> Sir he is a Pakistani not Indian!

[delayed]

> managed to reduced the tariff from the proposed 25% to 15%

Trumps actual goal was probably 10%. So he got more than he wanted while your PM thinks he "negotiated down" lol

Geopolitics to make sense.

the bilateral deals signed means we (the world, minus the US) is already divided. Got to scrap those deals first, which isn't going to happen. The shark has scattered the shoal and we're all going to get picked off - perpetually signing worse deals, then having to renegotiate again before signing ever worse terms.

> What are we waiting for.

Responsible governance around something like when and how to retaliate (if at all) against tariffs comes down to one of the most fundamental forces of economics and trade: real leverage. Whether or not the US should exercise its leverage to attain outsized and favorable terms on the economic stage is the peanut gallery conversation that happens on social media. The two worlds couldn't be farther apart. What will actually happen in the end is just a math equation that has never changed and will never change.

Honestly, if Trump keeps giving intelligence to Ukraine against Russia, then it was worth paying the (idiotic) tariffs.

That was the EUs top priority. The other issue was that each country had its own products they didn't want to lose sales from.

More generally, the EU isn't built for a world of presidential powers exercised at whom, which is becoming more of an issue this decade.

I am not sure how much of it is that, versus a mix of tariffs being paid by the recipient rather than the vendor, versus all his unpredictable behaviour being an inherent non-tariff barrier, versus it not mattering much what a deal with the USA even looks like if we all transition to other trade partners.

The UK's Neville Chamberlain is remembered for saying of an agreement with Hitler, "peace for our time"*, and by this agreement, appeasement; less well known was that he did pursue re-armament and mutual defence agreements while attempting to deescalate.

Hopefully we won't be here in 8 years wondering how the USA got carved up into a Canadian zone, a Chinese zone, a European zone, and an Aztec zone. That last one might be from a TV show I watched as a kid.

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peace_for_our_time

I think such people are delusional, I hope to be wrong and that the next elections are actually democratic, however I do have my doubts.

Exactly. You can't assume it's a new normal until Trump is out of office.

This is a classical problem. In theory it works when majority of the players work together and move in same direction, however everyone being opportunistic here makes in infeasible from long term perspective. Europe itself is in a difficult stage, its dealing with Russia on one end, has trust issues with China and now the its long term partner has gone rouge. The result of all this would be a mandate to be self sufficient aka anti-globalization

Couldn't the US buy back more bonds through QE than any foreign country could sell?

> trade barriers for US goods and services

are the trade barriers in the room with us?

Having guardrails against diarrhea lettuce is just reasonable policy.

He's just running a kleptocracy, and doing so reasonably well.

He's already got more money than he can spend. As dementia sets in, he's been shifting more and more to pure emotion-based decision making.

> “motivated entirely … to stuff his pockets”

Someone's pockets, must be gnomes:

• PHASE 1: COLLECT UNDERPANTS. (tariff "foreign" goods desired by Americans, collect upon import from companies, clarify spiked prices experienced by consumers ‘entirely’ due to prior admin policies)

• PHASE 2: … (let simmer)

• PHASE 3: PROFIT. ("return" tariff costs to companies)

don’t forget his weak ego

It's worse than that. He is so completely off that he thinks this means US builders will chose to buy US lumber instead and that will work out positively for everyone in the US.

The "make more money" rationale is way too logical vs how this guy's brain operates. It's better understood as being like Pro Wrestling. Except the "ring" is the world economy.

He wakes up and flips a coin. He doesn’t care anyway and there’s no consequences.

Indeed. Donald Trump is only the visible tip of an iceberg. Below the waterline it's a massive and all encompassing corruption, comprised of an organized multi-national cabal that touches every part of the globe and which has its roots in the world starting well before WWI. The goal of which appears has always been to enrich the people on the inside while sewing chaos. To these figures, war and peril have always been more profitable than making peace.

https://annas-archive.gl/md5/2275fbf2d96f518e54c2b72edf163f8...

Or they'll raise prices by that ten percent and become the marginal supplier. No way they're going to accept a loss. (Many items shipped into the USA of late have tariff related fees.)

Given "Donald" reference is beyond obvious, same if you know anything about trade, geography or housing issues.

