Trump's justification on Canadian tariffs? The War of 1812

The Hill

President Trump falsely claimed Canada burned down the White House during the War of 1812 while on a phone call with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau last month, CNN reported on Wednesday.

It is not clear from the report whether Trump was joking.

According to CNN, on May 25, Trump and Trudeau were discussing the Trump administration imposing tariffs on steel and aluminum imports from Canada.

Trump says the tariffs are a matter of national security, something Trudeau reportedly contested during the phone call, sources familiar with the discussion told CNN.

"Didn't you guys burn down the White House?" Trump reportedly quipped in response.

Trump was apparently referring to the War of 1812, when the White House and much of Washington, D.C., was burned by the British.

The British marched on Washington, D.C. in August 1814 after the Americans attacked York, Ontario. That territory, part of Canada, at the time was a British colony.

Former first lady Dolley Madison famously rescued a portrait of President Washington before fleeing the White House as it burned.

A source who was on the call told CNN that the comment was “not a laughing matter."

"To the degree one can ever take what is said as a joke,” the source told the network. “The impact on Canada and ultimately on workers in the U.S. won't be a laughing matter."

The Hill has reached out to the White House for comment.

Trump bragged in March that he has made up facts during meetings with Trudeau.

He reportedly told people at a fundraising dinner that he insisted the U.S. has a trade deficit with Canada but didn’t know if that was true.

Oh my god! Trump using a 200+ year old war as an excuse, and towards an ally that is now ruled differently than it was. Should the US tariff the UK next because 1776? Should we tariff Japan, Italy and Germany because World War II?

Gonna go on a limb here and guess that around half of the responses in the thread from here on can be boiled down to " Yup!"

In the UK that wasn't even considered a war just a theatre in the Napoleonic wars.

What a silly thing to be bitter about.

LMAO

Also, it was not really the "Canadians" who burned Washington DC, it was the British

But again with the assumptions about what Trump may have meant, he could have been joking or he could have been serious, does it really matter, the tariffs are there and it´s about time.

@Jacanuk: Glad you like seeing America burning to the ground by punishing our allies.

Eh? are you saying that Canada is going to invade America? Because having sensible tariffs are not going to "burn" anything.

It´s a sound business strategy when your supposed allies take advantage of you.

There is nothing sensible in attacking allies in anyway. Just wait until Blue Ribbon Beers jump up in price.

Even the World Bank thinks Trump is going to cause another financial crash.

This is the moment I just realized, Trump is just trolling everyone. I mean, out of all the possible countries, Canada? One of your biggest allies? Why not mess around with Russia? Oh, of course...

https://globalnews.ca/news/4258050/tariffs-steel-aluminum-us-jobs-canada/

Tariffs on steel and aluminum might cost the U.S. 400,000 jobs — and Canada could get hit too

@Jacanuk: How does the US get taken advantage of? You’re repeating his rhetoric but I doubt you have any understanding on what trade deficits actually mean.

First who has said anything about the trade surplus or the trade deficit? also, the US has a trade surplus with Canada.

The problem is the unfair market advantage countries in China, EU, Mexico where they can undercut the price and they can make the product cheaper based on either work conditions that could be said to be slave or child labour or almost no tax/employer cost in regards to the environment

But the main point in putting tariffs is to make it cheaper to produce in-house than import from countries like Canada.

And Zaryia, the funny thing with an estimate is that it´s an assumption and we all saw how the "assumptions", about how the economy would tank and Trump´s being elected would bring the worst recession since 1930´s,

@Jacanuk: Trump’s issue with all this is trade deficits. That is his complaint. For example he is upset about the US importing more German cars than the Germans buy American cars. China is the main culprit in his eyes since their trade deficit with the US is huge, but so what? The US gets cheap products out of it. That’s how business transactions work - you exchange money for goods and service. I don’t think American citizens want to start paying extra for products that are easily affordable for import. Tariffs just hurt the American consumer and don’t make it cheaper to produce domestically. It increases the cost of raw materials used to create the same products which in turn causes US companies to raise the price of their products to make a profit. No matter how one looks at it the American consumer loses out. There is a reason why no reputable economist agrees with these proposed tariffs.

Lumping Canada and the EU with China and Mexico doesn’t make sense since the former has as strict, if not more so, manufacturing laws and standards as the US. You are right that certain nations compete on different levels because of their regulatory environments and lax labour laws, but I don’t believe that is his problem with the current trade disputes.

Well, I can only hope his only issue with the Canadian tariffs is not the "deficit" because there is a surplus, but then again I am not blind enough to not admit that Trump is not the sharpest knife in the box.

But the problem you miss here is the unfair advantages there is in those countries, you think a company want to be under countless laws, EPA regulation and also have a workforce, that have demands, as to work hours, workplace conditions etc... or do you think they can see a benefit in moving to a country where the environment is an unknown word and they can get people to work for 1/100 of what it cost to get an equivalent worker in the us.

Sure we have a global free market and that is a good thing, we get cheap computers and TVs and cars etc.., But that is not worth the cost of American jobs.

You think all EU countries doesn't have their own taxes to pay, regulations and so on?

Never said that what I said was that especially the east-European countries are not involved in the global free market by fair means, after all, why do you think that a lot of eastern Europeans are "working" in the west for half the pay or even 1/3 of the pay of their local counterparts.

Or why do you think production companies are moving their production plants to the east.

To your first paragraph: Because they are being abused.

You never specify Eastern Europe. You say EU, which is a lot more than eastern Europe.

In Norway we have experienced companies pulling their production out of China and back to Norway because it was cheaper...

Well, I don´t need to specify Eastern EU member countries, since they are as much a part of the EU despite them having a workforce that gets a much lower pay than their western EU counterparts.

