Some 40 years ago, Canada launched itself into a free trade agreement with the U.S. and Mexico, a courageous move given the risks presented to our small industries by going up against gigantic ones that had grown up with the benefit of economies of scale possible in domestic markets ten times the size of our own.
The only terms on which we could enter such an arrangement was under a rules-based agreement that levelled the playing field. It was a bold experiment that enabled the three countries to combine their comparative advantages in one large market, increasing efficiency while lowering prices, making us all stronger together than any of us would be on our own.
But as the three countries signed the agreement, probably few imagined there might be a day when a U.S. president would turn his back on the whole arrangement. Yet here we are. The Trump administration has done exactly that, imposing 25 per cent tariffs on imports from its closest, most-trusted, long-standing friend and ally. And, to add insult to injury, it’s all based on lies.
Of all the fentanyl seized as it enters the U.S., only about 0.2 per cent of it comes from Canada. Similarly, fewer than 200,000 people enter the U.S. from Canada illegally each year, compared to over two million crossing into the United States via its southern border. It is clearly not true that Canada is the source of massive problems justifying the imposition of massive tariffs.
Also untrue is that they are our problems to fix. We don’t interrogate or search people on their way out of our country any more than the U.S. does. Controlling what comes into a country is a matter for that country’s border services to deal with.
And it is patently false that it will be Canadian exporters who pay the tariffs. It will be American importers and, ultimately, American consumers of those products who will pay the increased costs. When will that penny drop?
How is any of this even possible when there is an international trade agreement between Canada, the U.S. and Mexico that was ratified by the legislatures of all three countries and is therefore law?
From start to finish, this is a shakedown based on falsehoods. And it appears to be just one feature of a much larger agenda based on a pathological inability to tell the truth, a flagrant disregard for the rule of law and the democratic traditions that had already made America great, and the telltale sign of a president with reckless expansionist intentions.
Makes you wonder why our leaders rushed off to Washington and Mar-a-Lago in humiliating efforts to appease him. Isn’t that exactly how you empower and embolden a schoolyard bully? Isn’t that what we should have learned from Neville Chamberlain? Or from watching Putin take Crimea, and then invaded Ukraine?
Why are we, a $2 trillion economy, planning merely a dollar-for-dollar retaliation against tariffs imposed by a $30 trillion economy and hoping it will do anything other than be mildly annoying? After Trump’s declared intention to annex Canada, why are we buying anything from or selling anything to the U.S., with or without tariffs?
Withdrawing from the WHO, shutting down most of USAID, proposing the expulsions of Palestinians from Gaza to make way for coastal resorts, accusing Ukraine of starting the war with Russia, and then berating Zelensky publicly in an effort to extort Ukraine’s rare earth minerals – these are but a few of the new president’s malevolent deeds that have people throughout the U.S. and around the world wondering whether we are seeing the emergence of an authoritarian tyrant.
He has managed to secure Republican majorities in the House, the Senate and the Supreme Court. Some see the upcoming mid-term elections as an opportunity to put the brakes on this fast-moving train, unless civil unrest gives him a reason to call in the military and suspend elections until order is restored, a manoeuvre made much more feasible by his replacement of top military brass.
If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it’s quite possibly a duck.
