Trump said the dairy and lumber tariffs were going to hit today or possibly tomorrow. With the stocks crashing, it seems that they got delayed.
It’s becoming quite the familiar pattern with the Trump administration. Fascist dictator and raging asshole, Donald Trump, announces his latest plan to stab Canada in the back with punishing tariffs for no real practical reason, Canada, rightfully, responds by saying they will hit back, the stock markets crash, Trump sees the markets crashing on Fox News, Trump freaks out and proceeds to rescind the tariffs.
We saw this back in February when Trump made his first attempt to declare economic war on Canada. Canada, for it’s part through multiple levels of government, announced that they would be hitting back. The stock markets proceeded to crash. Then, Trump delayed the tariffs for 30 days. When the delay was announced, the markets partially recovered from the insanity.
After the 30 day reprieve, Trump let the tariffs go into effect, this time for reals. The Canadian government said that they are hitting back. Once again, the stock market crashed, Trump likely saw the 1,300 point crash on Fox News, Trump panicked, and partially lifted the tariffs.
At that point, the question then became whether Canada would lift the counter tariffs in response. Luckily, the seeming answer ended up being “no” with the reasoning being that the counter tariffs won’t be lifted until all tariffs and the threat of tariffs go away. That obviously didn’t happen, so the counter tariffs remain. At this point, that seemingly hasn’t changed.
Trump, for his part, said that although the wide ranging tariffs have been partially lifted, he is announcing additional tariffs on dairy and lumber. He said that it would take place on Monday or possibly Tuesday.
Well, today is Monday and the business headlines include the fact that the stock markets crashed yet again by another nearly 900 points. From Yahoo! Finance:
US stocks plunged on Monday as investors processed growing concerns about the health of the US economy after President Trump and his top economic officials acknowledged the possibility of a potential rough patch.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average (^DJI) fell nearly 900 points, or over 2%, while the benchmark S&P 500 (^GSPC) dropped around 2.7% after the index posted its worst week since September.
The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite (^IXIC) fell 4% in its worst day since 2022, as the “Magnificent Seven” stocks led the sell-off. Tesla’s (TSLA) rout continued, plunging 15% and officially wiping out the gains it had made in the wake of Trump’s election win. Nvidia (NVDA), Apple (AAPL), Google parent Alphabet (GOOG), and Meta (META) all each lost more than 4%.
All three major indexes built on losses of more than 2% last week as the Nasdaq plummeted deeper into correction territory.
What’s more, Canadian premiers are also taking action against the American bully by moving ahead or advancing counter measures. BC Premier, David Eby, announced that the liquor being pulled from store shelves are going from just “red state” alcohol to all American alcohol. From Global News:
B.C. Premier David Eby says all U.S. liquor products will be removed from B.C. liquor stores.
Previously, it was only liquor from red states, but Eby said on Monday that will now change.
“It was about a week ago, we announced taking liquor products and other products made in Republican states off the shelf here at the liquor store and at all of our public liquor stores across the province,” Eby said.
“Since then, we have seen a threat of additional tariffs on the dairy industry. An investigation into our lumber industry by the president, with the aim of adding even more tariffs and disturbing articles in the New York Times and other places about the president threatening to redraw our borders and pursue Canadian water.”
Eby added that if U.S. President Donald Trump is so interested in Canadian water then B.C. is going to help him out by letting him “keep his watery beer.”
Eby also said that he plans on implementing tolls for trucks going from the US to Alaska. From City News:
Just moments after the United States announced there would be a one-month pause for tariffs on Canadian-made goods, B.C. Premier David Eby announced that commercial trucks travelling through B.C. from Washington to Alaska will now be subject to new fees.
The move is part of the province’s non-tariff retaliation.
“The chaos and the swings back and forth, the tariffs are on, the tariffs are off. The threats, the orders rescinded, put in place — it’s all a deliberate tactic to weaken our resolve, and it will not work,” Eby said on the lawn of the Legislature.
Ontario Premier, Doug Ford, also allowed the 25% counter tariff on electricity to the US move ahead. From the CBC:
Ontario is imposing a 25 per cent surcharge on all U.S.-bound electricity as part of its retaliatory measures against U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariffs on Canadian goods.
