs, you’ll be able to buy black market tacos in alleys.
You aren’t already?
I am. Black market tacos taste fantastic if you ignore the numerous issues.
I’ll enjoy seeing the US go down.
We’re reaching the “find out” stage.
A friend of mine works for an electric semi truck company. The vast majority of their parts are manufactured in Canada and Mexico; they’re just assembled in the US. His mom voted for Trump and really wants him to move back to Ohio so he can have space and be close to family. He wanted to go back, too, and had a transfer and promotion within the company set up before the election. Now there’s a company-wide freeze and his transfer is gone. The company’s internal financial projections are not good.
His mom refuses to recognize that she just voted for her son to stay in Seattle indefinitely, even though he wants to move back. She keeps thinking that any day now, the economy will be so booming that his company will be doing great. He can’t talk to her about it anymore.
Why the fuck would you want to go back to Ohio?
That state sucks balls.
Especially compared to Washington
Can confirm am leaving it to move to Seattle funnily enough
For real though, aspects of Ohio are awesome. Republicans ruined it though
I have been to Ohio exactly ONCE, and I can confirm that the state does in fact suck balls. It’s so fucking FLAT…
Ooh you missed out on Athens Ohio. Beautiful city in the mountains
I’d use the term mountains loosely when describing Athens, Ohio.
That said, it is pretty with some great natural rock formations at Hocking Hills.
Has the second best CoL/MedianSalary ratio in the US. Ironically, the only state I saw that was consistently better was Michigan.
Plus we have Hocking Hills, which pretty consistently showed up on r/earthporn. If you want flat, we’ve got flat. If you want hills and mountains, we’ve got Appalachia.
Yeah but any time the state does anything good by ballot initiative the state government does something regressive out of spite
Lol
Not to mention roller coasters. Two of the largest thrill parks in the US.
The entire state smells like balls too.
Can’t say I disagree lol
If oil is excluded the truly boss move on Canada & Mexico’s part would just be to introduce a 25% export premium on those products while the tariffs are in effect.
Canada’s boss move is to remove the intellectual property laws that the US asked for and let Canadian companies and consumers thrive again.
This would be beautiful. I remember when there were mod-chip stores beside internet cafes, where i could bring my xbox and pay to have a chip and a hard drive installed that let me copy any game i wanted from a rented disk or downloaded off the internet right onto the console. I still have that console and pulled it out during quarantine to make use of the huge library of games on the hard drive. Having this sort of freedom for all types of goods and electronics would be incredible, but i doubt it will ever happen.
This is a really good read. Thank you.
I really like this idea.
This makes no sense. If Canada could make a phone viable without any changes to tariffs, why wouldn’t it have already happened? Why would tariffs make that less likely to happen?
You may have misunderstood the article.
There’s a trade agreement that says no tarrifs in exchange for respecting IP which includes not breaking digital locks.
If the agreement is out then there’s nothing preventing Canada from allowing their citizens to circumvent restrictions against repairing their own tractors for example.
Do you honestly think that reducing the cost of fixing a tractor will reduce the cost of agricultural production by 25% across the board?
Probably not, but it could open up a whole new set of business possibilities for creative Canadians. As the article points out, building repair kits for cars & tractors to sell world wide or selling printer ink bypass kits or mandating in country app stores.
I’m no economist, but I don’t think this will offset the cost of the US tariffs to everyday Canadians, but it will steal profits from US companies who will cry to uncle trump that Canada’s stealing their lunch money. He may reconsider the tariffs.
If I had my way, Canada would also make a statement that US copyright works are not copywritable in Canada, so copy & distribute to the world. Worst case, Canadians get free US music, movies & software. Best case, concerned US companies establish a presence in Canada and pay taxes, bring jobs, etc.
As the article points out, building repair kits for cars & tractors to sell world wide or selling printer ink bypass kits or mandating in country app stores.
Canada deciding to not follow IP laws doesn’t mean the rest of the world no longer follows IP laws. These ideas would be for products that could only be sold in Canada and they’d have to compete with US products in the Canadian market. because under this proposal there would be no tariffs on US products.
This is one of those ideas that people in a single issue frame of mind come up with. Don’t like IP laws? Every single problem is an opportunity to get rid of IP laws and getting rid of IP laws will solve every problem.
Everyone so god damn snarky on Lemmy.
