Yeah, I guess my issues is the ones in the US are all basically golf carts. My parents have one, and it can get up to about 30mph. It pretty much sucks to drive most of the time when the weather sucks - its a toy, nothing practical. I think the thing cost like $10k. I want something that looks like a Kia Soul, but is electric, goes 40 mph, doesn’t have 20 airbags that turn the interior into a pillow since it should never be going that fast. Something like that would be perfect around Chicago and other large cities. The base soul is like 20k, so surely once you swap the engine and transmission out with a battery and a motor, remove all the tech and safety junk, you gotta be getting below 15k.
2 Likes
Other than your 40mph threshold, seems this is totally legal now under Neighborhood electric vehicle statutes
No airbags required, but seatbelts and some other safety features are like brake lights, turn signals, and mirrors.
Trump should read about McKinley’s 1890 tariff war against Canada. Used up my gift articles so have pasted the text below. So many parallels to 2025.
**The U.S. waged a trade war against Canada before. Here’s how it ended
On an early-fall afternoon in 1890, Sir John A. Macdonald stood before a large crowd at a picnic in Halifax and delivered an impassioned speech that sounds eerily familiar in 2025.
The topic? Tariffs. The threat? Annexation.
“The fact is that the United States covet Canada,” Macdonald said.
The prime minister’s blunt words were prompted by the McKinley Tariff Act, a new U.S. law that would deliver crippling tariffs of up to 50 per cent on Canadian exports to the United States. The law was sponsored by Ohio congressman and future U.S. president William McKinley, so notorious a proponent of steep tariffs that he was nicknamed “the Napoleon of Protection.” The tariffs were ostensibly designed to protect U.S. manufacturers; Macdonald believed there was a more sinister motivation.
He warned that our neighbours were turning up the tariff screws to force Canada to accept not merely a commercial union with the United States, but a political union. The United States wanted what Canada had, he said, and was angling to remove the border to take it.
If history doesn’t exactly repeat itself, it certainly echoes, even across a 135-year canyon. Macdonald faced an economic and political threat that was, in many ways, remarkably similar to our current national predicament.
And like the current federal Liberals, Macdonald’s Conservatives entered their tariff crisis as a long-entrenched government that appeared to have outlived its usefulness.
Macdonald was 75 when he delivered his Halifax speech; his health in 1890 hadn’t been great. He was nearing the end of his fifth mandate, having governed for 18 of the 23 years since Confederation. In his private correspondence, Macdonald himself wondered whether he and his government had long passed their best-before date.
But the tariff fight reinvigorated the prime minister and turned his party’s fortunes. The Conservatives won the 1891 election, in which they campaigned as the country’s defender against the tariffs and the threat of annexation. On his campaign posters, Macdonald appeared waving the flag.
Mind you, the Canada of 1890 was quite different from the Canada of today. The country was just a generation old; while unquestionably rich with natural resources, its manufacturing industries were in their infancy. The country still relied on a kind of maternal protection from Britain, and constantly looked over its shoulder at its rapidly growing and endlessly ambitious neighbour to the south. The U.S. Civil War a quarter-century earlier had, despite its horrors, catapulted that country into a major industrial power; now, the U.S. was increasingly interested in expanding its global footprint as a political power, too. In this climate, a young Canada could never get too comfortable about its future.
While U.S. president Benjamin Harrison (unlike the current resident of the White House) never publicly threatened Canada with annexation, other senior U.S. government officials did little to hide their designs on Canada. Harrison’s secretary of state, James Blaine – who co-authored the tariff bill with McKinley – openly talked about his desire to unite Canada with the United States. Privately, he told the president that in the face of high tariffs, Canada would “ultimately, I believe, seek admission to the Union.”
Egging Harrison and Blaine on was Andrew Carnegie, the ultrarich U.S. industrialist who had the president’s ear on tariff matters (among other things). “If Canada wants the advantage of the American market, it must become American,” Carnegie wrote in a letter to William Gladstone, the past and future British prime minister.
But Macdonald wasn’t any more attracted to the prospect of being absorbed into the U.S. zeitgeist than the Canadian leadership of today. In his Halifax speech, he said that Canadians would prefer to “enjoy the magnificent country that God has given us, and look with philosophic eyes at the struggles of a fierce and discordant democracy” – setting off a prolonged round of applause.
Of course, the McKinley tariffs neither forced an economic union or annexation, nor did they destroy the Canadian economy.
