USA

Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick said on Sunday that President Donald Trump will renegotiate the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) when the trade pact is due for review next year.

The USMCA, enacted during President Donald Trump’s first term in July 2020, replaced the North American Free Trade Agreement.

The agreement requires that 75 percent of automobile components be made in the United States, Mexico, or Canada for a vehicle to qualify for tariff-free treatment. The trade agreement also mandates that up to 45 percent of parts and components be made by workers earning at least $16 per hour, according to the U.S. Trade Representative’s office.

Stellantis, the maker of Jeep and Ram vehicles, says its preliminary estimates show a 2.3-billion euro (nearly $3.7-billion Cdn) net loss in the first half of the year due to U.S. tariffs and some hefty charges.

The head of Canada’s Automotive Parts Manufacturers’ Association (APMA) says plants like those in Windsor and Brampton, both in Ontario, can’t survive that kind of storm.

The automaker anticipates an impact of about 300 million euros (about $480 million) for net tariffs incurred, and also expects planned production losses related to implementing its response plan.

I doubt that EV Battery plant will ever be finished.

For months now, consumers across North America have been wondering: Where’s the inflation? With tariffs making headlines constantly — particularly under the Trump administration — many expected food prices to spike. Yet, grocery bills haven’t exploded. Not yet.

A buck toothed national mascot throttling a squawking bald eagle under the headline “You Have No Idea How Furious the Canadians Are” had to get people talking. I suspect many who opined about it have not even read the extensive cover story in a recent issue of New York Magazine by Simon Van Zuylen Wood that attempted to let Americans know just how angry Canadians are about President Trump’s trade war.

I promptly posted about it on LinkedIn with the caption: “Captain Kirk is quoted in New York magazine”.

Supply management (SM) is a complex set of government policies that restricts production, marketing, and trade of dairy and poultry in Canada. At its core, SM is a textbook cartel in which producers collude to fix production at the national level, and set prices charged to processors who make the consumer food products sold in restaurants and grocery stores. Such collusion is illegal in other industries — food and elsewhere — but is mandated in SM through government policies.