I don’t “honestly think” that. I don’t really have an opinion. I’m just explaining the article to you.
I dunno, maybe something to do with the possibility of millions of people in my country losing their jobs because some dumbass in the US is pushing an agenda has made me snarky towards people exploiting it as an opportunity to push their own bullshit agenda.
Exactly, clearly they’ll still pay for it if it’s important enough to exempt. In Canada’s case we could give Alberta the extra revenue just so they won’t get too cranky.
Keep going higher, i bet Canada imports more from US than exports.
Mama didn’t love him, now he’s a grumpy old man with grievances.
I’m morbidly fascinated to see how all of this shakes out.
Everyone on the left is saying it’s a terrible idea with very predictable and deleterious consequences.
Trump seems to think it’s as great as it sounds at face value - tax things that sound bad and get money.
Either way it will be a feature of economics text books for centuries to come.
Obviously I want to see Trump fail spectacularly, but it fucking sucks that would harm those of us who can least afford it.
If you went shopping last week and half value of your purchases originated in Canada or Mexico, then will the same purchases next week cost 12.5% more ? That’s pretty staggering inflation
i come from a tariff heavy country. you want a sneak peak? inflation. shit is gonna get more expensive. that’s it
No no no he is going to stop all taxes, pay off the national debt, bring manufacturing back to the US, and build a Nazi mars base for Elon.
pay off the national debt
As if
Seems like Trump is trying to get rid of the income tax. He can’t just do that with an EO order though, congress has to do it.
He can do all these tariffs though, which will act as a quasi sales tax. And when everything starts to become more expensive, which will be blamed on something else, he will say he’s not removing the tariffs and congress should just get rid of the income tax to help people. He will say, look we are making so much money off tariffs and we have reduced government jobs by so much, we don’t need an income tax anymore anyways!
Obviously I want to see Trump fail spectacularly, but it fucking sucks that would harm those of us who can least afford it.
I thought that was the plan…
Great so now my food will cost even more?
WAY more. We import a lot of food from Mexico as is, and the immigration and ethnic clensing the Trump goverment is engaging in is already forcing farmers to watch their crops rot on the ground with no one to harvest them. So we’re following in the great tradition of Stalin and Pol Pot, we have a dumb fucking asshole with a hard on for ‘‘strong man tactics’’ demanding we change how we get food in many extreme ways immediately, you know, instead of gradual change, so we’ll all get to see what an artifical famine looks like! Do you think Trump will let other nations send us emergency rations so we won’t die? Or will he confiscate them at a dock or border and have them dumped into the ocean so he doesn’t look weak? North Korea knows.
We also export a hell of a lot of soybeans, so when retaliatory tariffs kick in I guess our new ultra-masculine conservative government is going to have us all eating lots and lots of soy.
He’ll take them for his friends and family ao they don’t have to buy food
And sell the surplus to his billionaire cabinet to be resold to the less than poor while the poors starve.
I can’t believe some people think that putting tariffs on a country means the country will just give the government 25% of everything and the merchants of that country are not just going to raise the prices to match the new expenses(or maybe even a little bit more since they have a good excuse to change prices).
I guess I can stand to eat a bit less, we can call it the economic collapse of the US diet! Just think of all the profits from the diet books! To bad they are going to cost 30% more now that my Mexican publisher is paying a tarrif to bring the books into the US. That’s OK, spending more money on the book just means that you won’t be able to afford as much food, making the diet work even better!
I can’t believe some people think that putting tariffs on a country means the country will just give the government 25% of everything and the merchants of that country are not just going to raise the prices to match the new expenses(or maybe even a little bit more since they have a good excuse to change prices)
I’m not sure anyone believes that. The point of tariffs is that merchants will have to increase prices to keep the same profit, causing people to purchase less of the product and look for cheaper alternatives (those without tariffs).
Many Americans thought the foreign country paid the tariffs, so forgive me if I disagree that my country is capable of that level of thought.
Lots of morons believe that and argues assuming that this is right.
Unfortunately, a lot of people are saying they think the county of origin pays the tariff and not the importer.
Yeah targeted tariffs only products where there’s a domestically produced alternative might do that. Putting tariffs on everything means people will just have to pay more for some things. Canada and Mexico will do the former, while the US is doing the later (much dumber) approach.
Anyway… this Canadian has just remembered a few more US based services to cancel. Not because of any price changes have happened yet but because apparently Americans have to learn the value of trade the hard way. Trade goes both ways, and that’s not going to happen as much now.
