Thoughts on Canadian ev tariff

[goalieguy847]

It is a gong show.. but as i love to be devils advocate i think we need go take a serious look at whats actually at stake here.. and that dropping the ev tariff might be a short term mistake on multiple fronts.


First off.. the gdp of ontario is huge. Alberta, sask and manitoba dont even match it.
ontario may NOT have an ev industry but they do have an auto industry... that almost all surveys show, dwarfs the canadian canola industry in gdp contribution and jobs provided. It IS frustrating that we feel like we are being sacrificed for a non existent industry.... but pummelling the largest province ( by population) ontario is political suicide, regardless of your colour.

Its alot easier to plant a different crop than it is to re organize, retrain and re-do the whole auto industry supply chain from.top to bottom. Especially when roughly 90% of the vehicles produced in canada go to... USA. Its not like we buy our our own products exclusively. Plus, what sort of damage would ( with a big question mark) BYD vehicles do to the foreign vehicle market that does have alot of manufacturing ( and sales) within canada . Countries that are consistently strong trading partners such as japan.


Now.. look at our annual trade with 2 countries that we are stuck between. Usa vs china.
600 billion with USA vs 120 billion with china.
then compare provincial reliance on exports to USA alone ( alberta about 35% of gdp and sask about 25% of gdp)

Now comparing IMPORTS
directly from USA.. with alberta ( 63%) and sask (80%) relying on US imports , which would open them both up to an incredible amount of financial pain if Canada went tit for tat with tariffs.
This is why ( understandably) Carney has softened his tariff stance....which has helped Alberta and Sask more than any other province due to their reliance on imports, both of which voted overwhelmingly in favour for the other guy.


Its estimated that roughly 45 % of all jobs in alberta are DIRECTLY tied to USA exports.... and about 30% of Saskatchewan jobs.
usa buys MORE canola.it buys more oil. More meal. More potash...etc...etc. They are a larger market.

What china has done here is genius. Pitted eastern and western canada against eachother in order to further divide up the country... when in reality this SHOULD be an opportunity to divest our canola industry by finding different trading partners, adding value-add to the market chain thru increased crush capacity.. and NOT BENDING to the political whims of a country that has played tariff games on us since Harper ( check out the tariffs on canadian canola over history).

Heres the other fly in the ointment and why a 1-for-1 swap with EV tariff and canola is a bad deal.

When BYD looked at setting up a manufacturing plant in mexico, trump threatened a 100% tariff on all mexican made vehicles.. BYD ended that plan pretty quickly.

So in a perfect world where the EV tariff gets dropped and we create some sort of manufacturing plant for BYD here in CANADA...what would Trump tariff us on? Likely a 100% tariff on BYD.. or worse... A 100% tariff on canadian grain. THAT would be ALOT more painful than what this chinese tariff on canola is.

What economic damage could trump inflict on Canada if he really wanted to...vs the 2$/ bushel hit we have taken on canola. If USA slapped tariffs on all oir ag products it would be a hell of alot more than the $5 billion estimated loss we are facing due to chinas canola tariffs. A number that is eye watering but certainly nothing like the " sell the farm" catastrophe we could have...

Even if usa didnt tariff us and BYD setup a plant here ( they wouldnt, they want to dump cheaply made overproduced products)....
Local manufacturing would increase the EV cost and BYD would lose MOST of their economic edge... thats why china wants to just ship their cheaply made cars here, rather than manufacture at higher labor/ energy costs.

But do we honestly believe that china really cares about our EV market?
Cmon now.
CARNEY even put the 2026 EV mandate (20% of all new vehicle sales need to be EV) on hold. Dropped the EV subsidy. The result?
Roughly 9% of all new vehicle sales in canada during the 1st half of 2025 were EVs. ( about 80 k total)
Thats a paltry total compared to BYDs 4.3 MILLION sold in 2024.
How much market share would BYD even gain if they were allowed access? Even at 50% that would be less than a 1% increase in vehicle sales. There certainly are more lucrative markets for them to go after.

This is so much less about BYD than it is wedging us against eachother and angering the USA.


So cant we accuse China of dirty play here with the canola tariffs?
wellll....

It would be nice if we could take china to task with a WTO appeal...but since trump left the world trade organization there arent enough members to rule on an appeal!

You have to remember.. china will do what china will do. And lets not forget the incredible amount of money they have invested in infrastructure in brazil and argentina in order to gain better access to their ports and export facilities. They are most likely out of usa soybean buying for this season and a large decrease if/when they do resume US purchases. Not to mention theyve already scooped up australian canola in some serious volume ( but there is a question of whether australia could even supply what china needs)...

So would it be too late to DROP the EV tariff and have it really affect our canola price at all? Tough to say.. We might make a deal with china ( without any future guarantees that they wont pull the same crap again) and they just buy everything that australia has to offer anyway.