This comment seems exactly like the school room exercise where the teacher hands out a test with a paragraph of instructions that includes the text buried in it: "do not answer any questions below" and students rush through the test and fail because they didn't bother reading the entire comment before ripping off their own because "our" is ambiguous. There is plenty of context in the comment, even for non-North Americans, since its very unlikely "Donald" was referring to famed Canadian-actor Donald Sutherland.

Or would you prefer every comment on HN to begin with: "As a/an $CountryDemonym..." or other requisite bona fides?

In reality unfortunately it likely means mills will sit idle or shut down entirely. Prices might come down a little bit hopefully

Amen.

His negotiating methods, if one can call them that, are like "single use weapons" that are relationship burning rather than building. If you are doing 100s of one-off deals with counterparties you will never talk to again, and who don't know each other.. it might actually work.

But you burn the ability to make more deals with the same counterparty again.

If you played this game with your neighbor over a fenceline or tree limb dangerously overhanging into your yard.. you would save a few bucks once, and have an antagonistic relationship for the next 10-20 years of living next to them. Good luck getting the benefit of the doubt next time.

Honestly though, it seems like he would rather have everyone lose than take a chance that anyone but him wins.

Even positive reporting of the man makes him out to have a massively fragile ego.

True but it won’t stop price gouging or as the company uses have been calling it price blending.

This does not seem to be accurate, from the reporting I've read. Do you have a source?

I read the article, I don't take away from it that Canadian lumber is suddenly 50% more expensive. It explains that tariffs for some Canadian lumber products was set to 50 percent at some point (or maybe lowered again, and raised, it's hard to tell since the Trump administration has issued 50+ different tariff directives in the last year), and that Canada walked away from negotiations recently.

I tried to do some more research before my coffee finishes in 5 minutes, you're right it's not ALL Canadian products or even all Canadian lumber products.

> Canadian negotiators also hoped to achieve some relief on softwood lumber tariffs that go back decades and were augmented with additional tariffs from Mr. Trump.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/21/world/canada/trump-tariff...

Right it probably works in real estate if you aren’t dealing with the same trading partners often. It is a business where dirtbag behavior is the norm.

May also explain why he stopped doing actual NYC RE dev and moved onto his licensing model in dozens of cities (new pools of suckers).

But when every threat & walk back is covered in national media, and he is playing the same game with the same big trading partners .. it loses its effect. Similarly he’s quite old and certainly lost any touch he had.

Not sure if you're joking, but I remember noticing the same thing last time I spent time there (2017). Lumber yards tend to have a lot of lumber. It's kind of like when you drive by a feed lot and they have an implausible number of cows (the ones over in imperial valley amazed me). Also there's always tankers by my house in Manhattan Beach. These anecdotes are not economic indicators.

The gas truck just came to the gas station on the corner and it's just crazy how big those things are, there's such a surplus of gas right now.

Idk about Washington but Oregon has increased logging a large amount over the last few years.

Yes, everyone know a modern economy statistics work by what you can see with your naked eyes out there on the streets.

I would not call it good relationship, US just stopped pretending, that is all. They were always a global threat. I am happy US delusions finally forced everyone to stop pretending too, because the cost of it got too large. Splendid.

> I will say with conviction no matter who is in office by then will not rebuild trust around the world in their tenure. Too much damage is done to the US's reputation.

The only way that the US can start rebuilding this trust is that the incoming Democratic President and Congress (assuming we are so lucky) immediately starts by prosecuting Trump and his family (and results in actual jail time, not just fines or small stays), zero out their government contracts, fire most of the people installed in government since 2025, expand the Supreme Court, and remove the fillibuster. I know people think ideas like that are extreme, but really, what else is going to convince the rest of the world that the US has cleaned up their act? It has to start at home first.

I know that this is insanely complex with everybody protecting their own economies, but I think this is where middle powers working together more strongly could help. Imagine that Canada, the EU, and Britain worked together as an economic NATO, where a tariff attack on one is a tariff attack on all. It would hurt the US much more to bully one of these economies.

As a Canadian, I am willing to suffer if it means long term benefits.

Carney is very popular for a reason.