In the five years after the imposition of the tariffs, Canada’s goods exports to the U.S. fell nearly 50 per cent compared with the five years prior; at the same time, exports to Britain more than doubled. Trade with other markets – chiefly the Caribbean – also doubled.
During those five years, Canadian exports overall grew more than 20 per cent. The U.S. tariffs hadn’t dissuaded Canadian trade; they had only rerouted it.
Meanwhile, the protectionist pursuits of Harrison’s Republicans had given the party scant cover politically. The Democrats steamrollered the Republicans in the midterm congressional election of November, 1890, winning 72 per cent of the contested seats. Two years later, a deeply unpopular Harrison lost the White House to Grover Cleveland, who had nearly double the incumbent’s electoral college votes.
In the second half of the 1890s, the Republicans led by Mr. McKinley – who succeeded Mr. Cleveland as president in 1896 – grew increasingly dissatisfied with the economic efficacy of tariffs. By 1901, the former great champion of tariffs had become an advocate of “reciprocity” – what we talk about now as bilateral free trade. He had come to believe that the United States could not expect to expand its industry into foreign markets unless it granted trading partners fair access to its own market.
“We must not repose in fancied security that we can forever sell everything and buy little or nothing,” the president said in a speech at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo in September, 1901.
The next day, McKinley was shot twice in the abdomen during a public meet-and-greet. Eight days later, he was dead.**
2 Likes
I guess my point is that legal status is enabling the use of golf carts as third vehicles more than it is enabling the use of a cheaper alternative to replace a second vehicle.
Completely agree. No one, in the US or external, should be fooled into thinking Trump would ever honor an agreement unless it’s in his near term financial or political interest to do so.
A “fierce and discordant democracy” describes the US perfectly even after all these years, and is a bit more politic than “a democratic hot mess”.
1 Like
Starmer has wooed Trump so it will be interesting to see if his approach, rather than standing up to him, results in the UK being exempted from April 2 tariffs.
Starmer has a very weak hand.
I don’t think appeasement is the right answer, but it looks like they don’t care much about auto tariffs because the cars that are exported to the US are high-end (thus mostly price inelastic). Paying 20% more for them is probably a rounding error for the US consumer who can afford them.
What has damaged the UK is the steel tariffs. They are panicking now because it will likely force British Steel in Scunthorpe to close (the company who runs it is Chinese and they are losing a lot of money due to the UKs high commercial energy prices. The tariffs were the last straw).
They are very desperate now for a deal (even if it favours the US) because the UK economy is effectively in stagflation, and without growth…they will not be re-elected because a lot more welfare cuts will be required.
Even if the UK gets a trade deal with the US, there is a chance it will be abused by the US the way CUSMA has been. “National security” tariffs can be invoked by Trump on anything to neuter the deal. The USA is not a reliable trading partner.
Other than Rolls Royces, I don’t see a lot of UK products that the US really wants?
1 Like
Make Bovril great again?
Its mostly Jaguar, McLaren, Rolls Royce, Aston Martin etc
These are very high end cars.
Don’t disagree that its a terrible idea to agree to anything with Trump, as he will not honour that agreement if he changes his mind later on (for whatever reason).
And unrestricted trade on agricultural products would destroy UK farming. They couldn’t compete with the huge US factory farms.
In fairness, the Brits have lately proven to be kinda shit at making decent trade deals.
1 Like
scotch?
Trump hasn’t put tariffs on that (yet).
But agree that its a solid export from UK to US.
The farmers were warned countless times that by voting for Brexit, there would invariably be a focus on the US (vs trading with EU) that would decimate them due to economies of scale.
Turkeys voting for Christmas basically.
All the issues that were raised by all the people that saw the trainwreck coming (farming and manufacturing would be severely damaged) were ignored in favour of nationalistic bluster.
Now the bill has come due. With interest.
1 Like
This is what is now happening in Europe.
There will be a lot more of this going forwards.
The RAV4 and Chrysler Pacifica are made in Canada, and on the other end of the border, VW makes a lot of Jettas and Tiguans in Mexico, it’s not all high end cars.
Lexus does make cars in Canada, but they still have to compete with Acura and Cadillac etc. Even for luxury cars, a 20% tariff will make them uncompetitive.
Now if we’re talking Ferrari, yeah, 20% may not be a strong deterrent.
1 Like
As mentioned before, I expect some sort of modified tariff treatment for cars imported from Mexico and Canada versus those from Italy and Germany. It’s nonsensical to treat those situations the same given how integrated car manufacturing is in US/Mex/Can.
Hey, this administration specializes in nonsense
4 Likes