Quote:
Originally Posted by butterfly
Sure, happy to oblige. I think the Canadian government has a duty to do the best thing for Canadian citizens, which is to not harm them. If I were them I would do nothing.
Trump doing this to our three biggest trade partners simply hurts American consumers. Why would you want to raise prices for your own consumers? It's senseless and leads to an inefficient allocation of resources. Chinese, Mexicans, and Canadians can bring unique goods and services to market at a better price than Americans can, and they're all things that we desire. Trump is lying when he claims "we don't need them", because if we could get these things for cheaper we would already be doing it.
So if they're happy to trade with us, why not do it? It really should have nothing to do with the government as it's obvious interference between parties willing to trade.
If I were Canada I certainly would not want to increase prices on my own consumers in an attempt to demonstrate some false sense of strength.
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Doing nothing does harm Canadian consumers. The natural reaction of Canadian companies would be to just move their operations to the USA then. You can sell into Canada with no penalty and you can avoid the US tariffs. Win-win. You times that by say 100 companies and real Canadians will lose their jobs. That is multiple times worse than a slightly more expensive orange, especially when there are substitutes for most goods.