Canada Versus U.S. President Donald Trump's Trade War

"He's a different guy and doesn't have a history with Trump. There was some baggage with Trudeau."

"That's positive because Trump is very sensitive to personal interactions."

"There's a fine line between going after Trump, and alienating him entirely." 

Daniel Beland, political-science professor, McGill University, Montreal

 

"The difference between [Mark] Carney and Trudeau is Carney doesn't seek to make a point or to virtue-signal. When he goes to see Trump, it's about getting a deal."

"The president's transactional, and Carney has a lot of experience in negotiating over the years."

Lisa Raitt, former Conservative cabinet minister

 

"Canada needs to continue having a proportionate response to any and all economic attacks from the U.S."

"We will do that, in part, by keeping our tariffs on the Americans for as long as they have their own tariffs and until the Americans show us respect and make credible, reliable commitments to free and fair trade."

Spokesperson for Carney

From left: U.S. President Donald Trump, Prime Minister Mark Carney and Conservative Party Leader Pierre Poilievre. Trump said on Tuesday “it doesn’t matter” to him which one of the other two wins the next Canadian election. Photo by Roberto Schmidt/AFP via Getty Images; Thomas Padilla/AP; Dave Chan/AFP via Getty Images

 

Since Donald Trump's re-election in the United States, he has repeatedly spoken of Justin Trudeau, while still Prime Minister of Canada, as 'Governor' Trudeau. Strained relations between the two date back to Mr. Trump's first term in office as President of the United States. They since went from cold to downright frozen, with Mr. Trudeau referring in public statements to 'Donald'. And cementing that hostility by calling his tariffs "dumb". But that was a month ago, and PM Trudeau is no more, to the great relief of most Canadians. In his place is the new leader of the Liberal Party, elevated to the Prime Minister's Office at least as long as it takes for an election to be called.

 

U.S. President Donald Trump has made the political situation in Canada even more tense, at a time when the Canadian economy is hobbling along due to poor decision making and inaction in necessary exploitation spheres of Canadian resources by the Liberal government, hobbling business and trade with its overweening focus on the environment to the detriment of the Canadian economy. Thanks to Mr. Trump's truculent, eruptive behaviour it is not only Canada, but Mexico, China, and the European Union, Japan and South Korea whose economic futures have been thrown a fastball with the threat of steep American tariffs. 

 

For the present, PM Mark Carney governs Canada with the mind of a technocrat and global economist. The country's goal, he has said, must be to build the strongest economy in the Group of Seven. The fly in that aspirational ointment is that while Trudeau's embrace of environment issues was inconvenient to economic growth for Canada, Carney's will be even more so, as a committed environmentalist whose past statements and actions distinguished him as every bit as passionate on the issue as his predecessor.

 

Mr. Carney has stated he is in no hurry to visit Washington to meet with the man who has said that Canada is not a viable country. But that it would make a very good 51st state, in surrendering its sovereignty and that it is his intention to destroy the Canadian economy in a bid to convince Canadians that joining the United States is where their destiny lies. Generally speaking, a great preponderance of the Canadian public has no interest whatever in doing such a thing, and the resentment engendered by these repetitive utterances is of magnitudes of disgust.

 

 At the "appropriate time, under a position where there's respect for Canadian sovereignty", stated Mr. Carney, he would be willing to undertake such a trip. On the other hand, the recognition must be there, that no one can talk reason to an unreasonable mind. In the meanwhile, Carney has undertaken trips to France and Britain in a bid to shore up relations with the two founding countries during the colonial days prior to confederation when relations with the Indigenous populations of the country were fraught with all the ills that accompany colonization.

 

Canadian officials from the provincial to the federal governments had been visiting Washington to speak with their counterparts over the issue of tariff threats. Those threats have turned out to be predictive of the man making them having no intention of not imposing them. Threatening further that if counter-tariffs were to be imposed it would be his intention to raise already-high tariffs even more. In the end the U.S. levies have been matched tariff-for-tariff on incoming U.S. goods to Canada, infuriating the U.S. president, that any other country would be so bold as to thwart his intention of one-way tariffs.

 

Canada's official opposition through Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre is now appealing to the voting public with his own agenda items; curbing public spending, reducing foreign aid, cutting taxes and stimulating business investments. The frank hope for the future is, once a general election is called and the voters finally have the opportunity to make their choice between a Liberal government that has spent a decade beggaring the economy, mounting a colossal public debt, alienating the country from East to West, transforming its culture and heritage and burdening the country with an impossibly high and divisive immigration rate that has failed its public health service and housing market, Canada will have a new, commonsense Conservative government.  

Prime Minister Mark Carney, while speaking in Iqaluit on Tuesday, announced that Canada will be working alongside Australia to build an early warning radar system in the Arctic.  CBC