alt Hacker NewsThis is hilarious and I agree.
I think an under-appreciated aspect of all this is the complete schadenfreude from everyone. The story goes tariffs only hurt yourself but then we see retaliatory tariffs in response. "Oh yeah I'm going to cut off my leg to show you whose boss!" Very funny.
And then you have people predisposed to higher-taxes who are contorting themselves over the economic cost of this tax while supporting significantly more economically destructive tax policies. Very funny.
And, of course, the opposite. Republicans in my state are campaigning on lowering taxes and inflation while also defending tariffs! Very funny.
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> but then we see retaliatory tariffs in response. "Oh yeah I'm going to cut off my leg to show you whose boss!"
Agree. Much better to lower the tariffs on other countries that compete with the US.
If Trump wants to kill Canadian auto industry then we'd better open wide our markets to Chinese or European cars.
> The story goes tariffs only hurt yourself
That's how the story goes with someplace like China. If you impose tariffs on imports you have no cost-effective alternative for, yes, the tariffs will only hurt the importer, because buying habits will not change. (I suppose Chinese cars are a big exception here)
But in this case, the math is probably different because none of these tariffs affect products the US must realistically buy from Canada (e.g. oil and potash). So Canadian exporters will feel some pain and American importers will feel some pain.
What should Canada do in this case if the two can't come to a trade agreement? Continue to import from the US at the same rate as before?