An update! Grap your popcorn! Luckily, I get to watch this North American duel unfold safely from afar.
NAFTA negotiations are in the toilet so the Canadians launched a whole bunch of WTO complaints against the U.S. today:
Source:
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/01/10/canada- ... urces.htmlGovernment sources told Reuters they increasingly expect the Trump administration to announce its exit from NAFTA.
Reuters said the two sources expect the U.S. to pull out around the time negotiators meet in January for the final round of talks to modernize the treaty.
Source:
http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/canada- ... -1.4480738Canada has launched a wide-ranging trade dispute against the United States, challenging Washington's use of anti-dumping and anti-subsidy duties, according to a World Trade Organization filing dated Dec. 20 and published Wednesday. Canada appeared to be mounting a case on behalf of the rest of the world, since it cited almost 200 examples of alleged U.S. wrongdoing, almost all of them concerning other trading partners, such as China, India, Brazil and the European Union.
The 32-page complaint homed in on technical details of the U.S. trade rulebook, ranging from the U.S. treatment of export controls to the use of retroactive duties and split decisions by the six-member U.S. International Trade Commission.
U.S. trade representative Robert Lighthizer issued a rebuttal calling Canada's case an "ill-advised attack on the U.S. trade remedies system."
"Canada's claims are unfounded and could only lower U.S. confidence that Canada is committed to mutually beneficial trade," Lighthizer said in a statement. "Canada is acting against its own workers' and businesses' interests. Even if Canada succeeded on these groundless claims, other countries would primarily benefit, not Canada," he said.
Under WTO rules, the United States has 60 days to try to settle the complaint, or Canada, which sends 75 per cent of its exports to the United States, could ask the WTO to adjudicate.

Source:
https://leehamnews.com/2018/01/10/canad ... complaint/"Canada files WTO complaint vs US over Boeing C Series trade complaint"
https://leehamnews.com/wp-content/uploa ... 011018.pdfOn a side note, some a.netters have expressed concern about Canadian oil pipelines in the U.S. It does appears that Canada is practically dumping oil into the U.S:
http://business.financialpost.com/commo ... oser-to-20Never mind $35 a barrel, Canada's oil is selling for closer to $20. As oil crashes through $35 in New York today, Alberta, which produces the world's cheapest oil at the highest cost, is already living with the reality of much lower prices
The U.S. should be supporting fair competition by purchasing oil at fair market prices from their comrades in Saudi Arabia, or by producing more oil inside the United States itself. I suspect a tariff against Canadian oil if the POTUS catches a whiff of this during his breaks from Twitter.
