“Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?”

28 Replies to ““Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?””

1. David has most of them. There’s a big non-tariff barrier he’s missed. That’s the requirement to do packaging of everything in both official languages – English and French. This constitutes a huge cost for all small manufacturers and suppliers, effectively blocking them completely out of the Canadian market all by itself. It turns Canada into an oligarchy of big manufacturers only.

   1. Lets not forget foreign banks not being able to register mortgages in Canada. The big banks are an oligopoly, as a US bank chequing account routinely carries interest, currently about 3%, Canada zilch. I just rolled over a CD in the US, 4.1% same term GIC in Canada 3.35%

      1. PEter – also don’t forget insurance , telecommunications and news restrictions. my guess this only scratches the surface. Also Canadian content rules.

2. “The Canada Border Services Agency collects an excise tax on imported liquor. For example, a U.S. exporter looking to ship 100 litres of 40 percent ABV whiskey to Canada will face a duty of $467.84 (100 × 0.4 × $11.696). That duty must be paid by the importer.”

   Isn’t that the same as every Canadian distiller? That’s as retarded as Trump claiming that Value Added Tax is a tax on American goods. French labeling? If you can’t run a batch of printing for Canada you are a pretty pathetic business.

   1. Bilingual labeling is still a barrier to trade. It’s a useless ingredient and if your prospects for shipping to Canada are only marginally profitable, you’ll not bother at all.

      1. Exactly so, Dennis. There’s no value-added for this regulatory requirement whatsoever. And for some, particularly in the food industry, it can be a low profit margin. This added cost could wipe it out.

      2. Canadian companies have to print for export to the US because of stone age weights and measures. Is that a devious conspiracy?

         1. No. American companies have to print in French to export to Canada. It’s a massive non-tariff trade barrier.

            1. Y’all otta see the product labels in the EU, several languages and those in Africa with arabic stickers atop others. Lol

3. I’m skeptical of the way in which the dairy tariffs are being defended by various water carriers. They claim that there is an import quota level below which no tariffs apply, which apparently is rarely used by American dairy companies that might want to import into Canada. Why is that? Probably because the import quota applies only to raw dairy products. Processed products, such as bottled milk or cheese packaged for sale directly to consumers has to pay the 250% tariff rate. The would explain why Manitoba supermarkets don’t stock Land O’ Lakes butter and milk. Even if you have raw milk for sale into Canada, you would have to seek an arrangement with a Canadian processor and that market is likely throttled by the production limits set up under supply mismanagement.

   1. A Canadian processor? That’s a very limited field in Canada. There are only two processors that occupy the whole market: Saputo and Lactalis (formerly Parmalat). This is a cartel and de facto monopoly.

      Saputo emerged into Canada in the late 1970s with a series of buyouts of small Canadian dairies. The suspicion is that it was all money provided from European mafia operations being laundered by purchasing companies with cash. Pierre Trudeau’s dairy marketing board made Canadian diaries an ideal target for a large corporate takeover.

      1. Careful how you talk about Saputo, I don’t know if you know who runs that business, but it ain’t the Boy Scouts. With apologies to Back to School.

   2. Lets take the example of Butter(and associated products), the available quota for butter is 4.5 million kilograms, or approximately 2% of what Canadian farms produce every year. 50% of that is used for butter that goes for “further processing”, say to make Butter Cookies in a Canadian factory as an example. The remaining 2.25 million kilograms can be sold to other canadian companies that have a valid quota, but not to end retailers.

      All other butter (and associated products) gets hit with the full tariff, so no one bothers.

4. I notice all the articles on this web site want to reach the same conclusion lately: Canada bad, US good.

   But if the topic is limited to Canada-US trade, the situation was, at least before 2025, comparable. Canada had tariffs on a few US farm products, the US had tariffs on Canadian steel and lumber. The biggest difference is that the Canadian tariffs were agreed to in the USMCA, while the US tariffs were not.

   1. Banks?
      Wireless?

      1. Massive subsidies to US farmers, at about twice the rate per agricultural output than Canada?

   2. Similar conclusion, USA prosperous, Canada poor and getting poorer at an increasing rate.

   3. KM, you are not paying attention to the non-tariff barriers.

      1. Yeah! Like he says. Printing Canadian labels for exactly the same cost of American labels. In another life we ran 3 brands of bacon on the same line, premium, regular and ends. We switched brands of sliced meats in 5 minutes. Quebec had 8 slices in a package of meat, Anglos had 6. We made our own wieners plus house brands. Changing packaging wasn’t a problem because we weren’t retards.

      2. The US has tons of non-tariff barriers, in total worse than their tariffs barriers.

         https://www.stlouisfed.org/on-the-economy/2023/apr/us-barriers-to-international-trade-of-goods-tariffs-and-non-tariff-measures

   4. Yep Marmot

5. Tariffs are a natural and normal thing.. Until they get out of hand.. We cant fight with America and China at the same time.. So this is where you have to park your trade war and work on behalf of the Canadian people you claim to serve..

   Boy, do we need an election.. Because at this point nobody really owns this mess..

   1. WRONG! Buster … YOU own it. No escaping it. Oh Canada … !

6. One point not touched on is subsidies. Milk for example – in Canada supply is limited so economics dictate that prices surpass the cost of production. In the US they have gone the way of subsidies to give producers a profit. To import subsidized milk into a country and sell at it below the price of production is called dumping which most countries have laws against. Don’t like marketing boards but await Pres trump’s solution on subsidies.

7. Yeah so tariffs are there on both sides. As the smaller market, Canada is the one that gets hit hardest both ways. It’s much more in Canada’s economic interest for Canada to join the US (or eliminate tariffs.)

8. The US has the lowest trade barriers in the G20.

   This chart includes actual tariffs and non-tariff barriers.

   https://x.com/Solix_Trade/status/1901242762080530839