Canada should not respond to potential U.S. tariffs with retaliatory tariffs, as this would primarily harm Canadian consumers by driving up prices. Instead, Canada should leverage its industrial and technological capabilities to undermine the monopolistic rent-seeking of American corporations by legalizing and promoting third-party modifications, repairs, and alternative marketplaces for technology, agriculture, and other industries. By dismantling restrictive intellectual property laws—many of which were imposed under the USMCA trade agreement—Canada could become a global hub for jailbreaks, independent app stores, and right-to-repair solutions, thereby reducing dependence on U.S. tech monopolies and fostering a new high-tech economy that directly benefits Canadian consumers and businesses.
Totally agree with Doctorow as usual that this would be ideal, but there is NO way the US would allow that without things getting much, much uglier. Maybe we could get away with the app store temporarily but I’m sure it would get shut down eventually… unless we can convince our other allies to back us first. Unless he thinks there’s a high chance of this, I think he’s underestimating the kind of response we would face-- especially given the current climate.
As he says in the article, we’ve won some trade disputes but I doubt any of them were under an ISDS. Either way though, we do definitely need to boost our own tech sector so we have self-sufficiency if things go bad.
As a first step, we could strengthen any of our our data protection and consumer protection laws that are lower then the EU laws/regulations to bring them up to the higher standard.
Or they could you know reverse the tariffs that caused the counter measures…