TIRED OF THE TARIFF TALK, BUT STILL NEEDS TO BE SAID

I’ve seen a lot of opinions on how Canada should respond to Donald Trump’s tariffs on imported Canadian goods to the United States and it got me to wondering if people truly understand what a tariff is.

I’ve tried to write it out a few times but Google is your friend here so I went with what I found on the Edward Jones website -

Companies importing goods subject to tariffs from other countries pay those tariffs to their own government. For example, if Canada were to apply a tariff on Mexican strawberries, a Canadian company importing strawberries from Mexico into Canada would pay the tariff to the Canadian government. Essentially, the tariff functions as an import duty.

Similarly, if the U.S. were to impose tariffs on all goods entering the U.S. from Canada, any U.S. company importing goods from Canada would be required to pay that tax to the U.S. government.

Businesses dependent on goods facing tariffs typically respond in one of three ways:

• They negotiate lower prices with international suppliers to offset the higher cost of tariffs;

• They absorb the higher cost of the goods, either by accepting lower profits or looking for cost cutting elsewhere in their business; or

• They pass the higher cost on to their customers, leading to price increases.

It's common that businesses pass along a portion (if not all) of the increased cost to customers, especially if the tariff is expected to stay in place for the long term.

Ezra Levant is, obviously, a conservative commentator but if you have an open mind at all…most of us don’t I get that but I’m going to try anyway….this podcast is well worth a listen because there are some very good educational points in here on tariffs and how they are applied and understanding that our response to Trump’s tariffs seems to be to punish us further through self-inflicting policies. It’s oversimplifying but to some degree, we are basically saying, “Oh yeah if you think your tariffs punishing us, just wait and see how we can punish ourselves even further.”

https://share.fireside.fm/episode/CrII5gCw+iLqQs1HT

Ezra has a saying that is very applicable - Don’t get mad, don’t get even. Get Ahead.

If you don’t listen to the podcast or if you don’t get this far, I want to mention a segment in there where Ezra plays a clip from Trudeau defining Canadians as ‘not American’ and Trudeau is, clearly, insinuating we are better than Americans. This has long been the typical Canadian’s thought process and I think American people, Trump in particular, have had enough of the smugness and we are going to pay dearly.

With all of this preaching to buy Canadian, I am finding it difficult to take it seriously from politicians who, purposely, put up gatekeepers to prevent any sort of progress in this country that would allow us to be self-sustainable so that we don’t have to rely on goods from other countries.

We should always support our local companies. Whether that be companies in our hometowns, home provinces, home countries. We shouldn’t need a trade war to do it. Furthermore, items made in Canada or predominantly made in Canada should never be more expensive than those that aren’t. We have a lot of fixing to do and I have no faith in our ability to fix anything. We will lose this trade war with Trump. It will cost all of us a lot (except the politicians who run-and don’t run- this country won’t lose anything. They’ll just encourage us to keep battling and struggling while they feed at the trough) and then when it’s over we will go back to being this weird country that refuses to support itself and there will be less people working, less businesses in operation, and the ones still here will be paying more to the government and the ones taking our money won’t have suffered one iota.

I know we hate Trump for doing audits in government departments, but don’t we need that here?

Story for another day.