REGINA - Well, folks, my lecture for today is about tariffs.
All the talk around here has been about little else. President-elect Donald Trump’s threat to impose 25 per cent tariffs on Canadian exports to the United States has sucked the oxygen out of every other news story out there.
Including the resignation of the sitting Prime Minister Minister of Canada. Including a ceasefire deal in the Middle East. Including even the disastrous wildfires in Southern California that have destroyed 10,000 homes!
Someone needs to tell this joker Trump that there are bigger fish to fry than the tariffs issue at the moment. You would think Trump’s priority when he takes office on Monday should be dealing with the unfolding disaster and tragedy in the Los Angeles area. But no, Trump would rather hit his closest neighbour and ally with 25 per cent tariffs, and try and take over Greenland and take over the Panama Canal. What madness.
What has been especially annoying has been all his talk on social media about his intentions to annex Canada and make it the 51st State. The Trump dittoheads on social media are loving this idea. What’s more, he sounded serious about it at that wild news conference down in Mar-a-Lago, where he talked about using “economic force” against Canada and about how Canada produces nothing the USA needs.
On top of all this nonsense were Trump’s pronouncements in which he refused to rule out military force in taking over Greenland and the Panama Canal. Let’s get real, folks: this is crazy talk. Any attempt to take Greenland by force would trigger World War III because Denmark would have none of it.
And Canada needs to quit acting like there is a real threat to the existence of the country. Canada will never be the 51st State. Canadians are never going to agree to it, and the global community won’t stand for it either.
It seems like people on both sides of the Canadian and U.S. border are forgetting that you can’t simply go and annex an entire sovereign country against its will. It would take a full-blown invasion, which would trigger World War III. Again, not gonna happen.
I don’t know what the heck Trump is smoking in saying all this — likely, it’s from the absolute worst quality Canadian weed that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau legalized. But if Trump thinks “economic force” through tariffs will do the trick to convince Canada or anyone else to join the USA, then he needs his head examined.
For instance: just look at all the sanctions on Russia, with American companies getting out of there in droves. All that “economic force” to convince Russia to get out of Ukraine sure worked, didn’t it? And speaking of Russia — look at how trying to take over a sovereign country right next door is turning out for them.
And look at Cuba. The Americans have had a full-blown economic embargo in place against that country for something like 60-odd years — economic pressure way worse than 25 per cent tariffs ever will be.
This embargo succeeded in making a total mess of Cuba economically and as a place to live, but yet little has changed politically. That country is still Communist, the same as usual. I don’t see Cubans clamouring to join the USA… wait, check that, actually they do, they’re moving to Miami in droves.
Maybe that’s the real motivation of Trump — to make life so miserable in Canada for Canadians that we will all want to move to the USA. Who knows. But his rants are making Canadians less inclined to go to the ‘States, not more.
What is being lost on these politicians is the fact that tariffs, and trade wars, are utterly unproductive and self-defeating. I like to read up on history as you know, and this Trump playbook is straight out of the 1930s.
Back then, lawmakers down there brought in the lousy Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act which, according to my quick research on Google, increased import duties on over 20,000 goods to the United States. It was supposed to boost farm prices, but these tariffs prompted other countries to impose retaliatory tariffs of their own on the USA and help usher in the Great Depression.
This is what Trump is risking with tariffs and the “51st State” talk: he’s risking a big retaliatory response. And he’s threatening tariffs against Denmark over Greenland, which risks an even more disastrous retaliatory response from the entire EU and possibly NATO, too. Seriously, the implications for the world are starting to go beyond just trade if this keeps up.
What’s needed in this situation is for some major diplomacy and for common sense to prevail. Unfortunately, as frightened as I am by what I see out of the USA, I’m even more freaked out by what I am seeing on the Canadian side.
What we’re seeing here is a state of utter confusion - a bizarre combination of threats of retaliation coupled with a leadership vacuum that makes the whole country look rudderless, like a chicken with its head cut off.
On the one hand, you have people, particularly in the Liberals and NDP, who seem to be spoiling for a fight and chomping at the bit to take on Trump in a trade war. Look at the rhetoric from Jagmeet Singh as a prime example:
“I have a message for Donald Trump. Our country’s not for sale, not now, not ever… we’re proud of our country and ready to fight like hell to defend it,” he said on a video on X.
Yet while the rhetoric is ramping up, at the same time you have a shaky minority government whose sitting Prime Minister has not only just resigned, but who has also prorogued Parliament. So, we have a Parliament basically on hold while all this cross-border drama is playing out. This is in the midst of rock-bottom poll numbers for the Liberals and a leadership fight, and Opposition parties are ready to vote non-confidence at the earliest opportunity.
With this leadership vacuum, it’s fallen on provincial Premiers to try and make their case to the Americans, with Ontario’s Doug Ford and Alberta’s Danielle Smith conspicuous in venturing down to the USA to lobby officials and go on American TV.
Yet it doesn’t even seem like all these politicians are even on the same page. We are now hearing talk from some Premiers as well as the federal government about potentially cutting off energy supplies to the United States in retaliation.
That First Ministers’ meeting in Ottawa this week to respond to the tariffs issue ended up exposing the divisions for all to see. In the end, Premier Smith refused to sign on to the communique of the other First Ministers, with Smith taking issue with the Feds continuing to, as she put it, “publicly and privately float the idea of cutting off energy supply to the U.S. and imposing export tariffs on Alberta energy and other products to the United States.”
Smith is right to be mad. At the end of the day, the people who will be hurt the most by such a move will be Canadian workers. We’re going to be hurt enough by a senseless Trump-induced trade war that's going to kill manufacturing jobs; we don’t need even more self-inflicted pain on top of it.
What Canada really should do is respond in kind to the Americans without hurting Canadians in the process. Instead, it looks like the energy industry and energy workers, and all of western Canada for that matter may get thrown under the bus yet again.
There appears little appetite to seek out a national consensus. Instead of seeking a unified team-Canada response to Trump, you are now seeing Liberal leadership contenders pitting politicians against politicians. Look at this post from Chrystia Freeland on the X platform: “@PierrePoilievre: are you going to stand up for Canada, or stand with Danielle Smith?”
This kind of talk is not helpful whatsoever. Our country looks like a gong show, with everyone at odds with one another.
Meanwhile, down in Mar-a-Lago, Donald Trump must be laughing at us. The leaders in charge of our country are making his “51st State” case for him.
It’s also the leaders in charge who’ve led us to the current state of affairs we are in when it comes to trade, due to the failures to get pipelines like Northern Gateway or Energy East up and running. If we had those going, Canada would have been in a position to sell to other markets and not have to rely on our supposed “friends” south of the border.
Instead of becoming the 51st State, maybe what is needed are some wholesale changes in how Canada runs things and makes decisions. Good luck getting that accomplished, either.