There is also the factor that Canada has been propping up unsustainable dead end industries on a massive scale for years, and that this will make any pain from such a situation, deal or no deal, that much worse.

Most obviously Southern Ontario is living in a dreamland where inexplicably ICE autos remain a viable industry ad infinitum.

Some forced reality, by any means, will in the long run prove to be welcome.

You can't respect someone who doesn't respect their self. It's a mistake to attribute personality features to countries, but not to their leaders.

Similarly, people who don't have self-respect don't respect others.

I think you're right that this will be more painful for Canada, economically, but I'm not so sure about "way more". But politically, it will be much more painful for the US side of the negotiation than for the Canadian side. The Carney administration is on much firmer political ground than the Trump administration. Time is on Carney's side.

> Unfortunately, Canada (where I live) will feel way more pain from this than the US. I am not sure Trump will have respect for this at all, but the alternative was to put in a permanent trade deal that significant disadvantaged Canada.

It's unfortunate and in some ways unfair. I hope the Canadian economy will move towards more open trade partners and will proposer.

The thing that I really struggle to understand is what the grand vision behind this is. A logical consequence of the tariffs is that Canada, Europe and other American allies focus more on those who are willing to trade with them, including China.

If I put a 2/3y contract in place with an American supplier, there's a fair chance that I might have to deal with 10-50% tariffs at some point during the contract. This does make (long)-term business deals with the US risky.

Perhaps, but Canada will emerge stronger. The US doing to flip Congress by a margin of 2 and just lock in Trump insanity until something really bad pops.

Trump's crazy ideas

s/Trump.*ideas/Line their own pockets/

For example, the first tariff wave was a huge transfer of wealth from citizens to corporations in the OBBBA. First, the income from tariffs was projected to offset the tax cuts for the rich and corporations. Then, when the Supreme Court found them unlawful, the money had to be returned. But first the corporations let consumers pay the tariffs by increasing product prices, but now it is the same companies who get the tariff refunds. And since they are obviously not going to give the money back to the customer, it lined their pockets.

They stand for Project 2025 and the Maralago Accord, and the ideology behind them. So far they followed both projects quite closely. Trump is a tool they have to manage to reach their goals

Also, of course, extracting as much money from the state as possible

Putin wanted Trump to decapitate the Iranian regime?

Let's be serious, that has nothing to do with the Canadian situation, which has more than enough going on without needing to imagine things.

Edit to add: the extent to which many of you will apparently blame anything and everything on Putin is extraordinary. Just because the sun shines on Putin as well does not mean he made it do so.

I'm confused. Is he a Putin's puppet or Netanyahu's? He can't be both: these two don't align.

Would Putin want Germany to cancel the shut down of its nuclear power plants as Trump urged it to. [1]

The Green Movement in Europe, which Trump opposes, was best thing to happen to Putin.

As far as I can see, where Trump goes wrong is the same place the social democrats go wrong: believing in economic fallacies. In Trump's case that would be the belief that tariffs are beneficial.

He also on rare occasion aligns with very socialist leaning politicians like Elizabeth Warren, like when he sought to prevent private equity from buying up housing — which totally misdiagnoses the cause of the housing shortage. But it's these economic fallacies that makes Trump popular for the same reason social democrats are popular. The vast majority of people don't understand economics.

[1] https://youtu.be/eKEycjREgPE

What is going to happen is this lack of deal will accelerate the (inevitable) decline of the Canadian car industry, which will reduce objections to the Chinese imports leading to those quotas changing in an ever accelerating feedback loop.

From the US strategic perspective this is moving out of the frying pan and into the fire.

I'm in the EU and my masters did hand over the car market to chinese cars and this was a very stupid move.

Some EU carmakers are fighting back but it's very hard when politicians managed to have energy price in the EU being about 7x higher than those carmakers in China do pay.

I'm not for tariffs but China is dumping and if we don't all want to end up being vassals of China, we should at least protect some of our industries.

And as "good" as chinese EVs are, I'm sorry but they're not anywhere near the quality of, say, what German cars used to be.

If western carmakers had been given a reasonable timeline to switch to EVs and reasonable energy price, the situation would be different.