The new levy took effect Monday and will add about $10 per megawatt-hour to the cost of power heading south, the province says. It will generate an estimated $300,000 to $400,000 per day, money that will be used to support workers and businesses hit by U.S. tariffs.
“Believe me when I say I do not want to do this,” Ontario Premier Doug Ford said at a news conference Monday.
“I feel terrible for the American people, because it’s not the American people who started this trade war. It’s one person who’s responsible, that’s President Trump,” he said.
US governor’s who are directly impacted by this called on Trump to drop the trade war with Canada as Trump’s actions are hurting Americans. From Inside Halton:
The governors of the three American states that share a land border with Ontario — New York, Michigan and Minnesota — have all blasted U.S. President Donald Trump’s “unnecessary and costly trade war trade war.”
According to a news release from the office of Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, he met online with two of his Canadian provincial counterparts — Ontario Premier Doug Ford and Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew — on Wednesday “to discuss ways to alleviate tariff impacts and strengthen trade relationships.”
“President Trump’s tariffs pose a serious threat to the future of trade with Canada. But while the president may not value the partnerships that contribute billions of dollars to our economy, Minnesota does,” said Gov. Walz, in the news release. “I am working closely with Canadian leadership to help Minnesota get through this unnecessary and costly trade war.”
A news release from the office of New York state Gov. Kathy Hochul said that on Tuesday she convened a roundtable with agriculture leaders from across the state to discuss global competitiveness and international markets in the wake of the Trump administration’s trade tariffs on Mexico, Canada, and China.
The news release noted that as of March 4 the Trump Administration placed a 25 per cent tariff on all goods from Canada and Mexico as well as a 10 per cent tariff on energy resources from Canada.
“The impact,” stated the news release, “is expected to raise costs for the average New Yorker by as much as $1,200 a year.”
The news release quoted the governor as saying:
“Many of our farmers rely on export sales of their products, and I’ll continue to do everything in my power to fight against this misguided tariff policy and ensure the government is doing what it is supposed to do, which is help, not hurt, New York farmers.”
While Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has not issued a news release this week, she made her views known when Trump threatened to initiate the tariffs at the beginning of February.
“Michiganders are already struggling with high costs — the last thing they need is for those costs to increase even more,” she said in a news release at the time.
A 25 per cent tariff, she added, “will hurt American autoworkers and consumers, raise prices on cars, groceries, and energy for working families and put countless jobs at risk. Trump’s middle-class tax hike will cripple our economy and hit working-class, blue-collar families especially hard.
“Because companies pass tariff costs on to the consumers, Trump’s middle-class tax hike will mean Michigan families pay more to heat their homes as they face below freezing temperatures, fill their gas tanks, and get affordable housing at a time when inflation is already high. It will harm our auto industry, driving up the cost of cars and slowing production lines.”
This really helps to punctuate the fact that this is all on Trump. I don’t recall anything about putting tariffs on Canada during the federal election. It wasn’t until after the results came in that Trump unilaterally decided to start doing this. So, it’s a very tough argument to make that the American people voted for this.
At any rate, it’s likely some additional ketchup bottles got placed in the witness protection program because now that the markets crashed again, it seems that the dairy and lumber tariffs failed to materialize. A search through all my feeds yields nothing about these tariffs. There are results for the steel and aluminum tariffs that are supposedly going to take place on Wednesday, but that’s about it.
Now, it’s, of course, possible that Trump could still move ahead with the dairy and lumber tariffs tomorrow, but with a crashing stock market, it’s entirely possible that this could also just result in further delays. After all, it’s quite clear that Trump is playing trial and error with these tariffs. He’s trying to figure out which tariffs won’t crash the markets so he can stick with those. This while leaving the tariffs that did crash the markets off the table for now. It’s unlikely he’ll find anything significant, but evidence and research be damned, he’s channelling his inner George W. Bush and becoming “the decider” and is just doing things to see what does and doesn’t break.
Tomorrow is going to be interesting to see what he does next, though. So, we’ll keep watching the shit show to see what additional stupidity comes from the US moving forward.
