“Canada doesn’t allow American Banks to do business in Canada, but their banks flood the American Market. Oh, that seems fair to me, doesn’t it?” Trump wrote in a social media post

CNN and others debunked Trump’s claim a month ago.

“There’s nothing prohibiting American banks from operating here, including having retail branches,” Cristie Ford, a professor at the University of British Columbia’s law school, said in an email in February.

Canada tightly regulates the banking industry, and it requires various government approvals before a foreign-owned bank can open in the country. But U.S. banks have been operating in Canada for well over a century; the Canadian Bankers Association, an industry group, said in a February statement that “there are 16 U.S.-based bank subsidiaries and branches with around C$113 billion in assets currently operating in Canada” and that “U.S. banks now make up approximately half of all foreign bank assets in Canada.”

Tyler Meredith, former head of economic and fiscal policy for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, noted on social media in February that Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Citigroup, U.S. Bank, JPMorgan, and Northern Trust are among the U.S. banks with current Canadian operations. You can see the others here and here.

Meredith said in an interview that “we take a very careful look at people who want to come into our banking sector, because we consider financial services to be a core asset to Canada and to the Canadian economy” and try hard to avoid the “cascading consequences” the world has seen with bank failures in the U.S

  • SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world
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    17 hours ago

    Ah, the difference is that I’m in the US. I wasn’t aware of the Canadian renewal system. That sounds like it could be disastrous for buyers’ interest rates.

    • Yoga@lemmy.ca
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      17 hours ago

      If you have a US mortgage, mortgages are usually open so you would just refinance with a different institution, the penalties should be less than with Canadian term mortgages.

      Depending on your rate though it would probably be a bad idea.

      • SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world
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        16 hours ago

        Yeah, I do have a good rate that I don’t want / can’t afford to lose.

        The problem is that it seems I still have no control over who holds my mortgage in the end. They can apparently just sell it to someone else whenever they want. My mortgage changed hands twice before it ended up with a specific group of fuckers that I hate.