this post was submitted on 16 Feb 2025
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Tariff threats are already driving investment out of Canada (www.cbc.ca)
submitted 6 days ago by HellsBelle to c/[email protected]
37 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

"Whether or not they ever be put into place, the damage is done," said Greig Mordue, a former auto industry executive and associate professor at the W. Booth School of Engineering Practice and Technology at McMaster University.

He says Trump's threats have already changed the landscape. Whether he goes ahead with the tariffs or not, or whether he carves out specific exemptions, the threat alone will drive investment out of Canada and into the U.S.

"For at least the next four years, there will be no serious investment in the Canadian automotive industry," said Mordue.

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[–] [email protected] 28 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (2 children)

Keep in mind that we don't need private investment to do anything. We can always replace any amount of private investment with public. We cannot run out of Canadian dollars so financial capital is never a limiting factor unless we are ideologically opposed to public investment. Real economic resources such as people, materials, factories, know-how and so on are the limit and those haven't changed much. Talk about fleeting financial capital presumes the primacy of private capital. This position is purely ideological. Canada itself has a history of relying on public investment to build the country and its services in the form of crown corporations, many of which got privatized with the ideological shift in the neoliberal era. Nothing except this entrenched ideology is stopping us from doing that again.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 days ago

A nice little addition is that we control most of the raw resources that goes into producing almost everything we need in the first place, so a weakened dollar due to borrowing and printing for the sake of massive public investments into our own industries actually makes us more competitive on the world market, especially for high end manufacturing or low and medium end that has very little labour input.

And such build-up will benefit the country massively in the long term as well, presuming that we're not neglectful in keeping them up to date as technology moves on. Not to mention all the employment opportunities this brings.

Canada is a superpower when it comes to energy, minerals, lumber, and agriculture. Not to mention that we've done surprisingly little in value added production of our raw resources, especially for selling oil without refining any of it. And delivering to the world market is easy, thanks to the build-up of the St Lawrence over the previous century, as well as BC's harbours.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 days ago (2 children)

Real economic resources such as people, materials, factories, know-how and so on are the limit and those haven’t changed much.

Yes but, well basically that. The government doesn't have all that shit, and is so stripped to the bone they can't even fund a website without getting conned by their contractors.

This is a reason the dip is self-limiting, and we shouldn't completely panic. This isn't a reason to go full Mao.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (1 children)

When I refer to us having those resources, I'm referring to the overall Canadian economy, not whether the government alone has them. If the money that mobilize those resources (e.g. someone from the Bay area paying me to do work) goes away and to a different country, the Canadian government can replace that money and get me to do work, directly or indirectly. For example building some of them gov't websites. Or working for some startup that got public funding. Among other possibilities.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (1 children)

Yes, I did get that. But when you start talking about public funding as a substitute for private, of course that's the government.

If you did mean going full Mao, you need to make it clear what that actually even means. Modern industrial economies are too complicated to just manually run, and historical alternatives have been suspiciously like a market with a lot of extra steps.

If you just meant emergency short-term stopgap programs, sure, they could and probably will do something like that.

It's Lemmy, so I can't actually tell.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (1 children)

Not sure where you're getting full Mao from, you mentioned it not me. I explicitly referenced Canada's history (and present) of running crown corporations. Besides that I was talking about replacing private dollars with public dollars. Canada's government has always done public investment in all sorts of firms. It can simply do more to offset missing private investment, instead of enduring the economic shock due to the unemployment resultant from the missing private dollars. Or it could fund building future firms (public or private) if private investment considers that too risky. For example think of public investment instead of venture capital funding startups.

On a separate note, speaking of public investment and crown corporations, a great way to make ourselves more efficient is to put common infrastructure (things that most need) under crown corporations which provide it at cost. We already do a lot of that but we've also privatized a lot of it since the late 80s. E.g. we no longer have public rail. Instead, everyone who ships products has to pay for the significant profits CN Rail makes. These days telecommunications is another example that would benefit everyone if provided at cost. Housing... Reducing all of these costs means lower costs for most other business activity.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

Not sure where you’re getting full Mao from

On Lemmy, it's as likely as not that's what's meant. No hate intended in either direction - this is the internet, we can talk about whatever.

It can simply do more to offset missing private investment, instead of enduring the economic shock due to the unemployment resultant from the missing private dollars.

Ah, so you just mean subsidies. Yes, we can do that up to a point, but the thing is you have to fund it somehow. More taxes or a higher debt load actually scare those investment dollars right off again, so at very high levels it becomes counterproductive.

In reality, it's not all going to go away anyway. Like you said, Canada is full of good stuff. That puts a natural floor on how much business will actually leave.

On a separate note, speaking of public investment and crown corporations, a great way to make ourselves more efficient is to put common infrastructure (things that most need) under crown corporations which provide it at cost.

Yes, there is a strong argument that makes sense for anything that suffers from the network effect - American social media platforms are also very relevant to what's going on. Some things are provided below cost right now as well. Free roads and waste disposal have been blamed for too many cars and too much packaging.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Mao isn’t the definition of socialism, which is what OP is talking about. Think the Nordic countries for a quality example on socialism, or early Canada. Communism is always defined by the dictators by people who have no understanding of communism

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

If you go on to .ml or Hexbear, they'll straighten you out about Norway being socialist really fast. They're not right necessarily, since words mean whatever we make them, but they're around and their definition is actually the older one.

Communism is always defined by the dictators by people who have no understanding of communism

However, people who call themselves "communist" as opposed to just "socialist" are definitely not aiming for Norway, in my experience.