Summary

Ontario Premier Doug Ford warned that Canada could cut electricity exports to the U.S. in retaliation for Donald Trump’s new tariffs on Canadian goods.

The U.S. imposed a 25% tariff on most Canadian imports, citing border security concerns. Ford emphasized that U.S. states like New York and Michigan rely on Canadian energy and should “feel the pain.”

Canadian officials also announced $155 billion in counter-tariffs.

If enacted, energy restrictions would likely raise prices in the U.S., escalating trade tensions between the two countries.

  • @canajac@lemmy.ca
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    442 months ago

    Don’t announce it, just do it and observe the panic…and then the begging for it to come back but with a 25% hike in prices.

      • @Someone@lemmy.ca
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        2 months ago

        Wow, $2.01CAD/L that’s actually slightly higher than our notoriously high BC prices. I was assuming it would be something like $1CAD/L which is a low price we’d dream of here.

        • @werefreeatlast@lemmy.world
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          22 months ago

          Its okay poor people will just band together carpooling in mini coopers… 12 at a time. All while wearing big shoes. Hey! We gotta make a buck somehow! This Canadian engine covffefe won’t pay for itself.

  • @RBWells@lemmy.world
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    62 months ago

    On the other hand, our formerly quasi-municipal energy company is now owned by a Canadian conglomerate. I’d not mind unwinding that.

    Like it or not, we are all connected across North America.

  • @meowmeowbeanz@sopuli.xyz
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    82 months ago

    Ford’s “smile” masks the grim reality of trade wars hurting everyday citizens on both sides. Effectively summarizes the stakes and implications of Ford’s actions.

    🐱🐱🐱🐱🐱

  • Laser
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    02 months ago

    Ford is spineless. I doubt he has the balls to do this

  • Jolly Platypus
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    2762 months ago

    As an American, I agree 100%. Canada needs to kick our ass. We deserve it.

    • @falk1856@midwest.social
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      642 months ago

      I agree with the sentiment but those states are all pretty blue. Trump might just let it happen to widen the divide and somehow claim that it’s punishment for not bending the knee.

      • @orbituary@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        292 months ago

        That’s some weird logic. Trump enacts tariffs on Canada,who retaliates in kind, so you’re worried about blue votes. Trump may claim that after the fact, but he’s definitely not playing chess that many moves ahead.

        The dude can barely plan a double jump with hopscotch, much less checkers.

        • Hemingways_Shotgun
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          102 months ago

          That Ozempic chewing orange twat has never physically jumped in his life, let’s be honest.

        • Null User Object
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          -142 months ago

          Trump enacts tariffs on Canada.

          Exactly. Trump. Not the states that voted against him. If you want to retaliate, retaliate against Trump. Make him, and the people that voted for him feel the pain.

          Look at the things he’s doing domestically. There’s nothing he and his MAGA dipshits love more than sticking it to the blue states. So, Canada doing something that predominantly hurts blue states isn’t going to hurt Trump at all. Quite the contrary, it’s going to give him huge hard-on.

          So, if your goal is to help Trump, well then carry on.

          • @NotSteve_@lemmy.ca
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            142 months ago

            Like it or not, Trump’s actions are America’s actions now and we’ll fight back in any way we can.

            Also Canadians are pretty pissed at Americans in general right now

          • @hemko@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            162 months ago

            Cutting off power in blue states will mean that the energy has to come from somewhere else, which means higher demand, and higher costs across multiple states, also red ones.

            And let’s not pretend those “blue states” don’t have very large numbers of maga idiots as well

            • @orbituary@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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              92 months ago

              Washington State, here. Can confirm. Seattle and Bellingham carry the state blue. Them yokels everywhere else vote red.

              I’ve literally seen Dixie flags here in Washington. Like, how fucking dumb do you need to be?

              • @Someone@lemmy.ca
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                12 months ago

                I’m curious, is there somewhere you can see votes broken down by county, or preferably more granular than that? I remember seeing an article a month ago about one of those small Alaskan panhandle towns that relies on its bigger BC neighbour town. They were begging the BC/Canadian government to take it easy on them because they didn’t vote for this but the article immediately fact checked them with an Alaskan government stat showing that town in particular voted something like 80% for Trump. My point is, I’ve been hearing a lot from both Point Roberts and Port Angeles and I’m curious if they’re full of shit or not.

                • @orbituary@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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                  12 months ago

                  Definitely not. Port Angeles has a major ferry service going back and forth to Victoria. I love that ferry ride - you often get to see grey whales on the trip, and god damn, Vicky is just one of the most beautiful cities. I love it so much. I wish I could move there.

