Canada lowered tariffs on Chinese EVs to similar levels of a few years ago (up to a limited number, and still 6% tariffs rather than zero).
US politicians are angry about about it, despite the fact that the US literally had/has a free trade agreement with Canada involving cars and many other products.
In the US, we keep dunking on our neighbors to the north about how lefty they are, since indeed they’re a lot more lefty than us, when ironically this decision by Canada is historically a conservative position: freer competition and lower taxes, and yet that’s the one we’re most angry about.
It's an example of how quickly perceptions can shift, the Overton window can shift, political parties ran rotate policies, etc. Everything becomes about optics and tribes.
A few years ago if someone said, "So Canada used to put 100% punitive tariffs on Chinese EVs, and now they're going to lower those a lot so that Canadians can buy more affordable EVs if they wish, and China will do the same for some Canadian stuff," most people would be like, "well, good."
US politicians are angry about about it, despite the fact that the US literally had/has a free trade agreement with Canada involving cars and many other products.
In the US, we keep dunking on our neighbors to the north about how lefty they are, since indeed they’re a lot more lefty than us, when ironically this decision by Canada is historically a conservative position: freer competition and lower taxes, and yet that’s the one we’re most angry about.
It's an example of how quickly perceptions can shift, the Overton window can shift, political parties ran rotate policies, etc. Everything becomes about optics and tribes.
A few years ago if someone said, "So Canada used to put 100% punitive tariffs on Chinese EVs, and now they're going to lower those a lot so that Canadians can buy more affordable EVs if they wish, and China will do the same for some Canadian stuff," most people would be like, "well, good."