alt Hacker News> So how do tariffs come in to play if there are no tariffs applied?
What is the duty you pay on duty free goods?
Is this a serious question?
Canada negotiated in a quota of dairy products the US could export to Canada tariff free. If the US exceeds this quota, there are tariffs. If it doesn't, there are none. It has never even come close to hitting the quota, much less exceeding it, and the total tariffs ever paid on this has been $0.
Again, this is all a part of a massively complex trade agreements where every agreement had a give and take.
Exactly the same system applies in reverse. Canadian dairy isn't putting US farmers out of business, because there are basically zero exports to the US of dairy products.
The fact that Trump constantly returns to dairy betrays just how fundamentally broken the US is now.
As an aside, saw Lutnick -- that disgusting greaseball Epstein island visitor, as the entire admin are scumbags and pedophiles -- on the news the other day declaring that the only reason there are auto plants in Canada is to evade unions. Canada has 3x the union rate than the US, better worker protections, better vacation and holiday and sick and health and environmental protections, and so on. Why is he willing to just LIE so egregiously? Because America has become the stupidest fucking country on the planet, and your Pedo Leaders can just do this endlessly and you'll eat it up and repeat the stupid nonsense verbatim. What an embarrassment.
> Canada negotiated in a quota of dairy products the US could export to Canada tariff free. If the US exceeds this quota, there are tariffs. If it doesn't, there are none. It has never even come close to hitting the quota, much less exceeding it, and the total tariffs ever paid on this has been $0.
So you wouldn't take issue with an America quota on assembled motor vehicles, for example, since that wouldn't be a tariff? Maybe that automaker moves most of its facilities back to the US and now yea you've got one factory making 10,000 cars/year or something and that's under the quota, but you were effectively tariffed anyway because to maintain facilities would breach the quota that was set. Were you outright tariffed? No. Were you effectively tariffed? Absolutely.
That's why this argument you are putting forth is just semantics. It's not tariffs on duty free goods (except when it is). It's not tariffs on imported products (except when it is). There aren't any restrictions, except when there are. Nobody is moving facilities until they do.
Other countries do the same thing to protect their domestic industries, I'm not singling Canada out here, but I do take issue with the lack of honesty where folks pretend that we had these free trade schemes without any barriers right up until Trump got elected again. It's simply untrue.