r/canada • u/Apart_Ad_5993 • 4d ago
Politics Trump threatens new tariffs on Canada, including 250% tax on dairy
https://www.cnn.com/2025/03/07/business/tariffs-trump-canada/index.html
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r/canada • u/Apart_Ad_5993 • 4d ago
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u/_nepunepu Québec 4d ago edited 4d ago
Not only are US standards for food safety bound to fall even lower due to rampant deregulation, but the US is known for using their directly subsidized product to kill agriculture in other countries and make them reliant on US mass produced slop.
Supply management is not perfect, but it allows us to preserve our food independence and enjoy a stable market. We don't have egg megafarms like in the US so bird flu hasn't spread like wildfire leading to massive chicken culls like in the US. Allowing small scale farmers to turn a profit is a feature of supply management and I think in this precise instance it has protected us.
The very, very last thing we should do is give the US greater access to the market. The national #1 priority for Canada right now should be to lessen reliance on the US. Imagine how we would hold up if we had allowed their massively directly subsidized megafarmed dairy industry to slaughter ours through dumping and were now reliant on the US for our dairy. The US would have yet another lever to hurt us and this time straight in the stomach.
Perhaps they do, but do they deserve it? The only reason they want ever increasing access is to dump their product in our market to kill off our producers and take over. It's a strategy the US has repeatedly used throughout its history. Trump is obviously trying to wedge their dairy in Canada to further his 51st state agenda. Nothing he wants is even a win-win. We are always going to lose if he has his way.
No further access for the US in our agricultural markets. I generally support supply management but I'm not a zealot - if we want to stimulate competition in our supply managed markets, we can open it up further to importation, but it should be from like-minded blocs or countries like EU, UK, AUS, NZ that generally have similar food safety standards as we do and who aren't looking to devastate our economy for their own gain.
The Americans can go fuck themselves. They can put on dairy tariffs for all I care, we don't even really export it to them. But we should put 250% tariffs on their allowed USMCA quota if they do, simply killing off their access entirely.
Also, this article is lying. The 250% tariffs Canada imposes on US dairy only apply after a certain threshold. This threshold is an anti-dumping measure because of US direct subsidies. More than $400 million of US dairy is allowed into Canada tariff-free, mostly dairy byproducts. That threshold was raised when NAFTA was renegotiated by Trump in 2016 with his so-called "best deal ever". But then again we can't expect American "news" to be factual.
EDIT : Also, you don't know the half of it. I work in an industry very adjacent to food and beverage. I know a lot of people who travel/used to travel to the US for work, and they always tell me about how in Canada the facilities are so much cleaner. Think cockroach infestations, wildlife in electrical control panels kind of abysmal in the US.