EU carmakers may be saved by people preferring to buy cars from their own continent but that remains to be seen. The latest BMW EVs, for example (once you remove the spying / remote control issues: but that affects chinese EVs doubly so), are apparently very fine machines.

This has always been an option pre-AI (block MS, block Google, etc). They never done that before why would they do that now?

Heads up, you would want to keep the sword of damocles in that case, no matter how illusory.

Good luck with the Chinese models I’d say. Next they’ll be using Russian ones just because they hate Trump so much haha.

It feels good to say things like the EU and Canada should just ban whatever, but the US can just ban imports of critical goods from Europe too and harm European industries (I’m not in favor of this but it’s certainly an option).

So if the EU can cozy up to China, well we can drop the whole Taiwan issue and cozy up to China too. If Europeans don’t care about democracy in Taiwan maybe we shouldn’t either. Oh and by the way, China is helping Russia prosecute its war against Ukraine (just like Iran and North Korea) but I guess Trump sent some mean tweets so NATO is over, all the alliances are over, the EU and Canada will cozy up to China, and ban all American products. Things that can be easily discarded by both sides aren’t worth much.

Why is this ironic? I see this point a lot but don’t understand the underlying reasoning for why it is a meaningful rebuttal?

It’s insane that the US administration (said as an American) doesn’t continue to treasure a values-aligned, peaceful, stable, independent neighbor along a massive unprotected border.

But I don’t understand this energy carve-out argument.

Yeah but this is the point, right? The guy thinks the US is still living in an era before it became a massive service economy

And maybe the US will learn again, that a great deal is something that people can rely on?

Pity that for such an obvious fact that even peasants like me can easily see, the "elite" European political leaders are still playing ostrich.

No, not good for Canada. Free trade is optimal, even if its unilateral.

The EU should abolish their tariffs and let the clowns in the US do whatever they feel like.

To add into what you said. EU’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) already affects the United States, though its impact varies depending on the sector. CBAM is big permanent change, and that will be rolled in smoothly below all this.

EU has carbon tax internally and they are rolling out CBAM to prevent "carbon exports" (manufacturing stuff outside EU and then importing those product without tax). CBAM is currently used directly some high-emission sectors: iron and steel, aluminum, fertilizers, cement, electricity, and hydrogen.

EU importers require granular data on the embedded emissions (both direct and indirect). US companies in these supply chains have had to overhaul how they track and verify carbon intensity down to the sub-supplier level to help their EU buyers comply with strict European reporting standards.

EU will gradually expand CBAM after allowing supply chains to adjust.

Not just software but online services. That would help us a lot and is safer anyway.

> and protect / stimulate domestic alternatives.

I really would love to see this, but the sad truth is that there are no real alternatives for a very big amount of software products. In the end, the eu residents will simply have to pay more for a lot of software products, and that's it :(

Europe/EU are highly reliant on the US military and these issues are linked.

Regarding the retaliation, I’m unsure who would be hurt more. There are very few ready alternatives to the MS office suite, and none with the close integrations like AD. Most corps run on Microsoft. If those contracts get slapped with tariffs they would become unmanageable to buy.

Then, because it isn’t on-premise anymore where you could just continue running without paying for the service contract you lose direct access to the product. So that might even mean whole companies going under.

If Europe does't buy gas from Russia then that leaves Qatar and the US. Qatar does sell a lot to Europe (hence you'll notice how "friendly" Europe is towards Qatar) but is vulnerable to instability in the straight of Ormuz.

The US are making a fortune on gas at the expense of Europe an it's not that the promise to buy gas is meaningless because unenforceable within Europe, it's that it was already happening in practice. And that makes Europe even more dependent on the US (while the complaint was that we could't buy gas from Russia and depend on them).

The EU also stopped enforcing its laws (like DMA and GDPR) against US tech companies.

> The only real concession the EU made was just allowing Trump to tariff them at a certain rate

No. Van der Leyen also promised EU investments into the USA. This is betrayal as well; that money should go into EU countries. Or Canada.

No need to make violating American copyright legal. Just remove their equivalent of the DMCA.

I can't understand why there isn't a single country that did that.

Europe: here is a tome of regulations you need to follow to do business here. its kind a big deal. Also Europe: we don't care about copyright.

how did you dream this up?

