Summary
Ontario will impose a 25% surcharge on electricity exports to New York, Michigan, and Minnesota starting Monday in retaliation for Trump’s tariffs on Canadian goods.
Premier Doug Ford warned U.S. governors and vowed to maintain the surcharge until all tariffs are lifted.
Canada has already imposed $30 billion in retaliatory tariffs, with more planned.
Ford also threatened to cut power to the states by April and banned U.S. firms from bidding on Ontario contracts. A $100M SpaceX deal for rural internet was also scrapped in response.
Based Doug Ford was not on my 2025 bingo card.
When Trump said “America is back!” did he mean in the back of the line? Cause that’s where we’re at fellas.
In healthcare, we’ve been back of the line for decades.
Ironically, while Ford might be doing a pretty good job staying tough against Trump, he’s doing his level best to try to drive Ontario right to the back of that healthcare line as well. So save us a spot?
What’s he doing? I’m ootl.
Just the usual conservative tactic of underfunding public healthcare to push brake healthcare practitioners and patients into privatised healthcare services, which leaves public healthcare services understaffed and just further snowballs into worse staffing issues at public healthcare services and leaves the state of access to healthcare in the province in an abysmal state.
Just do it please
Any foreigner should avoid visiting US or buying US products to put pressure too.
It is crazy to advocate for it, as I live in US, but this administration needs pressure from everywhere.
Brit here, I make sure to try and pay more attention and avoid American products now. Not that I bought many before, cola is probably the main one when at a pub/restaurant. Now if there is nothing else I want I just get water. So probably a healthier switch.
Yeah, I’m discouraged to even buy American because Trump and the Republicans have basically turned that into a nationalist policy. I used to love buying American and local, but it feels gross to think that I’m supporting their agenda.
As an American- Agree. The dumbfucks in this country aren’t going to understand they fucked up, until the pain kicks in.
It will likely take awhile for this to have any effect. I know at least in my state (ME) the utility needs to give a 30 day notice of rate hike and then that needs to then go to committee within public utility commission, who will basically arbitrate the request for increase.
Consequently, my supplier of electricity is a wholly owned Canadian company…so they’d actually be paying the increase until a rate hike was approved. Also, would a punitive rate hike even be approved?
They have enough trouble getting a 1% rate hike though for building infrastructure.
Edit: Although I’m not up to speed on if the affected states have set rates or variable rates.
The era of US-Canada being brothers in arms is over. I doubt US will be receiving any favors in the future without something in return. And if Canada chooses to expand their supply chains outside of the US, which they 100% should, there’ll be no coming back to a scale of trade as it exists today.
Canada - America trade amounts to a little over $920B https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IF/IF12595
Canadian GDP is a little over $2.1T https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.CD?locations=CA
We’re talking nearly half of their GDP. In addition, half of Canadian foreign investment comes directly from the US. They will continue to be integrated into the US economy, even if Trump doubled the tariffs tomorrow.
And that’s because Canada, and Mexico to an even higher extent, are completely reliant on US trade. They both have no real choice but to grin and bear it. They will of course speak out publicly for the domestic audience but things will continue more or less status quo for the foreseeable future.
canada and Mexico are not “grinning and bearing it” though
Yes, they are. There will be no meaningful response because they have no leverage. Any meaningful change from status quo would mean an immediate economic crisis.
Ignore what they say on camera because they are speaking to their domestic audience.
Right now, Canada has placed a 25% tariff on $30B worth of imports. That’s 7% of US imports. Whereas Trump has placed 25% on everything that Canada exports to the US.
And 80% of Canadian exports go directly to the US.
So just for reference.
Canada retaliatory tariff -> $30B which represents less than 1% of total US exports
Trump’s tariffs -> ~$550B which represents nearly 80% of total Canadian exports
Ignore the rhetoric, look at the numbers. Canada and Mexico have no choice. They signed their economic autonomy away a long time ago. It’s sort of like when Greece went through their debt crisis and couldn’t do jack shit because they signed away their autonomy to Brussels (and really Germany).
