News / tariffs
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1 min read
Thirty Billion and a Soccer Ball
Read more . . . →The US and China just released their big tariff deal. Seventy-seven items get relief. The list includes fireworks, Christmas ornaments, tableware, and soccer balls. That’s the headline from the summit: you can buy a cheaper soccer ball now. Meanwhile, tariffs have cost the average American household over $2,500 this year. Congratulations, you got about nine percent back. Mostly in ornaments. This is the cycle. Break something big, fix something small, hold a press conference. The Supreme Court ruled the IEEPA tariffs unconstitutional back in February. Didn’t matter. Trump kept collecting and now wants a standing ovation for agreeing to stop...
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1 min read
Four Days Until Your Whisky Disappears
Read more . . . →In four days, it becomes illegal to import Canadian whisky into the United States. Also banned: Canadian beer, wine, vodka, cider, motorcycles, and whey protein. Trump signed the executive orders as retaliation for Canada’s retaliatory tariffs, which were retaliation for his original tariffs, which were retaliation for Canada having the nerve to exist next door. The circle of punishment lands, as it always does, on the person holding the receipt. This is what a trade war looks like when one side runs out of ideas. You can’t negotiate your way to a win, so you take the other country’s beer...
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1 min read
Nobody Leaves the Table
Read more . . . →Donald Trump signed an order yesterday to strip all Canadian-origin goods from federal procurement, $280 billion in contracts, because Canada had the nerve to launch a Buy Canadian policy after he tariffed them. The same day, he told reporters that if the European Union goes ahead with its plan to make Canada an associate member, he’d consider it a “hostile act” and hit Europe with tariffs too. Read that again. He’s kicking Canada off his shelves and threatening to punish anyone who puts them on theirs. This is the trade-policy version of the guy who dumps you and then shows...
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1 min read
Twenty-Five Years and a Beer Ban
Read more . . . →Twenty-five years ago today, US airspace shut down and 38 planes carrying 6,500 people dropped into Gander, Newfoundland, a town of about ten thousand that wasn’t expecting any of them. The people of Gander emptied their fridges, opened their churches, dragged cots into community halls, and took care of complete strangers for days. They didn’t negotiate terms. They didn’t send an invoice. They just did it, because that’s what you do when your neighbor’s house is on fire. Today, on the anniversary of that, the president of the United States is banning Canadian beer. Canadian rye whisky. Canadian motorcycles. Canadian...
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1 min read
Your Laptop Is a National Security Threat Now
Read more . . . →The Trump administration is considering tariffs on every laptop, gaming console, and server that touches a semiconductor, which is all of them. The pitch is that this will bring chip manufacturing back to American soil. The reality is that a chip fab costs $20 billion, takes five years to build, and employs fewer people than a regional hospital. Your next laptop costs 20% more by Christmas. Intel gets a talking point for its investor call. You get the bill. Howard Lutnick, the Commerce Secretary who used to run a Wall Street brokerage, is the one designing this. His plan ties...
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1 min read
He Renamed the Water
Read more . . . →Donald Trump signed an executive order yesterday renaming Lake Ontario to “Lake America.” The name Ontario comes from the Wendat word Ontari’io (“beautiful lake”) and it’s been on maps since before the Declaration of Independence existed. Four hundred years of Indigenous naming, erased because a man who can’t find most countries on a map decided a body of water shared with another country needed a more patriotic brand. The Interior Department has 30 days to update the federal database. Canada is not required to adopt the change. Canada will not. This is what happens when you run out of leverage....
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1 min read
The Deal Was Never a Deal
Read more . . . →Trump spent three days telling everyone he had a deal with Canada. Posted about it on Truth Social. Floated resurrecting a dead oil pipeline as a victory lap. Then late last night, the talks collapsed, and at midnight 50% tariffs landed on $20 billion in Canadian imports: lumber, electronics, clothing, furniture, dairy, booze. The USMCA, the trade agreement he personally signed in 2020, says none of this is supposed to happen. His trade rep blamed Canada for “walk backs.” Carney said the US changed terms at the last minute that were “unfair, uneconomic, and called into question the reliability of...
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1 min read
He Broke the Window and Sold You the Glass
Read more . . . →Trump set a deadline of August 19 — tomorrow — for 50% tariffs on Canadian dairy, alcohol, and autos. The “deal” he’s offering to make them go away: Canada drops its retaliatory tariffs, opens up dairy markets, kills provincial procurement rules, and accepts the American interpretation of trade quotas. In exchange, the US would reduce some of the tariffs it imposed on Canada in the first place. That’s not a negotiation. That’s a guy who breaks your window and then offers to sell you the glass. Carney keeps saying Canada won’t accept a bad deal, but the framework leaking out...
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You Built the Bridge and Paid the Toll
Read more . . . →Canada spent $6.4 billion building the Gordie Howe International Bridge. Then agreed to share the toll revenue with the United States for fifteen years. Then scrapped the digital services tax. Then killed the Netflix tax. Then pulled its own retaliatory tariffs off the table. A reporter asked Carney what Canada got back for all of that. He couldn’t name one thing. Not a reduced rate, not a delayed deadline, not a handshake agreement scribbled on a napkin. Six and a half billion dollars and a stack of policy surrenders bought exactly zero goodwill from a man who doesn’t sell it....
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Walmart Gets $2.4 Billion Back. You Get the Receipt.
Read more . . . →Walmart just got a $2.4 billion refund check from the federal government. Apple got $2.19 billion. Amazon, $600 million. Ford, $1.3 billion. Your refund: zero. Trump spent two years collecting $166 billion in tariffs that the Supreme Court ruled were illegal, and now the money is flowing back — to the corporations that filed the customs paperwork. You paid the markup at the register for two straight years. You ate the price hikes on everything from groceries to sneakers. The refund process is designed so that only the “importer of record” can claim a cent. You were never the importer...
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