                  I’m not sure this gets granular enough. I don’t think that the upper peninsula is as blue as this map suggests, seeing as when I was there before the election, it was just littered with Trump signs. https://bestneighborhood.org/conservative-vs-liberal-map-washington/

                  Far be it from me to suggest a Fox site, but this also breaks it down: https://www.fox13seattle.com/news/wa-county-voted-president

                  Anyhow, the GOP voters will, in the words of the inimitable Ricky from Trailer Park Boys, “cut off their nose for spiderface.”

      • TheRealKuni
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        102 months ago

        those states are all pretty blue.

        Minnesota is. Michigan tends to be (especially now that our districts are drawn independently), but we voted for Trump as a state. And New York is mostly red except for NYC.

        I almost want to see our power bills skyrocket in Michigan. But at the same time I know full well the dipshits who voted red (including my own family) will blame everyone else before they blame the people who might end abortion. So it won’t matter. They won’t learn. Instead we’ll all suffer because of their idiocy and they’ll continue to think that we’re winning.

        (In fact they’ll be thrilled because it will mean increased oil and natural gas production to close the gap in demand.)

        • @harrys_balzac@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          32 months ago

          The problem with that is trying to ramp up oil and gas production in the US is a losing proposition. Even with a friendly administration, it takes a long time and a lot of money to do it and it may not pay off.

      • Cruxifux
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        1182 months ago

        Im gonna tell you right now, as a Canadian, we do not care what colour your states are.

          • Cruxifux
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            262 months ago

            Yeah well the country you guys are threatening to invade is allowed to have a fucking opinion on it.

            • @lolrightythen@lemmy.world
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              -82 months ago

              I support that. I invite you to hate on the US government and the assholes that put it in power. But you do yourself and many like me a disservice by acting like all US citizens want this to happen.

              • @M0oP0o@mander.xyz
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                222 months ago

                We are not acting like all US citizens wanted this to happen, but we understand that this is happening and what you wanted at this point is not relevant. If you don’t want to be lumped into the rest of your belligerent nation, do something.

              • Cruxifux
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                12 months ago

                You do yourselves a disservice by allowing this to happen.

          • @Pieisawesome@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            102 months ago

            Secession is a nice idea, but merging into Canada is a nonstarter.

            Canada is 40 million people, New York is 20 million. That kind of influx would be insane to manage. And that’s just one state…

            I can only think of east/west Germany as the closes parallel and they are still merging the halves.

            • @Artyom@lemm.ee
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              -12 months ago

              “We can’t merge states with Canada because what if we tried with <third largest state with largest city in either country>?”

              Your logic here is flawless.

            • @Someone@lemmy.ca
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              22 months ago

              I agree. I think we’d be better off supporting their new independent nation[-states?] than absorbing them. Too many systemic issues and too large of a population to change overnight, not to mention all the guns. Maybe we could accept Hawaii, I think they’re far enough removed from the continental states.

              • @metallic_z3r0@infosec.pub
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                12 months ago

                Isn’t the balkanization of the US explicitly part of Russia’s goal, and establishment of city-states (or CityCorps) the explicit goal of the dark enlightenment types that Peter Thiel is backing?

        • @jaxxed@lemmy.ml
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          32 months ago

          This is a great comment.

          I think that Americans have forgotten that not everything in the world fits into US partisan politics.

          • Cruxifux
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            12 months ago

            Americans rarely think outside of terms of “America” and “not America”

      • Malle_Yeno
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        532 months ago

        Given that Canadians don’t typically vote in American elections, I don’t see how that has anything to do with us or should affect our decision making.

        The USA is tariffing us, not just the red states.

        • @M0oP0o@mander.xyz
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          222 months ago

          Yeah, the us is bad at thinking everyone is inside their crazy system. It does not matter to us if you state “don’t blame me I voted for Kodos”, at the end of the day you are all citizens of a belligerent nation. Your government is representing you all on the world stage, if you don’t like it do something about it.

    • Diplomjodler
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      242 months ago

      Maybe you guys should just kick out the traitors that very obviously work for a foreign government.

      • @harrys_balzac@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        02 months ago

        We wanted to. Unfortunately, the corporations run the country and so we have no effective opposition party. The Democrats are as beholden to big money donors as the Mazis.

  • @Voroxpete@sh.itjust.works
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    652 months ago

    Don’t get too excited. Ford loves to talk tough but he’s a fucking pussy.

