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Canada prepared to halt booze bans, meet other U.S. demands in exchange for tariff relief: sources (www.cbc.ca)
submitted 3 months ago by to c/canada@lemmy.ca
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[–] 1 point 3 months ago (2 children)

Same here.

I don't live in Canada anymore — and likely won't ever be able to afford to go back with the shit yen here and shit housing situation there — but I still stand by Canada and refuse to buy US products. Luckily, not only is it easy to avoid US brands Japan, but I can even look at whether main ingredients of a product come from the US and avoid those since we have so many choices. If my favourite brand of Japanese chips uses potatoes from the US, they go back on the shelf.

The hardest thing I stopped buying are games though. Not that there are US-made games that I absolutely need to get, but because I don't want to use Steam. Even though they're a pretty good company, I'd still rather not spend money on a US platform willingly. Surprisingly, I got shit on for having this stance in one of the games community on lemmy.ca.

Is it hard to stay away from US goods and services when you live in Canada? All my friends and family hate Trump, but they don't seem to have a hard boycott stance like me and I assumed it's because it's really difficult to do without paying a huge premium.

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  • [–] 2 points 3 months ago

    It can be quite difficult, but not impossible to stay away from US goods in Canada. Given our geopolitical closeness, truly buying nothing from the US is likely functionally impossible. Somewhere down/up the chain there will be someone using imported things to make the goods you buy.

    Me personally, I don't sweat it too much. I buy Canadian when I can, but I don't kill myself over it. The one big thing I draw the line at is foods, I'm not really in a position to be buying more expensive food over morals. If the US bag of carrots are cheaper, I'm buying them. I do however choose the Canadian option if given the chance, and have been having great fun exploring what Canadian alternatives/products are available.

    The real hit in all this is the business owners of Canada. I've spoken to quite a few people who do little side businesses and it's largely impossible to sell to the US with the tariffs. Vice versa too, I sometime go on ebay to buy vintage enamel pins, and its just not realistic to drop like $30 on one pin, with most of it being tariffs. It's somehow cheaper to get pins from Britain and France on ebay than from the US now. This is just a small anecdote of the situation of course, but you can imagine how it effects everything else in the economy small and large. I worry that if we return to the status quo, we will be simply economically domesticated by the US.

    Big respect on not buying games on steam. Personally if its not on steam, I'm not buying the game. The only exceptions I've ever made was for technically Minecraft, Star Sector, and Vintage Story.

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