WASHINGTON (TIP): It’s a deal that’s left everyone unhappy, except perhaps the few corporate honchos who executed it. Americans are upset that Burger King, their beloved fast food franchise, is decamping to Canada. Canadians are appalled that the American chain is swallowing up its cherished coffee chain Tim Horton’s.
The US government too is mad as hell that Burger King is fleeing north, suspecting it is doing so because of lower taxes there. And Canadian politicians, who are constantly trying to get their country out of the American shadow (Al Capone once joked he doesn’t even know which street Canada is on), want to know what’s in it for Canadians, besides additional tax dollars. Things haven’t been this bad between the neighbors since the War of 1812, when the two countries last had a scrap.
They may be the world’s largest trading partners and they may be sharing the world’s longest border, but when it comes to certain things, the ‘twain shall never meet – like coffee and doughnuts, as Canadians spell it (Americans have shortened it to Donuts). Canadians have their Tim Horton’s, Americans have their Starbucks, and that’s the way they like it.
But Burger King has broken the unwritten compact by agreeing to merge (a euphemism for takeover) with Tim Horton’s in a deal valued at $11 billion, in effect making it a sort of American McDonald’s plus Canadian Starbucks. The merger is expected to create the world’s third largest fast food company after McDonalds and Subway, enabling the rather more insular Canadian chain to be introduced to the nearly 100 countries where Burger King operates, while giving the American giant relief from high US corporate tax.
Apparently, BK took to heart a quip by the late Robin Williams that “Canada is like a loft apartment over a really great party,” a gag that justifies the Canadian complaint that while they may be suffering from paranoid schizophrenia, Americans have a bad case of megalomania.
US LOSING TAX REVENUES AS FOOD, BEVERAGE FIRMS FLEE ABROAD