There are trade-offs to every decision. Canada got easy access to the American market and a nice way to exploit their natural resources. But it also gives Washington an absurd amount of leverage over them.
Mexico is even more screwed.
I’m not disagreeing with you that free trade with the US was a very stupid thing for Canada to agree to, but back in the day it was shoved down our throats by the conservative government of the day. Canada is experiencing the consequences of that poor decision right now. That being said, as an export heavy, raw materials-heavy country we have a lot of options. In the first Trunp presidency we signed CETA with the EU, we already get a lot of food imports from Mexico (that won’t change) and since Donald was elected the 2nd time we’ve signed trade deals with Ecuador, and new military agreements with Brazil and the Philippines on top of all our existing allies. There will be more deals that Canada makes, unlike the US, our signature on international agreements actually means something. Canadians aren’t at all like Americans, we are united and we will do anything and everything it takes to protect our sovereignty and our country. Again unlike Americans, we are prepared to go without. We’re a smaller economy and therefore more nimble. We’re doing all kinds of things internally as well. Barring military action by the US on us, I am not that worried and have full confidence in all Canadians to stand up for ourselves and do what we need to do to rid ourselves of the US fascist protectionist isolationist scourge.
All countries are sovereign but some countries are more sovereign than others. If Canada’s priority was protecting sovereignty then they would not be in this position to begin with.
It’s something that has been decades in the making. It will take decades to reverse course. It isn’t going to meaningfully change in the upcoming 5-10 years.
You say Canadians are ready to “go without” but we’re talking about millions of people losing their jobs. A historic spike in poverty. Collapse of many industries. No sane leadership would ever cut off trade with America. National pride doesn’t feed a family.
Long term, sure, maybe there will be a realignment. I doubt it, but it’s possible. The near future is a chaotic one where Canada and Mexico are going to need the economic value from America. We’re headed for troubled times globally.
I cut off a Canadian guy I was friends with recently, this guy agreed with everything Trump was doing.
Told him I don’t associate with Trump supporters, even weirder you’re Canadian (and lives in Canada)
He said he didn’t support trump, but reads all the policies front to back and agrees with them.
I said ok, bye and blocked his ass, we can talk again when you get invaded and become 51st state you love him so much.
Wtf is going on?? He had some bullshit reply to everything like he was Canadian maga.
It basically boils down to this: Trump is a lying, racist, rapist.
How do you put trust in anything he says? I can show you 200 lies, with evidence, just in the last week. He loves Putin and himself, gives no shits about us. He’s already broken long existing agreements with other countries, he CANNOT be trusted, no matter how good what he says sounds. His goal is to exact revenge on those that don’t like him or have said something bad about him, his skin is so thin. You don’t “accidentally” rape a person, he is an absolute terrible human being who deserves zero respect from anyone. Fuck Trump in the neck with a metal pipe.
John Stewart agrees with some of the DOGE objectives.
John Oliver agrees with some of RFKs beliefs.
Someone I know just keeps telling me he disagrees with every policy that’s bad, while also saying he agrees with Trump for 50 things per the 5 he disagrees with.
Anyway that relationship is very sour as you can imagine
I’m certain he’s doing it for the wrong reasons, but it’s nice to see the angry raging conservative attacking a genuine asshole for once.
Honestly he’s even doing it for the right reasons. His country has been economically attacked. Not to respond would just make it worse.
I suspect he’s playing it up for the camera in order to differentiate himself from American conservatives now that they’ve begun turning on Canada. It’s something I imagine we’ll see out of Poilievre as well, because otherwise they’ll quickly become unelectable.
Just remember that they were chums all up until this point, and that’s still damning. Ford supported American conservatives all the way until the leopards turned to eat his face. Yeah, it’s cool that he’s going above and beyond to fight back now, but he still wants Ontario to act like Texas.