If you haven't heard, President Trump is working on renegotiating NAFTA in order to get a better deal.
Ever since he first made reference to Canada being an unfair player, many people began to wonder just how Trump could influence our spending power and affect us, aside from the obvious stuff, like import tariffs on our exported goods.
This is where the De Minimis term comes into play and becomes very important to the average Canada. De Minimis, simply translated from Latin, means something of insignificance or of little importance to merit review. To many Canadians, Trump is in and of himself a De Minimis, however if Trudeau's Liberals were smart, they would use our current De Minimis of $20.00 as a weapon to ease the might(stupid) Trump!
If you buy anything from the United States and have it delivered via mail, you are usually subject to Duty on anything over $20.00, not to mention the shipping costs, coupled in with any fluctuations on the dollar. This can make the entire process very frustrating and expensive if you live too far from the border to drive, which Canadian retailers like.
You see, for the past 20 years or so, Canadian retailers have fought hard to ensure our De Minimis ( Say that 10 times fast) is low in order to maintain domestic consumption. Our American counterparts recently had an increase added to their limits under the Obama administration, which increased their De Minimis from $200 to $800!
While this is good for the average American, it also directly translated into something great for Canadian exporters.
Canadians as a result, have been long overdue for an increase and based on the price gouging that we do experience here, with the closure of many brick and mortar stores, it appears the conditions are perfect to begin looking at an increase.
Many Canadians will argue that this is bad for domestic business, since it will take tax revenue from the governments hands and further kill our domestic retailers, however I disagree with this. Our domestic retailers in many cases are no longer domestic in the true sense, many of these retailers are American owned and when the time came that Canada was at parity with the United States, insisted on keeping their prices higher, while using shipping and dollar fluctuations as an excuse.
Not to mention that our world is changing, which is allowing us to purchase a wide variety of products from anywhere, which sometimes still work out to being cheaper even with the duty and shipping calculated.
Trump wants to boost American exports and domestic manufacturing, so it makes sense to have our government play into him, while really just doing something that will allow the average Canadian more choice and boost their personal abilities. Not to mention, increased shipping via parcel will directly benefit someone currently hurting for more business, that someone being Canada Post.
Where the government might lose out on some duty, Canada Post will more than recoup the loss in increased revenue, which is good for them, good for the increased demand and jobs to come and good for all other parcel companies looking to continue an expansion among Canadian clients.
So I say, bring on your demands Trump. You are a De Minimis to all Canadians, until you actually do something that benefits all Canadians.
Ask not what you can do for Trump, ask what Trump can do for you!
-The Political Road Map
No comments:
Post a Comment