And good for Norway, you are also not in the EU, so while you do have a separate deal with the EU, you are not as other EU member countries bound as hard. But if you look at the companies moving it far outweighs the company that does not.

Norway is better than many EU members at following EU directives... Well those we got to follow.

And there you have the icing on the cake, Norway picks the ones they want to follow (for the most part)

@nintendoboy16:

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/a-guide-to-understanding-the-dairy-dispute-between-the-us-andcanada/article34802291/

Canada has long maintained a high tariff wall on most dairy products. The duty on milk is 270 per cent. That keeps most imports from the United States and elsewhere out of Canada, while helping to prop up higher domestic prices. One notable exception is ultrafiltered milk and other protein-rich dairy ingredients used to make dairy products such as cheese and yogurt. North American free-trade rules do not cover these ingredients, so they enter Canada duty-free. And in recent years, U.S. dairies have developed a booming business selling these low-cost products to dairies in Canada ($133-million last year). That all changed about a year ago, when Canadian dairy farmers and producers moved to close the breach in the tariff wall with a new "ingredients strategy." They persuaded regulators to create a new lower-priced class of industrial milk as an incentive to get dairies to produce protein substances in Canada, using Canadian milk. The result was predictable: U.S. imports fell in 2016, and are declining sharply so far this year.

In year 2016, Canada started a trade war against US.

Hypocrites from Canada. Canada talks about "Free Trade" while installed a trade protection for it's dairy industry.

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https://www.export.gov/article?id=Argentina-trade-barriers

Tariff Barriers

For countries outside the MERCOSUR area, Argentina and its MERCOSUR partners established the MERCOSUR common external tariff (CET) on January 1, 1995. The CET currently ranges from zero to 20 percent for most products. However, some products in the automotive sector can reach 35 percent.

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From March 2017, China has higher trade tariffs on US built cars before Trump's response.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/20/business/economy/china-us-trade-tariffs.html

From Musk's March 8th, 2018, China already has 25 percent import duty on US made cars before Trump's response.

Hypocrites from China

https://global.handelsblatt.com/politics/trump-may-point-eu-tariffs-ifo-says-899083

“The EU is by no means the paradise for free traders that it likes to think,” said Gabriel Felbermayr, director of the ifo Center for International Economics, a division of the Munich-based ifo Institute. The European Union actually comes off as the bigger offender when compared to the US, he added. The unweighted average EU customs duty is 5.2 percent, versus the US rate of 3.5 percent, according to ifo’s database.

So when Mr. Trump complains of “massive tariffs” he is not that far off the mark in several cases. And he does complain. “If the EU wants to further increase their already massive tariffs and barriers on US companies doing business there, we will simply apply a tax on their cars, which freely pour into the US,” the president tweeted earlier this month. “They make it impossible for our cars (and more) to sell there. Big trade imbalance!”

....

In fact it wasn’t even Mr. Trump who first broke off negotiations over a US-EU free trade deal known as the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), the German economist noted. It was actually the EU that put the unpopular talks “on ice” ahead of elections in France and Germany.

Hypocrites from EU

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-eu-steel-china/eu-raises-import-duties-on-chinese-steel-angering-beijing-idUSKBN1780VU

EU already raises import duties on Chinese steel in 2017.

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-03-06/europe-renews-tariffs-chinese-steel-pipes-high-72

European Union Renews Tariffs On Chinese Steel Pipes As High As 72%

You're a hypocrite to single out Trump when other countries engages in their own "Made In XYZ country" programs.

US's recent steel and aluminium tariffs doesn't apply on Australian and Japanese steel (mostly Australian raw iron and coal).

Australia is US's one of it's main source for Titanium, Cobalt (e.g. Tesla battery) and Lithium.

I didn't single out Trump or mention what other countries do, I was merely replying to a post Jacanuk (not Trump) made stating this sound business strategy although data potentially shows otherwise. Data you did not directly refute, or even mention.

A report released Tuesday by the Washington-based trade and economic consulting firm claims that for every steel and aluminum job saved by the Trump administration’s tariffs on imports, 16 more will be lost.

“Basically, the report finds not surprisingly that the tariffs would increase employment in the steel and the aluminum sectors, but what it shows pretty clearly is that a large number of other workers would lose jobs in the process as higher steel costs ripple through the economy,” said Laura Baughman, one of the report’s authors.

Attempt to stay on quote chain topic, rather than spamming random links to make it appear that you are actually "debating" what was said.

Donald Trump! Pissing off all of our allies and hurting our economy in the process!

Best president ever, so much winning.

pfft.

a foreigner is a foreigner

Ya, it´s funny that when America does the same thing as Canada have done on several occasions, like with Milk or EU on cars, they get shown to be the bad guys.

You ever wondered why Canada has so strict tariffs on things like Milk, last I heard it was a 270% increase. Or the EU with 25% extra on imported cars.

That's unproven ground you're walking on there.

I thought the EU only added 10% to US cars. Where did you get 25%?

The US adds 2.5% to EU cars and 25% to EU trucks and vans, it was a compromise both sides were happy with for the longest time.

"The United States imposes a 2.5-percent tariff on cars assembled in Europe and a 25-percent tariff on European-built vans and pickup trucks. Europe imposes a 10-percent tariff on U.S.-built cars"

https://www.google.ie/amp/s/mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/idUSKCN1GF0QJ

And let's not pretend like the US is a bastion of free trade

http://www.businessinsider.com/americas-biggest-tariffs-2010-9?IR=T

You are correct it was only 10%.

And the US only puts 2.5%

Thanks for the correction, the problem though is still there, like with Canada complains over steel tariffs but have a 270% tax on farm produce from the US.