Your take on this issue is interesting, but it only addresses big businesses, not small and, in my case, tiny businesses.
I run a small retail arbitrage business out of my home. I sell on Peer-to-Peer Platforms such as eBay. My product is very niche, but the income makes up about 30% of my household gross, so it is a significant contribution to my family's well-being.
Living close to the border is the only thing that facilitates this for me, many in Canada cannot do what I do because they live too far from the border, or do not have access to high-quality and abundant products that I get at large city Thrift Stores. The metrics of the platforms I sell on depend on quick delivery and tracked shipping; If shipping tracking registers quickly in the platforms, then my online store gets pushed higher in the algorithm. If the packages all have to go through customs inspection and assessment for duties, then that is probably days of processing, and I will lose my shipping status with the platforms, which is one of the more important ranking in the platforms.
It costs me $1.00 to move a package across the border to Montana, where it enters the US postal system. On average, the customer pays $4.99 for the actual postage charge. In Canada, Canada Post charges 3X more as a starting point, dissuading many Canadian customers from ordering in the first place.
Most of my business is facilitated by the De Minimus exemptions for entry into the USA.
Due to the value of the products that I sell, every one is unique, and is usually never over $60, I do not have the luxury of shipping anywhere else where the shipping costs to get the product to the customer in a reasonable amount of time would not exceed the product cost. To ship one of my products to Europe, by a reasonably timely service, is $40 - $50, and my items are not that unique to justify this type of shipping cost, or I can ship by surface and have it arrive it 60 plus days, also unacceptable, and still fairly expensive.
I can't even sell my product economically in Canada because Canada Post's small parcel rates are too high, and the Canadian Consumer doesn't want to pay enough. At least in the USA, I am getting the foreign exchange gain, and that makes me much more competitive against other USA-based sellers. In fact, that has been the whole game of Canadian Manufacturing for the last 50 years.
I worked for a kitchen cabinet manufacturing company in Red Deer, Alberta just after the 2008 collapse in the USA housing market. Our little firm, not so little, employed over 100 craftsmen, and sold 85% of their cabinetry to the USA. Not only that, but the product was high end, going to places like Aspen, CO, and Steamboat Springs for Hollywood A-listers that probably never even saw the house. The average sale of kitchen cabinets for a single house was $300,000 USD, because it was specialty tropical hardwoods...Book Matched, Zebra Wood Panels as an example. The company had been in business for 25 years, and was profitable so long as the C$ stayed low, but when it went above 85 cents USD, the profit turned negative, and when it went above par, even though it was a short time, the company went bankrupt.
If they come in, the tariffs will stop me and everyone else who does this type of business in their tracks on day one. While my business might be tiny, thousands are doing what I am doing, and it does add up. I consider myself small in this ecosystem, but I am also probably in the top 10% of people who do this in Canada, so we are still talking about $10s of millions of dollars that go directly into the pockets of families.
I agree we must diversify our economy and bypass the USA as much and as fast as possible, but if there is nothing we can do, and I do believe this to be the truth, there is nothing Canada can do to placate Mr Trump, then we must "Make America Feel the Pain Too." The only way through it is to induce as much pain as possible on the MAGA electorate, and I think that starts with tariff-inducing job losses in the states that support this strongly.
I was interviewed on this topic by Wired magazine on February 3.
Here is my opinion on this issue.
https://medium.com/@lesbrown-46737/donald-trump-will-kill-my-business-c73d696bea0a
