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>It's pretty easy right now for certain goods to bypass the US tariffs by being transshipped through Canada and enter the USA without tariff because of minimal
by mthoms 1mo ago
>It's pretty easy right now for certain goods to bypass the US tariffs by being transshipped through Canada and enter the USA without tariff because of minimal processing.
This talking point keeps getting repeated on HN. Always without sources because the only source is a dubious White House "report" that is nothing more than a manufactured reason for buying an expensive new AI system (probably from a big donor). https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/The-Great-Transshipment-Scam.pdf https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/The-Gr...
That same report equally names the European Union, India, Israel, Japan, Mexico, South Korea, and Taiwan alongside Canada. So literally every modern western economy is making this "pretty easy"? Yeah, ok.
- declan_roberts 1mo agoI haven't personally seen it on HN but it has been an issue at least since the beginning of tariffs, and there's significant rules in the original NAFTA agreement to try and curb it. So it's not new, and definitely predates that report. Here's a NYT article from April about the difficulty in preventing transhipping. https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/07/us/politics/tariffs-trade-import-fraud.html https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/07/us/politics/tariffs-trade...
- mthoms 1mo agoWhere does it say "it's pretty easy" to do this via Canada? Canada isn't even mentioned in your source. Only Asian countries are. Please stop repeating as fact nonsense you vaguely half-remember hearing somewhere. It's very Trumpian. The whole world isn't out to get you. I'm not saying trans-shipping doesn't happen. I'm sure it does. But your framing was entirely baseless.