Emily (she/her)

It’s weird you think China is some kind of gotcha, because if the best the Canadian government could do in the unlikely future where “China is parked on [Australia’s] coastline” is a symbolic gesture that hurts its own citizens, I would rather you wouldn’t. So again, why do you expect us to damage our own economy for the sake of a symbolic gesture?

Trump does not understand or respect symbolic gestures in trade/deals, and you’re complaining that we won’t make one at our significant detriment. Considering you and Mexico are the biggest importers from the United States, well targeted retaliatory tariffs have a real chance of hurting the US and enacting change. We import 10 times fewer goods (20 times if you include Mexico) and have a 2:1 trade deficit, so we don’t have the power to significantly affect the US in the same way you do, and our treasury has made it pretty clear we’d probably be the only ones hurt by such a policy.

We have better, actually effective ways to enact change (i.e. threatening Pine Gap, AUKUS, etc). So why do you expect us to damage our own economy for the sake of a symbolic gesture?

It’s not our responsibility to damage our own economy for an empty symbolic gesture

We’re not retaliating with tariffs because nearly every mainstream economist has advised against it, including our own Treasury. Here’s the quote from Steven Kennedy, treasury head, at a Senate estimates hearing on 26 February:

For a medium-sized economy such as Australia, there is overwhelming evidence that the use of trade restrictions imposes costs on our consumers and businesses… If Australia were to impose tariffs, we would bear nearly all the cost, given our size and inability to affect the world prices of the goods we import.

We would be shooting ourselves in the foot for the sake of what would essentially amount to little more than a symbolic gesture. We have other, more effective cards beyond tariffs.