It looks me to me like taxes on a foreign dividend are unavoidable, even in a retirement account, except there seems to be an exception for Canadian companies.

I looked on the IRS site and it seems like it's hard to find, so I just Google'd and found articles like this, and on the surface it appears to make sense. US retirement accounts are not recognized by foreign sources so they want their taxes from the dividend, and the US Govt can't be expected to offset your taxes paid with a credit today considering that from the US' point of view, they don't see the other side of that offset until you start distributing from the account possibly decades from now, which was made lower by paying of those taxes a long time ago. This is for an IRA. A Roth may be a little different.

Since you don't pay current taxes on investment income in your IRA or 401(k), there's no deduction or credit currently available for foreign taxes paid on investments held in these accounts.

Think of it as a timing issue: The amount you pay in foreign taxes today reduces your retirement assets, and therefore reduces the amount of tax the IRS is able to collect when you start making withdrawals.

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Countries without dividend withholding tax

One of the best ways to avoid dividend withholding tax is to invest in countries without such a tax. Among the countries that don't withhold foreign investors' dividends are Hong Kong, India, Singapore, and the United Kingdom.

There is always a risk that these tax policies could change as these countries look for additional revenue but for now they allow U.S. residents to easily avoid dividend withholding taxes.

Retirement account exemptions

While holding foreign dividend stocks in an IRA is often a bad idea since a foreign tax credit cannot be claimed (see below for more on this), there are some situations where IRAs do have an advantage.

In the case of Canadian dividend withholding tax, U.S. investors can avoid the tax by holding shares in an IRA or 401(k). This makes Canadian dividends stocks one of the best tax-positioned investments for investors looking to put international investments in their retirement account. U.S. investors may be particularly interested in large Canadian banks for both this tax position and their higher dividend yields compared to similar U.S. banks.

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