A reader is unhappy about my column on Trump’s trade war with Canada, in which I note that, before that trade war, 99.85 percent of cross-border trade was tariff-free:
Totally incorrect. For over 30 years Canada has been using CBSA to apply GST & PST at the border on personal property of [U.S.] origin entering Canada. . . . Try to get your facts right.
(Acronym translator: CBSA is the Canada Border Services Agency, GST is the Goods and Services Tax, and PST is the Provincial Sales Tax.)
Those taxes may be annoying, but they apply to goods and services Canadians buy at home as well as to those they import from the U.S. So they’re not tariffs, and they’re not protectionist.