    We’ll see what actually happens. No one here is holding their breath.

    • @garbagebagel@lemmy.world
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      02 months ago

      Does he have anything in plan to protect Canadians rather than just revenge on the US? Like in BC they’re pushing the buy local, cutting down American liquor sales, and realloting some money to prep for what’s expected to be all the upcoming layoffs.

      All I’ve seen from Ontario is Ford saying he’ll kick America’s ass metaphorically but is there anything in place to protect the local jobs that’d be lost if they were to cut off all that electricity?

      • @Voroxpete@sh.itjust.works
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        2 months ago

        Not sure, I don’t live in Ontario anymore so I’m not so plugged in on provincial politics. It would certainly be very like Ford to make all these big aggressive moves but ultimately fuck over Ontarians in the process. But like I said, I’m not aware of the details, so that’s just baseless speculation.

      • @jaxxed@lemmy.ml
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        12 months ago

        The Fords aren’tgreat at Making ng stuff work. They’re better at stopping things.

    • @rbesfe@lemmy.ca
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      52 months ago

      LCBO is actively removing American products from shelves.

      I do think there’s more technical problems related to decoupling a massive load from the grid, but Ford does seem to be following through with at least some of the promised retaliations. Time will tell if he keeps it up.

  • @Bytemeister@lemmy.world
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    -12 months ago

    Please please please only do this during the day. 8AM to 5PM. Don’t put the squeeze on the voters. They either didn’t vote for trump, or they were so dumb that they did vote for trump won’t understand why their electric bill went through the roof. Do this during the day to shut down the businesses that stumped for trump, sent him millions of dollars and bent the knee in the hopes the tax burden will get shifted further down the income scale.

    But definitely do it!

    • @Mossheart@lemmy.ca
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      202 months ago

      Sorry. 24/7, just like the tariffs.

      It will hurt. That’s the point. Maybe it’ll hurt enough that y’all DO something about the absolute fuckery happening down there. Canada didn’t ask for this shit.

      I hate that this is where things are but pretty soon folks will need to get to the FO part of FAFO.

      • @Bytemeister@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        You can’t bomb people into loving you. A lesson hard learned in the Middle East.

        Sure, you can run those tariffs 24/7, and it would be totally in your sovereign right to do so. However, that’s not going to change anything. Trump may be a blithering idiot, but the Peter Thiels and Stephen Millers feeding him all those “bright ideas” certainly knew that equal tariffs from Canada would be the response. The line here will be “Canada is attacking you, and shutting off your power”, and the trump supporters will gag themselves choking down that line of rhetoric as hard and as fast as possible. Thats not going to solve the tariffs problem for Canada though, it will only make it worse.

        If you want revenge, equal tariffs. If you wanna actually stick it to the people that stuck you and force them to backtrack, go after the businesses bottom line.

        • @PixelPinecone@lemmy.today
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          102 months ago

          Damn… your comment being at zero upvotes is making me realize just how much everyone hates us. I know zero isn’t really anything on the surface. But I would’ve thought your comment would resonate a little.

          But naw, everyone is, rightfully, just fearing for their countries right now and wants to, understandably, punish.

          I fucking hate my country rn, I protested today even. But I know we’re in a bad spot and I kinda looked to countries like Canada as our last hope in defeating the pieces of shit running our country.

          Guess I was delusional that they would still prioritize us “good” ones and keep us safe. But like… why? Why would they?

          Oh well, no one who’s lived in a collapsing empire throughout history wanted to. And a lot of people died, and they probably didn’t want to lol.

          I hope I don’t die, but I hope for good to prevail more. And if I die in the process of the defeat of this fucked country, and the world order that follows is something better. So be it… shits rough.

          • @Bytemeister@lemmy.world
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            22 months ago

            What right isn’t always popular, and what’s popular isn’t always right.

            I can’t blame people who just got slapped with a CoL increase because the great orange leader of the dipshit bigot brigade needed neded new meat to toss to his base. If you’re throwing punches everywhere, some bystanders are gonna get bloody noses though.

        • @redwattlebird@lemmings.world
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          72 months ago

          This all just seems incredibly sad to me. As a nation, it sounds like the fight has been completely beaten out of you all, so much so that you’re afraid of even a little pain, vote based on empty promises and sound bites, and blame each other instead of yourselves.

          You all traded your freedom for convenience. You’re like flowers, opened wide, waiting for rain rather than vines that seek.

          Best of luck to you all. We have to prepare ourselves, as members of the global economy, for this economic fallout. I’m prepared to fight and suffer, if I have to protect my own way of life.

