Yup. I never did quite understand sweet and sour oil.
End up in the the situation I talked about.
The reason the US doesn’t just retool the refineries? Cuz the time horizon to recoup the fixed costs is greater than the expected supplies will last. Bad investment.
Yup. The cost to build or retool a refinery is uneconomical. Canada has not built a major new refinery in over 40 years as a result. More sensible to export most of our oil to US refineries.
Trump does not understand the concept of mutually beneficial: he is always looking for a “win” even where there is none to be had.
Reagan and Congress appreciated the value of the Canada-US Free Trade Agreement and happily adopted it in 1988. A majority of Canadians were against it at the time but the Canadian Conservative Party had a strong parliamentary majority and pushed it through. Interesting how the political sentiment around it has changed since then. Canadian politicians now universally support free trade with the US while Trump is damaging it.
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It’s the Art of the Deal. You make deals with the intent to stiff your partners on payments, then litigate with everyone over it.
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Canada’s mistake was to think the USA would always be a fair trade partner: it put all its eggs in one basket rather than actively seek out other trading partners. Canada needs to export to thrive economically but is now committed to US trade.
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I thought that during Trump 1.0 there was an effort to diversify Canada’s trading relationships, for the obvious reason.
I assume that those efforts were detailed due to the distraction of COVID, and the subsequent belief that the status quo had been restored with Trump’s defeat.
Oops.
There was an attempt to develop much closer trade ties with China which would have been logical from a financial viewpoint. However politics interfered and we are now siding with the USA on matters involving China. Our political relationship with both China and India is very bad and that inhibits the trade relationships with those major economies.
We should trade much more with the EU than we do but the proximity of the US has made them the natural partner.
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Analysts are forecasting that Midwest US gas prices could go up 75 US cents a gallon due to the 25% tariffs. I would love to see Trump try to explain that.
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“The prices went up because of the horrible policies that Biden put into place.”
That was easy. The talking heads can take the torch and soberly discuss how many refineries were closed under Biden (due to policies put in place under Trump) or how under Trump we were drilling record-high amounts of oil (we later drilled more under Biden).
“and Canada is killing us on gas, that’s why we need a tariff.”
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Agreed.
He will reframe it as a Biden and/or Canada problem.
Its what he always does.
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Sadly you are probably right. Even sadder is that Trump supporters will accept the explanation.
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I agree. I read through NAFTA, it seemed great. Yet everyone just accepted Trump’s word that it was a bad deal.
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Can’t fix stupid.
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This guy is very whacky and ideological. He also seems to be fanatically loyal to Trump. Doesn’t bode well for the future.
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Necessity really is the mother of invention.
EU is now moving to get Mercosur signed off before Trump lobs a few hand grenades at the deal to deep-six it.
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No brainer really. Both parties end up with a stronger hand whilst weakening Trump’s hand. What more could you want?
Canada may want to quickly get a bit of the action.
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In our defence the Europeans stopped buying baby seal skin.
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And..its official.
The global re-alignment away from the US is fortifying itself for when Trump gets into power.
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We don’t kill the whitecoats anymore and haven’t in decades. Also, the seal population is quite healthy. The meat on the other hand is nasty.
This is just so distasteful.
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