I said “need”. None of those things are unavailable in the US. Liberal politics has driven our buying from Canada. Now that we have a man in the whitehouse, we can get back to America First! America Wins! and not some lame-assed country like Canada.
Liberal politics have not. It is called capitalism. Almost all of these products: oil, natural gas, gold, lumber, potash are COMMODITIES. We are buying them from Canada because they deliver to the US CHEAPER than the same product either made in the US or some or world producer.
For example, do you think Scotts fertilizer would pay MORE to get potash from Canada if they could buy it cheaper delivered to their fertilizer factory from some other producer in India, China, or the US.
I am a wholesale lumber broker.I buy lumber from Canada, Europe and the US. I sell into the US. I just sold a truck of lumber into Idaho. I bought it from a sawmill in BC. I could have bought the exact same product(2x10 Select Structural Douglas Fir) from a mill in Oregon. The Canadian lumber was $595/thousand board feet delivered to northern Idaho. The same product from Oregon was $645/mbf delivered. This includes the 20% duty on the Canadian lumber. My customer chose to buy the lumber from Canada. IF the Oregon mill was cheaper, he would have bought that.
Millions of transactions like this happen everyday in our economy.