          • @AA5B@lemmy.world
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            32 months ago

            Pain is fine. Pain is deserved. Pain needs to either be felt as a whole or target the most deserving.

            But shutting off electricity mainly affects people without any power (😁) and that had the awareness to vote against this horror. Trump and co will just laugh “see the poor snowflake liberals what happens when they import clean electricity instead of good old American coal”.

            I can’t argue that we don’t deserve it but I can hope for something more likely to help make a difference

            • @redwattlebird@lemmings.world
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              32 months ago

              That’s exactly right; the policies that your government is putting forward only hurts middle and lower class on both sides of the border.

              Honestly, the only way to overthrow a dictatorship is to roll heads. They’re not going to be voted out, that’s for sure.

              • @in4apenny@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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                22 months ago

                I think about what the Dutch did to the De Witt brothers for selling out their territory to the enemy. They were hung upside down with broken legs, sliced up. stabbed, fingers and toes cut off, faces cut off, genitals cut off, then disemboweled them alive.

                I personally prefer the big bagel slicer option but to each their own.

        • @someguy3@lemmy.world
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          32 months ago

          You can’t bomb people into loving you

          That’s what Canada needs to teach Trump. It’s needs to be 24/7 or else he thinks he got away with it.

    • @790@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      192 months ago

      Don’t put the squeeze on the voters. They either didn’t vote for trump, or they were so dumb that they did vote for trump won’t understand why their electric bill went through the roof.

      The whole point of democracy is the voters have an impact. If nothing changes for the voters don’t be surprised when they vote for the same party next time.

      • @Bubbaonthebeach@lemmy.ca
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        62 months ago

        70% of American voters allowed Trump to be elected by either voting for him or not voting. Only a minority of 30% tried to stand against him. I hope Trump has a hell of an impact on the 70%. Every one that cries that they voted for him but have lost their job or whatever fully deserve it. Nothing he is doing now wasn’t known before the election. None of it is a surprise. The only surprise is that 70% of Americans supported him destroying their country.

    • @shawn1122@lemm.ee
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      92 months ago

      Trump’s tariffs don’t just apply to business hours. Americans need to feel the pain that Canadians will.

  • @antlion@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    72 months ago

    Canada and US are in negotiations to renew the Columbia River Treaty, where the US pays Canada for flood control upstream. They protect the cities along the Columbia River, and the hydroelectric infrastructure on the River, and the bridges. If Canada decides to play hardball, there’s a lot at their mercy.

  • @febra@lemmy.world
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    472 months ago

    Play stupid games win stupid prizes. Glad that Canadians are standing up for themselves.

  • Queen HawlSera
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    572 months ago

    Do it, do it, do it, do it, do it, do it… America needs to learn, I say this as an American.

    • @FilthyHookerSpit@lemmy.world
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      132 months ago

      Honestly, I don’t think there’s going back to any level of normal. Maybe by quickly destroying the system, we will be able to quickly rebuild it (after all the destruction to everyone’s lives)

      • Queen HawlSera
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        112 months ago

        Elon and Trump seem to be intentionally destroying the system, or are so profoundly stupid that they’ve pulled a “We did it Patrick! We saved the city!”

        Honestly with those two I can never tell if they’re being dumb or malicious.

        • @uienia@lemmy.world
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          62 months ago

          I can definitely tell that they are always being malicious. Sociopaths like them doesnt do humanitarian acts, it is always exclusively about themselves

          • Queen HawlSera
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            32 months ago

            Him blanket accusing a guy of pedophilia simply because he was getting more attention and didn’t wanna use a Musk made submarine was everything I needed to see to know he’d turn out like this

  • @LadyAutumn@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    2 months ago

    One of Canada’s worst politicians says he’ll do something useful for once.

    Incredible watching the downfall of American hegemony in real-time.

  • @kibiz0r@midwest.social
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    1252 months ago

    (Copy-pasting from another thread)

    I like Cory Doctorow’s plan.

    The reason Canada got tariff-free access to sell to the US in the first place? Canada agreed to enforce penalties for tampering with digital locks, following the premise of the Digital Milennium Copyright Act.

    If the US is going back on the deal, then Canada should too. Make it legal to jailbreak all US tech.

    Doctorow advocating for this plan:

  • @CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org
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    2 months ago

    This headline makes it sound way more imminent than I’ve been lead to believe. The first order of business is just messing with things like Florida orange farms and Kentucky bourbon, then we might escalate.