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CAN-USA Tariff Strife (split from various pol threads)

Well at least we now know what the going rate is .
The real question is is there any sort of tax advantage to leasing a President as opposed to buying one ?
Foreign Preferred rate (Russia, Israel, Board of Peace members, et al) or Foreign Nasty Nations?
 
. Follow the money. PACs and foundations. Not hard; they're right out in the open.
If the average American who actually votes clearly understood their entire voting system - from PACs/Foundations to voter registration to compensation to lobbyists, I think that there would be alot of people put against the wall and shot.
 
I think that there would be alot of people put against the wall and shot.
Figuratively, they are. The insurgency is upon them already. Problem is, the insurgent faction is led by Trump.

Relevant news of the moment: McConnell (definitely part of the old establishment) is preventing the SAVE Act (voter registration and identification) from getting to the Senate floor for a vote.
 
Figuratively, they are. The insurgency is upon them already. Problem is, the insurgent faction is led by Trump.

Relevant news of the moment: McConnell (definitely part of the old establishment) is preventing the SAVE Act (voter registration and identification) from getting to the Senate floor for a vote.
If the average voter actually understood their own system, 'figuratively' would translate into literally.
 
Right from the horse’s mouth. There is no advantageous trade deal to be had.


Yet there are those that will still fall over each other to lick the boot.

"If Canada wants to agree that we can have some level of higher tariff on them while they open up their markets to us on things like dairy and other things, then that's a helpful conversation."

LMFAO 🤡
 
Right from the horse’s mouth. There is no advantageous trade deal to be had.
There are degrees of advantage.

The greatest simple economic advantage should lie with untrammeled trade. Almost no country (maybe actually no country?) occupies this position.

If the utility of protecting selected domestic producers is sufficient, a situation of mostly free trade with some protectionism could theoretically yield greater overall utility (for the protectionist). Often (usually) protectionism is pure domestic politics elevated to international effect, irrespective of the fact that it's a net loss (eg. more losers-consumers than winners-producers) for the protectionist. Whatever the measure of utility, most countries (including Canada, and usually the US) occupy this position.

Clearly the administration believes the US should be able to charge a premium for access to its market. That sets it in a new position, but they're directly charging that premium to their own people in the beliefs that foreign exporters will absorb some of the cost and that substitution will stoke US productivity. They also want to claim revenues raised as a success, but the more substitution of domestic output occurs, the more those revenues will drop. They of course ignore the detrimental effects on themselves (eg. protection of domestic US steel production costs steel users more than the producers gain).

What confounds the expectations that depend on the conventional belief that import tariffs are sub-optimal is that the US is such a ridiculously economically productive country - it can mostly afford the cost. Add in the domestic gains, and an explanation emerges as to why the administration's policies have not created as much domestic dissatisfaction as expected/predicted/hoped by opponents.

The unpalatable truth might be that the administration can make its demands without dashing electoral prospects if the costs do not sufficiently outweigh the benefits in the reckoning of voters. There are other factors in play that may be elevating overall economic performance: drop in federal government employment (on the order of 10%); deportation (mostly self-deportation) of enough people in the country illegally for replacement by US citizens at slightly higher wages to be making positive differences in employment and productivity numbers.

That puts Canada in the unwanted/unfair position of having to decide how much it should concede to maximize access to a large proximate wealthy market, while leaving Canadian exporters to figure out how to compete there.
 
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