A Trade War on Steroids -- Between 'Friends'

 

"I was just with the President in the Oval Office, and I can confirm that tomorrow, the February 1st deadline that President Trump put into place in a statement several weeks ago continues."

"These are promises made and promises kept by the president."

"Starting tomorrow those tariffs will be in place."

White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt

In the Oval Office on Thursday, January 30/25  AP

 

And so, President Donald J. Trump who lost no time in rescuing America from the dripping talons of the progressive-left Democrats whose playbook was Critical Race Theory and DEI, leading off  his second (interrupted) term that saw him reappraise wokeness, political correctness, affirmative action, net zero ad infinitum, going on to address the World Economic Forum in Davos to lecture world leaders on American Greatness, denouncing taxation in excess along with over-regulation, and reckless immigration/migration, has decided that his neighbours on the North American Continent were in need of a little reorientation in their trade with a newly protectionist United States.

 

His face stony and unmoving as he said he had quite a number of good friends in Canada, he proceeded to announce that his earlier pronouncements in punishing Canada and Mexico with an across-the-board tariff of 25 percent on their exports to the United States was printed in tablets of stone. America's neighbours had for too long taken his nation's good fellowship for granted, coasting on its coattails without themselves living up to trade fairness and he would put a stop to it. Full stop. In so doing, he illegally broke with the very trade agreement he had signed alongside Canada and Mexico during his first presidency.

President Sheinbaum orders tariffs in response to US measures  Reuters

Not only were the two countries dependent on the United States for trade breaks, he thundered, but on its protection from any potential hostile moves by other states; paying their equal share of security measures was absent from the relationship and he wouldn't have it any longer. Lax border attention leading to the ingress of illegal migrants had to stop! Furtively allowing leaky borders to smuggle Fentanyl and other illegal drugs into the United States had to end! The imposition of financial strain on Canada and Mexico would bring home to them just.how.serious Donald J. Trump is.

 

And he most definitely is. Today's announcement that the threat that has seen both countries on target feverishly plead with the president's stern admonishments to rethink his disastrous decision that would, they stressed, harm American consumers just as it would Canada's and Mexico's fell on deaf ears. Dependence on Canada's electricity and gas exports would turn into a misery for the U.S., and Canada and Mexico warned their reaction would be to impose similar penalties on American imports. 

 

The response to that was swift in the declaration by President Trump that should his neighbours retaliate, he would raise the tariffs even more steeply. Canada alone exports four million barrels of oil on a daily basis in support of the U.S. economy. To America First it is irrelevant that a trade war of these dimensions would trigger recessions in the two other countries. Nor is the reality that illegal migrants from Canada represent a minuscule proportion of those entering the United States. Reason.does.not.prevail...

 

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau addresses the media following the imposition of a raft of tariffs by U.S. President Donald Trump against Canada, Mexico and China, in Ottawa on Saturday. Public Safety Minister David McGuinty, left to right, Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly and Finance Minister Dominic LeBlanc look on. (Justin Tang/The Canadian Press)

"[Trump’s tariffs would] tax America first [in the form of higher costs]."

"This is a lose-lose. We will keep working with partners to show President Trump and Americans that this doesn’t make life any more affordable."

"It makes life more expensive and sends our integrated businesses scrambling."

Matthew Holmes, executive vice president and chief of public policy, Canadian Chamber of Commerce