Are we in the ‘find out’ stage of NAFTA/CUSMA agreement now - especially now it’s in its sunset stage? Sure starting to look like it. Canada’s own failing to increase inter-provincial trade, international trade, and encourage domestic expansion is coming back to bite. Decades of selling out Canadian companies to the US, mergers of domestic companies, and privatisation of crown corps (funny how we don’t even own our own rail) is going to make the transition all bite extra hard.
Does this mean tariffs worked
Reading the comments I don’t think people understand what’s involved here.
The companies are moving to the states because that’s where the majority of their customers are. Which means it’s not viable for them to stay in Canada and only sell to Canadian markets.
Which means nobody’s going to be replacing these businesses. We’re talking about hundreds of thousands of jobs that will be lost with no replacement.
The state can’t nationalize them, the workers can’t take them over, they’re just not viable as businesses anymore.
And all those businesses and all the people that work for those businesses pay taxes. Which means we’re going to have less and less money to provide services the people who are poor etc
This isn’t about giving states our money, this is about us not having any money anymore. I think people need to wake up to the reality of how serious this is
They can do their worst. I didn’t buy so much as a US sweet potato from the grocery store this week. Sure as hell isn’t going to be a car or an appliance from any company moving out of Canada.
Sure bud, your stand on potatoes is going to save the CDN manufacturing sector.
So you mean we can nationalize a bunch of factories and turn them over to worker owned and managed cooperatives?
And how sell what where to whom, exactly? The problem isn’t the production, its the sales
Canada should yo much more to export products to other countries than the US
Maybe something like this: https://doctorow.medium.com/https-pluralistic-net-2026-01-29-post-american-canada-ottawa-0a9df32d23f7
And make what? Sandals and snow shovels?
Hey you guys! Bad Things will happen if you keep not giving us your money! We really mean it, really Bad!
Art of the deal, motherfuckers. Deal with that!
All I hear is the boycott is working just fine!
If they move the machines to the US, wouldn’t they get ta tariff-ed?
No, they are not selling them in the US.
They’re also not making “Peoples Cars” anymore either. They’re making luxury fuck you got mine mobiles.
get ready for vehicle quality to go down. american plants pretty much always make the worst parts.
hell, I’m aware of one situation right now where an OEM is knowingly assembling something incorrectly because the product design is shit. instead of fixing it, they’re just making the parts pass the inspection, while most definitely not making good parts.
get ready for vehicle quality to go down
L O L
What’s the name of that truck built in Canada that isn’t shit again?
do you have any experience in the industry?
if not, fuck off
I can believe it, the Chrysler Hatchback on a model way back had a built in rubber seal molded to the plastic trim. They spec’d materials that don’t stick to each other so the seal would just peel off. Instead or changing materials they made it sawtoothed like nubs to hold the seal in place mechanically… But I’m sure that leaked after a while
In some ways I don’t blame the companies. That is the business game. However another side of that is that when a company leaves, another company can replace it. It creates opportunity for new Canadian companies to be started. As Canadians, we need to be aware of the companies that leave, stop doing any business with them, build and support new Canadian companies and if that doesn’t happen, buy from China or Europe or South America. Yes it will cost Canadian consumers more in the short term but buying from Americans enslaves us over the long term. We have to cut our ties. NAFTA wasn’t a boon for Canada, it was a boon for the US. We can choose to support Canada by not buying American.
Trade isn’t really meant to be a win-lose calculation, your take on NAFTA being a win for the USA and not Canada is a fundamentally Trumpian way of looking at it. NAFTA benefited all participating countries.
In terms of Canadian companies filling voids, that’s a very optimistic/hopefully outlook. More realistically, Canada’s market size is about 1/10th that of the USA, and it’s most likely that the Canadian government won’t employ things like industry protectionist tactics, such as tariffs on foreign imports. They definitely wouldn’t tariff that USA’s imports, and not tariff other countries, due to the amount of trade still reliant on the USA – even if the Canadian govt hits its target of doubling non-USA foreign trade, the USA would still be like >50% of our exports.
