USA

For decades, Canadians have been, by a wide margin, the world’s largest buyers of cars and trucks made in the United States. In most years, four out of every 10 vehicles that roll out of Canadian dealerships were shipped from American factories.

But being the most important overseas market for America’s vehicle industry has not insulated Canada’s own auto industry from President Trump’s move to unravel the global trading system. On Friday, Mr. Trump threatened to impose a new 35 percent tariff on Canada unless the two countries struck a deal.

But even before then, Mr. Trump’s recent trade deals with Japan, Britain and the European Union meant that their auto exports would now be entering the United States at tariff rates lower than that on Canadian cars and trucks.

Do not break out the champagne. The trade “deal” agreed this weekend by the United States and the European Union bears the familiar elements of President Donald Trump’s evolving vision of trade under Trumponomics.

What’s been announced is better than the worst-case scenario of a trade war, but worse than the status quo.

WASHINGTON, D.C. — U.S. President Donald Trump wants a Golden Dome of missile defence over the United States, and if you’re thinking this sounds familiar, you’d be right. Back in the 1980s, Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative, aka Star Wars, also aimed to develop a space-based and layered defence system to knock out any incoming strikes.

It didn’t work out.

Prime Minister Mark Carney said negotiations between Canada and the U.S. on a new trade and security deal have reached an “intense phase,” as an Aug. 1 deadline looms.

Carney made the comments in Prince Edward Island on Monday during a separate announcement about the Confederation Bridge.

“The negotiations are at an intense phase,” Carney said. “It’s a complex negotiation you see with the various trade deals that have been agreed by other jurisdictions … there are many aspects to these negotiations.”

We are approaching the end game of the current round of negotiations between Canada and the U.S. on a new comprehensive trade deal.

The outcome of the talks is still very much uncertain. While it appeared early on as if progress was being made, President Donald Trump has made no secret of the fact that several major obstacles remain. Favourite targets of his have been our banking rules and regulations and our protectionist digital and cultural sectors (in addition to non-trade irritants like our border policies).

Fifteen per cent seems to be the new magic number being bandied about for a U.S. tariff rate after Japan and the Americans announced a trade deal, with the European Union now signed up too and South Korea apparently headed in the same direction.

… If 15 per cent is the “new normal” as Stretch wondered, what does that mean for Canada?

Canada’s Soviet-style supply management system on dairy, poultry and eggs has been screwing citizens for decades with higher food prices, obliterated family farms and disrupted international trade deals. The dairy cartels are deeply entrenched in Canada and have effectively cowed every federal political party (so to speak,) including the Conservatives. No major federal leader will dare question supply management for fear of upsetting Quebec which benefits from the program. The standoff on this terrible policy robs Canadians of billions.