Canadians will literally pay for Trump’s ignorance, when he builds that stupid Mexican Wall.
Take the Avacado. Best known as the foundation of the king of dips (guacamole), and the culinary magic it performs when added to a sandwich, avocados aren’t just delicious, they deliver a serious nutritional punch to your system.
Chances are your avocados come from Mexico. 95% of avocados in Canada come from Mexico (with Peru supplementing us the most during Mexico’s down time). The avocado business is booming so much in Mexico, that avocados recently became the first piece of produce to ever buy a commercial during the Superbowl. Those ads cost millions, for 30 seconds of airtime.
Good business means reasonable prices for countries like the US and Canada, who are importing these delicious green taste bombs across the border. According to Stats Canada, Canada now imports 57,520 tonnes of them a year. That’s 250 million avocados a year. Americans consume almost twice as many.
Dave Austin is the director of Marketing for Mission Avocados in California. Mission Avacados have a ripening station, and ship avocados all over the states, and, to a ripening station in Burlington Ontario, that services us here in Eastern Canada.
Dave can’t get over the avocado craze. Ten years ago, no one even knew what they were. “I’ve worked with a lot of produce over the years: potatoes, apples, onion. And I’ve never seen growth like this.” Keep the avocados coming, hey b’y, Dave?
Enter Trump’s ridiculous wall. If you thought he was joking when he said “I’ll build a wall along the Mexican border, and make them pay for it!” he wasn’t. He has vowed to immediately construct that walled border — some 3,100 kilometers long — amounting to tens of billions of dollars.
Mexican President Enrique Nieto recently cancelled a trip to the US. He says they will not be paying for the wall, despite Donald’s claims. “I regret and condemn the decision of the United States to construct a wall that divides us, instead of uniting us.”
Apparently, Trump thinks he might fund the construction of the multi-billion-dollar wall with a 20% tax on Mexican imports across the Mexican-American border. But that will just indirectly force Americans and Canadians to pay for the wall.
If you increase what it costs a Mexican company to sell avocados into The States, that company will just up the cost of their avocados when selling to American outlets, and so the grocery stores that sell them will up their costs to customers and chefs.
We, the consumer, will have to pay higher prices to offset this cost of Mexico doing business with the US. To quote one Twitterer, “Now I’ll have to feel bad, every time I eat a taco, that I’m supporting Trump’s stupid wall.”
White House spokesman Sean Spicer said the proposed tax would generate approximately 10 billion a year for the US, since Mexico exports about 300 billion dollars worth of stuff into the US every year. (Avocados, tomatoes, washers, flatscreen TVs, Mexican Fender telecasters.)
10 billion a year in Mexican Import taxes has some people thinking, “great idea!” But this 20-billion-dollar wall will basically amount to an ineffective monument to American Racism, funded by North America.
No one is going to stop buying avocados and tomatoes, or affordable washers and TVs. We will just have to pay a little more for them now, because some misguided man wants to build a wall.
RE: “Unimpressed”: I feel you. But your generation needs to understand something. SHOUTING AT THE ENEMY leads to division. Reasoning with the Right Wing though, enlightens them, by appealing to self-interest. It is social justice 101. Case in point, you and Chad: you have created tension between the two of you, effectively blowing your opportunity to enlighten him. Not that he needs enlightenment, there’s nothing wrong with this article. And, as someone who actually knows Chad, trust me, he’s not trying to be a social justice warrior. That’s your generation’s self-obsession speaking (you’re presuming he’s motivation to run this paper is to have a podium? Why would you assume that? His job is to create content, he created content)
Dear “unimpressed”: A raging diatribe about xenophobia does not change the world, and if anything, it plays into it. Whereas a well-articulated article about the financial impact of racism makes the world take pause and think, “Shit, Trump’s ignorance is truly affecting white me?” Plus, this is a newspaper and source of entertainment, not a place to state the obvious “Trump is a dangerous racist dickhead.” We all know that already, it’s not news, it’s a Facebook status rant. I wish The Overcast would turn off comments. Sick of rolling my eyes at those kinds of comments.
wow of all the stupid & terrible things that are going to happen if trump builds the wall - its really the price of avocado that we should be worried about.
Plus how is eating a taco supporting the wall?!
another failed attempt by chad to be a SJW
Let me break it down for you, “Unimpressed,” because you’re obviously 21, and naive about how to really enact social change. 50% of North Americans probably want that wall for the reasons Trump does. But if you show those 50% of ignorant people how THEY will PERSONALLY be affected by the wall, they’ll care, and no longer support it, and Trump will back down. It’s smart. It;s better than an article, preaching to the Overcast choir, about how racism is mean.
Is it a “failed attempt” if he got your attention?
Perhaps offer some of your own insight on the matter, instead of mocking someone else’s and throwing out lame buzz-terms like “SJW”. Then perhaps, someday, you will be taken seriously and have something to offer in an adult conversation.
Bye bye sushi