I Believe that at this point.. we need to tell china to go eff themselves and find different trading partners. Its time to help subsidize canadian farners by helping them find ways to

a) store their canola til other markets can be found.

B) grow other crops to decrease canola acres

And c) lower their cost of production by decreasing import caps/ duties on foreign fertilizer and products.

A direct to farm subsidy, i feel, is nothing more than flow thru money which will end up in the pockets of cargill/nutrien/basf and FCC/ scotiabank. If the companies know we have a set revenue then they sure will find a way to peel it from us.

Programs like

A)interest free loans with extended repayment terms...

B) capital expenditure write- off allowances.....

c)premium reductions to crop insurance are all helpful ways to reduce costs to farmers and help alleviate financial strain with a reasonable ask to taxpayers.

Remember how angry people were when air canada... gm... bombardier... etc got bailed out? And how angry we are, as farmers, that the auto and dairy industry gets bailed out ?

Granted.. a subsidy to individuals is alot easier to stomach than to a faceless company....but that can also be more difficult to swallow when non farming taxpayers see the amount of equipment ( and value) of equipment thats leaving dealerships and driving across 3,4,5000$/ acre farmland.

You think farmers arent already in the crosshairs with glyphosate, chemicals... and the right ( and wrong) perception that all farmers are rich? Plus.. we have to remember... more than 50 of people didnt vote how 80% of of farmers did!
Less than 15% of canadians today have ever set foot on a farm...(although i suspect a hell of a smaller% have ever set foot in a Ford factory!).

So I feel like now isnt the time to go after canadians and how they voted ( heck, even 35 %of albertans didnt vote Conservative)

but rather

Tell china to suck it.
Band together as farmers.
and realize that short term pain may actually be better than a long term raw deal... which is something we currently have with China. They are using this opportunity to find alternate trading partners and force us to decide between Them and our neighbour to the south. A political pawn in their trade-war.
Maybe it's time that we do the same thing.

I just feel like we really.. reaaaallllyyyyy need to tread carefully here with how we approach dropping the EV tariff.

Danielle smith understands this...which is why she hasnt openly asked for a removal of the tariff.....and im kind of surprised MOE and Kinew have...although not surprising as they know it most likely wont happen and its easy cannon fodder for their electoral base.

To be honest, i could use a direct to farm subsidy. Sure. But i feel like it would be a mistake that would actually push the Ag industry FURTHER into a negative light in the Canadian public's eyes. Thats my real concern.

And after a deep dive into the numbers i have come to realize the opportunity that's sitting infront of our canola industry. An opportunity to place less reliance on who is essentially... a terrible trading "partner", in China, who is attempting to force us into a terrible deal..which could put us into a serious tailspin with a much MUCH more important trading partner in the US.

I know ive been critical of trump.. but he wont always be there.. and we need USA a hell of alot more than we need china.

( full disclosure; some of the numbers are stats can and the newest they have are from 2021)

?

[Old Cowzilla]

Its quite the pickle we don't want cheap shit China cars but flock by the millions to Walmart,Canadian Tire, Princess Auto and RB auctions(toy section ) . Lots of farmers don't want handouts but our prices are set by down south markets. And the proud southern boys will gladly cash a sub check they are checking there mail boxes every week . Soybeans set the price of canola not the other way around. We have to fight with there bailouts all the time. I believe they are getting a $100/acre that's 2 bucks pressure against our canola price . Could be some lean times for sure.

[shtferbrains]

Eventually we are going to have to realize that we have to fix our economy and do what we do best.
That's what exporting countries live on.
We have to be able to be competitive and productive.

Your basically saying we should dump off the growing economies because they are smarter than us.
So let's go find some stagnating economies to buddy up with that are even stupider than us and form our own little trading block with protectionist policy like
CBAM.

We are in a tight spot, but we caused it.
Has to be fixed, not dodged.


Lots of opportunities, but not for everything that once was.

Investment is not coming here, and we just lost $15 billion more yesterday.

We have a great country but seem to wannabe something else.

Edit: Lots of good points and we'll thought out but don't see a solution.

