Featured Canada-China EVs

Family members who used to import gray Market Mercedes gave up even trying by Y2K due to all the hurdles usa creates.

 

those canola tariffs were really adding up

 

I've been hearing about this possibility of Canada relaxing tariffs on Chinese EVs for months now, and I'm beginning to doubt that it's ever going to happen. Carney's Liberals get much more support from the auto manufacturing areas of Ontario than they've ever gotten from the Western provinces, Alberta, Saskatchewan and to a lesser extent, Manitoba, where the canola is grown. I could see the tariffs on Chinese autos coming down if Chinese manufacturers agreed to set up production in Canada, but that is going to be years away. While a remnant of auto manufacturing survives in the province of Ontario (probably limited to the Japanese and Korean brands), I'm pretty sure the Canadian government will prioritize their well-being over that of the Western farmers, although I wish it weren't so.

 

Much of the northern states east of Washington grow a buttload of rape seed.
Rapeseed - Wikipedia
.

 

As a kid growing up in Manitoba, I knew it as rapeseed, but not many people call it that anymore.

 

Well yeah, who wants to ingest any oil's seed(s) - with the word rape in front of it. It conjures up something else. You got to give it up to the Canadian marketing crew, concocting a new name with the first syllable of Canada in the oil.

 

Except no one has made any sort of decision on this, its entirely a 'for clicks' headline. We've known (In canada) that the Canola tariffs are related in large part to the EV tariffs we put in place. They always have been. And its also part of the broader trade war and the US/China posturing on the issue as well.

The issue for chinese EVs has more to do with our domestic auto manufacturing industry than anything else. Its a massive industry and makes up a huge part of our exports to the US. It's one of our top economic sectors alongside O&G. Canola is a big deal for saskatchewan, cars a big deal for Ontario. But Cars is larger in general. So if we can avoid the auto industry shipping all its work south of the border under Trump, then we will probably keep our chinese EV tariffs in place, or at best reduce them slightly. But realistically, there is no serious consideration, from what I've seen publicly anyway, that they're considering dropping the Chinese EV tariffs. It would make negotiating with the US even harder. I mean, mexico has chinese EV manufacturing and market access and i know its brought up as an irritant for the US. Mind you, if we could get domestic factories for chinese brand EVs here, I'm sure that the government would be far more receptive. It's my understanding there were talks with BYD a few years back, based on what some auto industry people were saying on the news when trump started the tariffs on auto sector nonsense months ago. But they wanted to have chinese workers in the plants, and wanted to keep tight control of the plants in a way that was non-negotiable, which led to it never happening.

I would like to have chinese EVs enter our market, as well as more european cars too. But relying even more on auto imports than domestic production, is something that the big auto industry does not want. It's a massive industry here and it would be devastating to have it collapse. At least with stuff like Canola, there *are* other buyers. Cars, less so.

 

It seems a little temper tantrum with hurt feelings that Reagan didn't agree with protectionist anti capitalist tarrifs except in small cases, created an emergency where the president lashes out to punish canada, and canadian and us workers and consumers. So of course canada might shift from buying american goods to chinese goods. Worse yet the president decided to help out his budies that invested in argentina with a bail out, and the ability of argentina to sell soybeans and beef above american farmers and ranchers. I wonder what Reagan would have said about that?

Not sure what this has to do with tarrifs. industrial rapeseed oil has a lot of acid in it. They used cross breeding in canada to get the seeds less acidic, so the oil would taste better for human consumption. So not only does canola (Canadian oil low acid) sound better, it differentiates from the bad tasting industrial crop stuff. I think the anti seed oil is just another fad in nutrition, but there are better tasting more expensive oils than corn or canola.

 

Manufacturing is a long game. When I was in engineering school, over a half century ago, I was told that it usually takes about 15 years to break even. This was hard parts manufacturing and milling. You manage the annual market ups and downs. As the current administration is finding out or ignoring (fooling themselves) into thinking that you can just drop a manufacturing facility anywhere and everything is going to be good. Where's the feed stock coming form? Oh that's right you've tariff that - so nothing will "pencil out". This country needs long term economic policies and fore warning when something is going to change. This is why businesses are laying off and thinking of moving overseas. They can't plan the future direction of their business, because the next shoe could double, triple their cost of doing business - so they lay-off and/or stop hiring; hoping to weather the storm brewing - and try to survive another day.

This problem wasn't created overnight and "simple thinking" isn't going to solve this overnight either - although it makes for great click-bait.

Just my two cents.

@Zeromus; I don't think Canada is going to totally remove tariff from Chinese EV's either, since our thin-skinned King just slapped another 10% tariff on them for a dose of the truth he doesn't want to see.... They may lower it a few points to make a point - but trade diversification would be the proper move here. Dependent on a sole source simply leaves a country vulnerable as we are to rare earth materials or titanium along with a long laundry list of items.

 

Taste isn't just the issue. The acid in rapeseed is a toxin that has health issues attached. The plant has it to keep its babies from being eaten.

 

iirc hexane solvent is used in the oil extraction process .

 

Just editorial...