I think a slightly different way of looking at this though, is that the companies that are considering moving do not have a sufficient customer base / market in Canada ‘alone’ to justify their presence. Too many of our businesses get too much of their revenue from USA sales, with little market activity on the Canada side. There are also some manufacturers, particularly in the auto industry, who are getting obliterated by the automation/efficiency of Chinese companies already, who are using the trade fiasco as an excuse – similar to tech companies using AI as an excuse to trim bloat.
Yea but we’re telling each other to not implement automation and Ai. So take that China. We have so many groups on western internet telling each other that these technologies are evil. So at least we have morals given to us by these anonymous totally not Chinese backed digital groups
The reality is when NAFTA was originally signed, hundreds of US companies shut down and moved across the border. Why? Same reason they won’t move back, paying workers on a lower dollar value and not having to pay US medical insurance.
From a US perspective, NAFTA/ USMCA did lose them jobs and was not good for the country, however, Republicans and Democrats did nothing to control US medical insurance costs, which makes US labor impossible.
If an established company decides they can’t make money in Canada, it would be doubly true for a new company.
But what if they are only deciding to increase profits beyond the already obscene profits they already make?
Auto sector makes pretty thin margins.
*thin margins on big numbers with all but guaranteed returns.
You must think it’s easy to run a multi-national company and just anyone can do it. It is not.
This is why I support Carney’s agenda of diversifying our economy and our partners. These companies are moving to the U.S. because, currently, Canada predominantly does business with the U.S., so these U.S. companies see tariffs as an obstacle to their business.
However, when Canada has exports predominantly in the rest of the world, companies will stop moving.
Export what. Diversify what.
Canada is the bottom of the barrel for industry R&D, we have been since the 1960s. All we do is dig shit out of a hole to feed jobs abroad.
Mark Carney is not going to pull a new industry out of his ass.
Okay but all our other neighbors are an ocean away. This is hard mode.
Yes but the alternative is to become hostage to a hostile nation.
You cave now and they will do it again. We also have to stop pretending these are Canadian firms leaving. We’ve allowed many of our manufacturing companies to become subsidiaries of foreign companies.
Exactly. When I hear the east talk about the “Canadian Auto Industry” I think, what auto industry? Oh the american one that hires a lot of Canadians? The deal has been good for both sides so I understand why we became dependent, but now that the mask is off and the US is openly saying they intend to fuck us we need to pivot.
While I would love a Canadian auto company, that is very hard to do and the better interim option would be to better partnership with European and Asian car brands. No reason we can’t build Renault cars here.
I mean, same with China for the most part? And yet they manage to be an industrial powerhouse. Shipping is not impossible.
We also are their biggest export market. If we start “eating our own dog food” then those overseas exports will be enough to make up most of the difference, but we have to double down on the effort to build and buy anything but American.
We also have a land border with Denmark
Lot of international trade possibilities on Hans Island?
I hear they like poutine.
Historically, there’s been a bit of a whiskey trade on the Denmark-Canada land border.
We probably need to build a pipeline over the border
JFC…consult a globe.
thats-the-joke.gif
Yeah but also a lot of countries are looking to diversify away from the us who is just as far from those potential partners.
Not exposed to Tarrifs for the US, just a fascist lawless kakistocracy when rights and rules don’t exist. You won’t be selling to the rest of the world as counter tarrifs settle. If you are selling only to the US, move. If you have such a poor opinion of a rules based civilization, I don’t want you here anyways. We will be busy enough making things for ourselves and our allies.
Name one thing Canada makes as a finished product Europe will buy. 100% chance whatever you have in mind is not made here.
Airplanes (Bombardier), mining equipment, Military Equipment, finished metals etc…
There is room to grow because whatever the EU bought from the US or Russia, that Canada can make, should be included. Lots of opportunity both ways.
Businesses love fascist, lawless kakistocracies up until they find themselves neglecting their protection payments.