[ajl]

MAJOR problem with gdp is that is includes government spending at cost. Once you strip that out you will find that ontariowe's real economy is tiny. Full disclosure: I grew up in ontario and went to high school there. To people living in ontario, western canada was a place on the moon for all we knew. It simply did not register on the radar screen of the world as we knew it. In the mean time ontario shipped its industry to china and became dependent on western tax dough while absolutely hating their benefactors. Already in the 70's, the feds were using western tax dough to pay for auto workers health care thus luring those jobs north of the border. Now president Trump wants, and is getting, those jobs back. Fact is that ontariowe is as dependent on western tax dough as much as quebec. Besides equalization, there is all the public disservants, consultants, and just general grifters in the ottawa orbit. All these are located in ontariowe and quebec and send there provincial taxes to Queens park and Quebec city. Another factor is that ontariowe is home to the parasitical banking industry in canada, which needs deposits from the west as that is home to the only real wealth production in canada. Thanks to the scamdemic, my wife and I moved most of our personal banking from the Royal to the ATB, not an insubstantial sum. Others need do likewise. Bottom line is that ontariowe needs Alberta. Alberta does not need ontariowe. Western interests and canada will never be aligned so we needs separation now.

[AlbertaFarmer5]

Canada has only four significant industries that run a trade surplus with the rest of the world.
Energy at $150 billion
Metals and Minerals at $34.5 billion
Agriculture at $32 billion
Forestry at $17 billion
Virtually every other industry in Canada is running a trade deficit. Including manufacturing.
All of those other industries have such a massive trade deficit, that they overwhelm the above surpluses to put Canada into a net trade deficit over all.

Those are the only industries making a net contribution to our exportable GDP.

[AlbertaFarmer5]

I suppose money laundering, fraud/scams, illegal gambling, drug trade etc. also run a trade surplus, but the official figures aren't easy to find.

[AlbertaFarmer5]

Its time to help subsidize canadian farners by helping them find ways to

a) store their canola till other markets can be found.

?

Check out how well that worked out in the US in the 80's when the government paid farmers to store grain, and stocks grew year after year.

Couldn't have sent a worse signal to an already oversupplied market if they tried.

[furrowtickler]

The crop insurance idea has merit
many areas where due to multi year drought have very high premiums now , very low coverage levels and now the political pressure on markets are the ones really suffering

[SmallTimeOperator]

Ask yourself every time you read something if Western Separation would solve the problem. I came to this realization yesterday when Moe and Kinew were calling for and end to the EV tariffs and Ford was saying hell no. This came after Vassy Kapellos had some chinese guy on her show talking through an interpreter who said the canola tariff would be dropped if we dropped the EV tariff, and that China would start buying canola from us as long as the price was competitive to other prices they have to pay for canola.

So here goes:
EV tariff
-Separation would still solve that. East can keep it. West would drop it.

Canola / Pea tariffs
-Separation would solve that- Chinese guy admitted they were in direct retaliation for the EV tariff, so if the West Separated, it wouldn’t be a retaliation, since we don’t build any cars in the west and it would be pointless to retaliate against Western Canada when we don’t build any cars and when we had already dropped the EV tariff, do China would drop it.

9 bad laws(No more pipelines, etc)
-Separation would solve that. West would drop them all.

Pipelines
-Separation would solve that. We’d have the 9 bad laws dropped before lunch on the first day and by the afternoon, companies would be announcing their intents to build.

Immigration
-Separation would solve that. West would just shut it down and only let in who is needed here.

Housing
-Separation would solve that. Just need to slow the movement of all the immigrants coming from Toronto/Brampton/Montreal and close the door to new immigrants except those who are really needed.

TFWs
-Separation would solve that. Just shut it down.

Equalization
-Separation would solve that cause it would be over.

Health Care
-Separation would solve that. Since Western Canada would keep all the equalization money, governments could spend the money on Health Care

Roads
-Separation would solve that. Again, keep equalization money, fix the roads

Military
-Separation would solve that. Keep the equalization money, build our own military. And no money would be wasted stocking the men’s washrooms with tampons.

Homeless Crisis
-Separation would solve that. We could keep the money giveaways for gender sensitive farming in Africa and the Caribbean and all the woke gender gay giveaways and use it to get homeless people off the street and help communities that need to upgrade their drinking water.

Drug Crises
-Aside from BC, separation would solve just spend a little equalizion money and build more rehab facilities. BC would lose the federal money they are using for safe supply, and they would be forced to end safe supply.

USA Trade
-Separation would solve that. USA needs our oil. We don’t make cars in the west. USA needs our critical minerals so much that the US government is buying shares in Canadian Companies. We don’t export any aluminum from Western Canada that I know of. I don’t think we export a lot of steel from the west. USA uses a lot of our canola meal in dairy. We ship grain down there. They ship corn up here. We buy their cars, trucks, tractors, and combines. I think Western Canada and the USA could come to an amicable trade deal.


So I beg the question, is there anything that Western Separation wouldn’t solve?

Carney better fix the ship fast. I think it’s about to split into two.

If Canada was a company, the unprofitable parts would be spun off into separate companies and sold.

[SmallTimeOperator]

I would call myself a dedicated Canadian, but Western Separation would solve a lot of the problems in this country. It’s just so divided. And the East doesn’t give a rats ass about the west. They just want our money.