I think that's how you get the US to declare war :P

Yanis Varoufakis - aside from being radically left and becoming the finance minister in Greece after their financial crisis hit - is a professor in game theory and economics.

He did a pretty good explanation of the difference between theory and practice in his Rest is Politics Leading podcast interview recently :).

Sticks in my mind and well worth listening.

I guess it has a little to do with your goals. Optimal trade economically or avoiding giving something that looks like a win to this type of politicians with the goal of avoiding re-electing trump. I don’t know what science say here.

Tarriffs will hurt your existing industries, they will lose sales/revenue.

Since you are getting hurt you play tit-for-tat to get the other to knock it off.

So you add export taxes to items they care about (oil/fertilizer/...) and compensate the losses incurred by existing industries.

You also add tarriffs on items that have alternatives, like alcohool.

Maybe add tarriffs on items with elastic prices, say 100% tarriff on digital services. Software services will have to adjust prices so they end up the same after tarriffs since few people will accept youtube or netflix doubling in price.

This hurts both countries but will get a result - either free trade or no trade.

In the meanwhile, Trump's entourage has derivative bets on this and take massive proffits shorting everyone. For them, this is all massively profitable.

it’s a repeating negotiation so that’s not always true, this tit for tat approach may work to make the US lower tariffs.

In a vacuum or thought experiment.

China put tariffs specifically on the sectors that voted for Trump and depended on sales to China.

When the other party is not playing the same game, or not playing in fairness, then the best game theoretical move is to cease cooperation and retaliate.

nah

> It might push for cooperations outside the US-sphere.

BRICS is just that for oil.

The US is not indefatigable. As of March 2026 the nine largest foreign holders of US Treasury securities are Japan, UK, China, France and Canada.

All nations the US is jerking around. If they dump bonds US in big trouble. Oh, and the US is almost $40T in debt.

Are they still dominant? They can't even win their war against Iran. And everyone is slowly moving away from the dollar. The US as world hegemon is counting its days.

Ever seen the Twilight Zone episode "It's a Good Life"? It's a tough situation when your opponent is an all-powerful preteen. No win scenario: perpetually give in to childish temper tantrums and everyone is worse off forever, or suffer the consequences of opposing the child.

Yeah, quite likely. It is surely for the best to stand up

Actually its the opposite. The pain of "giving in" is limited to specific Canadian industries and powerful stakeholders with a LOT of political influence. In the broadest terms, Canada's economy grows rapidly if they give in.

Ah! I was not aware that it was a transcription.

Yes, I had the thought that it sounded a lot like speech.

Thanks.

Still. Many of those periods. Should be commas.

Attack dog Doug Ford threatened this last time and the Americans absolutely freaked out. It’s probably still a valuable nuclear option.

> less of it gets exported

Depends whether demand is flexible or not.

Oil and potash are made in provinces that have had their voter bases successfully propagandized by US Republican interests. They refused to get on-side at a political level.

You just outlined what would be the purpose of Canada doing this - to cause power prices to go up in the US.

Where would the US be without cheap electricity?

I’m not defending anything

I’m trying to encourage people to understand the facts in a forum dedicated to intellectual discussion.

>- the US imports 60-70% of its oil from Canada

In context, this only applies to oil that the US imports. That number means that of the oil that the US imports, 60-70% of it comes from Canada. The US currently produces more oil than any other nation. Your note should read "the US imports 60-70% of the oil that it imports from Canada"

- 100% of the natural gas

As mentioned above, this means that US imports of natural gas come exclusively from Canada. The US currently produces more natural gas than any other nation too. Your note should read "100% of the natural gas that the US imports comes from Canada"

It makes sense that Canada is sole source for imported natural gas since that is a product that is most efficiently transported in pipelines, like crude oil.

The way your numbers are framed seems to me to imply that the US is a net importer of oil and natural gas when in fact we began to ramp up exports of oil and natural gas (and coal) in 2006-2008 time period. Those exports helped the industry remain a dominant political force and provided a lot of seed money for the corruption that we have seen in the US since.

And Canada has also been passing up an absolutely enormous opportunity for industrial growth by spending generations supporting American industry by remaining a primary resources economy.