It will unless it can come from somewhere else.
If you are a non-Trump voter in a red state, especially if you work for the flagship company or industry in that state, I would like to apologize on behalf of all Canadians for what our government is about to do. We don’t want to do it but it is the only way to deal with a bully.
Lol, do it, bitch. Bet you’ll chicken out of this one too.
Part of me thinks this is so they have an easy way to drop prices after people get used to everything costing more, but I’m sure it’s mostly just trying to destroy the the US’s relationship with it’s most important allies.
Part of me thinks this is so they have an easy way to drop prices after people get used to everything costing more
This is a technique commonly employed by Sisi in Egypt so while it’d be surprising that America sunk that low that quickly I can see it happening. And by the way, yes America is now being compared to Egypt out of all countries so… Uh… Good luck.
I’ve compared to Afghanistan many times.
It’s already destroyed.
Not by him, his threats and tariffs are old news. By the people - The People, the royal We - who actively, unironically and with great power of democracy, chose an aggressive, compromised, and stupid fascist with ample evidence that this, hate, and war were a consequence.
Because the hate and apathy was stronger I guess. For electing a woman. For people being bullied by a juvenile government wielding adult violence for who they aren’t - a cis white right male.
They went to the dark side and joined a tri-polar world of evils to bully and rape the rest of us until we all burn to death. So yeah.
Never again.
Never again.
Optimistic
Part of me thinks this is so they have an easy way to drop prices after people get used to everything costing more
Trump is running the US the same way I ran my cities in SimCity2000
“Oooh it’s December, time to raise taxes to 20%. Ok January again, lowering taxes to 0%. The people love me!”
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Its very possible to enrich corrupt elites without taking an axe to the US’s strategic position. That would be preferable for securing the wealth of the ruling class in the future.
Of course they want to make the rich richer, but this level of systemic destruction isn’t the most efficient way to do that. The damage is clearly part of the goal.
Its very possible to enrich corrupt elites without taking an axe to the US’s strategic position.
Yes. But not for a very stupid easily manipulated “businessman”.
Even if they do, I expect that businesses won’t drop their prices much. If the consumers have gotten used to it, it’s free money for the business. Same with the supply chain issue pricing from COVID.
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I don’t doubt he thinks that’s possible, but what every one who repeats this idea seems to not grasp is that the US doesn’t manufacture consumer goods, and increasingly we aren’t able to farm our own food, particularly right the fuck now while we’re depopulating the country of farm labor. There’s nothing here to replace what we can’t get now. There’s no American alternative. We don’t do that, we pay other people to do it in a country with no labor protections and garbage pay and economy. No one wants to start manufacturing anything new right now in the US because it will become even less profitable the second the moron is out of office and all this stops, then there’s the fact that even if we had people who wanted to start doing all this manufacturing, it would take them often more than 5-10 years to get off the ground and that’s not even getting into finding labor in the US to do this work. While we’re being depopulated. Apparently the 1m dead from Covid simply wasn’t enough.
Exactly. No one is thinking “right this is our big chance to build a toothbrush factory”.
Setting aside the tariffs on the production line you need to buy from China…
All your precursor would need to come from China anyway.
Couple that with the cost of maintaining local safety regs and I’d be surprised if you could put a product on super market shelves thats cheaper than the tariffed one.
The problem with these kinds of conspiracy theories is that it assumes the conspirators are hyper-competent people.
It’s far more plausible that they’re just idiots.
American ruling class, “Oh would you look at that, we just found a 24.99999% price hike that we definitely have to do because economy. Still cheaper though than the Canadian and Mexican imports.”
It’s just the rest of America that is going to get fucked.
But wages will go up because more stuff will be made in the US! /S (Basically my father’s argument)
Narrator: no they won’t
Fun fact: Under Hitler, while there was an economic boom (due to production switching to war preparation), wages fell on Great Depression levels and workers had to work a lot more hours. Germany was also deeply in debt, because most of this was financed by crazy lending from other countries, which Hitler had no intention of paying back.
Also, the ones that were profiting the most off of this were oligarchs.
Yes, but i don’t believe trump KNOWS that. Instead he’s been told to do this.
President Musk? Or just some randome other Oligarch?
Probably, and the people who wrote project 2025 are telling him what to do
