this post was submitted on 16 Jul 2025
84 points (97.7% liked)

World News

48627 readers
2447 users here now

A community for discussing events around the World

Rules:

Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.

We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.

All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.


Lemmy World Partners

News !news@lemmy.world

Politics !politics@lemmy.world

World Politics !globalpolitics@lemmy.world


Recommendations

For Firefox users, there is media bias / propaganda / fact check plugin.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/media-bias-fact-check/

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

First of all, supply and demand is not a concept bound by natural law, like physics or something. It's a framework of understanding, not a hard and fast rule. For example, let's say I'm selling something. It costs me $5 to produce each one and I sell them for $8 each.

A foreign producer comes along and sells the exact same item for $5 each because it costs them $2 to make. Now the market is flooded with this product, but mine cannot be sold for $5 or less (since it would be sold for either no profit or at a loss), so there is direct financial incentive to buy the foreign product.

By adding a tariff, the price of the foreign product becomes higher, artificially driving demand of the domestic product, the price of which generally cannot be lowered without damaging local industry. You can see this in retail markets as well with stores like Walmart and Dollarama, who price other stores out of the market due to their unbeatable prices, which are the result of Chinese manufacturing infrastructure and subsidies.

There is much less flexibility in pricing in heavy industries like steel manufacturing compared to retail, so it doesn't really make sense for prices to fall significantly enough for Canadian companies to be able to compete with a manufacturing powerhouse like China.