The U.S. also has a huge amount of trade barriers that are indirect against the rest of the world. Don't act like the U.S. is the victim here.
One example: In Canada, there's a vibrant french language film industry, meaning films in french that originate and are made in Canada and then marketed abroad. The english language equivalent is anemic because decades ago, as part of trade negotiations, the Canadian gov't gutted subsidies for english language film production as a trade barrier against Hollywood.
Not only USA products. Most countries with low safety standards and known for dangerous products are barred from trading with the EU, or at least many of their products. Recently, even big Chinese on-line shops are being targeted for selling dangerous products and lying on the description on that products.
I understand that quality and safety is a diminishing goal for the USA. But I hope that other countries keep the care for their citizens as a achievable goal.
> is not entirely incorrect
With enough re-interpretation nothing is not entirely incorrect. Agree on the part that it is misleading.
But it's not really a trade barrier if it applies equally for everyone, including domestic products, is it? Then it's just a safety regulation barrier, which also the US has plenty of.
It's something else entirely to point to a specific country and say that "anyone who imports from there is going to get taxed an extra 15%". That's a specific barrier to a specific trade.
It is still a barrier even just by being different. The British drive on the left side of the road, all domestic manufacturers make cars which are left side drive. If you are from the majority of the world which is right hand drive, you can't just directly export your default car in bulk to the UK and expect it to sell. This makes it a barrier to imports into the UK, and also exports from the UK. It is a non-tariff barrier to trade.
EU and US egg safety rules are mutually incompatible.
It goes both ways. You can’t buy an Iberian ham that’s fully compliant with EU standards and take it back to the US because it’s not USDA certified. It’s arguably the same flavor of backdoor protectionism involved.
In the softwood lumber dispute that's been going on for decades, the US raised (legitimately) the point that in Canada, land is granted by permit to loggers for only nominal fees; in the U.S. loggers have to pay significant amounts for rights to log. This is effectively a gov't subsidy to Canadian loggers by comparison with American loggers, allowing Canadian loggers to sell softwoods at a lower price.
This is the difficulty with discussing "trade barriers": things that are simply handled differently in different countries can be (arguably) economic factors that discriminate against one side or the other, hence they're trade barriers. Complicating it further, one can create barriers that have plausible deniability, or point to unrelated factors and scream "TRADE BARRIER".
I know someone who was involved for a while in the softwood lumber discussions. Just an absolute snake pit trying to suss out what are real barriers, intended barriers, relevant inputs... and all of this in the context of negotiations over the same, so everything is also "does he mean this or is he distracting us from something else or just building up a talking point to surrender later?"
trade courts did not find the US complaints legitimate, and repeatedly rule in canada's favour. the end root of the difference in cost is that canada is really big with a lot of forest and doesnt have better things to do with forested land.
the logs in canada are just worth less than the ones in the US. Differential advantage is a real thing that exists.
If the US government really beleives it to be a canadian government subsidy to loggers, it should be more than happy to give the tariff money to the canadian government, making canada's taxes and fees exactly what the US thinks they should be.
Agreed, but my point was that these things are hideously complicated and there's an endless source of details to hold up and say "NOT FAIR!" and it's ultimately about finding an agreement, not about the course of natural justice.
BTW, I'm Canadian. IIRC, the trade courts didn't find that the complaint about fees wasn't legitimate, it was that American logging companies had other, offsetting economic benefits, so the bottom line was that they weren't disadvantaged. So the U.S. simply refused to abide by the ruling and didn't pay the fine it was supposed to, so that receiving the fine or some portion thereof, became another thing to negotiate in the next round. Unbelievably hairy stuff.
Unless you can explain why the American stumpage fees are inherently "correct", this is simply a case of one country having a bigger supply of something and therefore being able to offer it much cheaper. You know... Capitalism working exactly as intended.
Isn't that kind of America's thing?
"No, not like that!"
All the rest of this is designed to distract from the real issue: Americans love Capitalism, except in the rare cases where they don't come out on top. Then everyone else is being mean and unfair.
It's funny. When European governments charge high fees, Americans deride them as socialist and anti-capitalist. When the American government does it (as it does here)? Why, it's the natural order of things! Our fees are the "correct" fees. It's everyone else that's wrong!
I mean, yes. An easy one that is omnipresent is that Canada mandates Canadian radio stations to play a certain amount of Canadian content giving advantage to Canadian artists
Of course this is fine... Countries should protect their industries..just don't get on your moral high horse when America does it
To be clear, I am against Trump's approach, but all the pearl clutching is exhausting.
Trump just went directly after Canada's sovereignty. Nobody else has done anything even remotely similar since I don't know China's occupation of Tibet.
America has just unmasked itself and shown what they really think of Canadians.
Trump is nuts, but he is broadly correct that the world expects the benefits of American statehood without the responsibilities and reduction in autonomy. Yes, I realize this arrangement benefits the United States, but on the other hand, these other countries have gotten too used to it. People made fun of Vance and Trump for the Zelensky interaction, but I think a lot of Americans felt heard for the first time in a long time.
Canada can do what it likes, but people shouldn't expect America to come to their rescue. Trump explicitly warned Germany about Russian oil, and the Germans quite literally laughed at the UN because of their hubris.
> Canada can do what it likes, but people shouldn't expect America to come to their rescue.
What specifically are you referring to here?
NATO Article 5 has been invoked once, and that resulted in soldiers from Canada (and other allies) losing their lives responding to an attack on America. Not the other way round.
I'm responding to the general expectation that America will deploy resources . You cite article 5. America is expected to intervene whether article 5 is involved or not
This is also a problem for trade between EU member states.
There's other examples of course, e.g. the Cybertruck is not road legal in the EU. Though I can hardly say that's "in the room" given how unpopular the vehicle is even in the USA.
Unfair? I didn't say unfair, I said it was "in the room" with us. Most NTBs aren't unfair, but also most don't fit in a room and unlike language are abstract in ways most people don't engage with.
The local jobs market is currently demanding a lot of C1 German. This does not seem unfair to me. Does make it challenging to sell services to Germany if you can't provide it at that level.
Or, to put it another way, imagine my response had been:
Hör mal, Kumpel, wenn du glaubst, du kannst deine Dienstleistungen in einem Land verkaufen, dessen Landessprache du nicht sprichst, dann glaub mir als jemandem, der es gerade versucht: Das ist verdammt schwer.
You can only get so far with Google Translate in a business setting; I know, 'cause that's where I started, and it took me a long time to work up to "eh, you'll do".
Unfortunately, systematically and illegally dismantling the organization responsible for protecting us against diarrhea lettuce is a setback to that goal.
Yes sure. Add it to the pile of contradictory goals:
1. Bring back manufacturing jobs
2. Remove trade barriers
3. Make US rich by collecting huge amount of tariffs
If 1 is true then there is no benefit for countries to remove trade barriers or pay tariffs because now there is no leverage (manufacturing jobs to protect).
If 2 is true then there is no leverage for other things to happen - countries aren't going to voluntary remove trade barriers without keeping the jobs or paying tariffs.
