Trump saves the Canadian Liberals while throwing stones?

Trump saves the Canadian Liberals while throwing stones!

Canada just gave Trump the finger. Before his tariffs the Canadian liberals were on the run. A sluggish economy and the boorish tactics of Justin Trudeau had propelled the conservatives into a 25 point lead in the polls. Then came the president with his tariffs threatening to force Canada into becoming the 51^st state and Elon Musk tweeting that Canada was not a real country. Trump in his usual hyperbole said that “Without us, Canada cannot make it. Canada relies on us 95%. We rely on it 4%.” Of course the truth is a bit different. We are Canada’s largest trading partner but US trade accounts for only 19 percent of Canadian GDP.

Trudeau resigns, the conservatives are ascendant and then voila! Trump declares war against Canada. All of a sudden the Liberals were up by two points as their new leader Mark Carney made Trump the focus of his campaign. Never mind the slow growing economy. Never mind the dire economics and budget excesses of Liberal governments past and present, Trump not the economy became the issue. Although the conservatives tried their best to pivot from attacking the failures of the liberals to attacking the president, they lost. Now instead of reform, Carney will double down on the failed liberal agenda. He is Al Gore with a Canadian accent. Despite the mineral and oil riches of the country, Carney is a green zealot and probably will be forced to making appropriate clucking noises toward more pipelines and utilization of resources. Carney is a smart man, having been head of both the Bank of Canada and the Bank of England. If he is really smart then he needs to expand pipelines and export terminals for gas and oil and cultivate trade deals with China, India and Japan. But I doubt that he will shed his green skin.

However, if he doesn’t change the downward slide of the Canadian economy, he won’t be prime minister for long. What will be interesting to watch will be his attempts to decouple the Canadian economy from the American one. We are by far the Canadians biggest trading partner but they are ours as well. Look to Canada to attempt to negotiate free trade agreements with the rest of the world and even snuggle closer to China. Trump is forcing this upon Canada and the Canadians at least for the moment seem willing to suffer more economically in order to assert their national pride. Carney probably sent Trump a thank you note.

I wonder if Trump was surprised to find that Canadians are a people with a backbone and national pride? I believe that only they and the Chinese have countered Trump’s tariffs with tariffs of their own on American goods. Sixty percent of Canadians have canceled American vacations. Many are selling their American vacation homes. Eighty percent are boycotting American products and turning hostile toward their neighbors to the south. Ninety percent reject the ridiculous idea of an American statehood. Seventy percent consider America as the enemy. Only Trump could transform our closest friend into our closest enemy. I guess my Canadian bear hunting days are over. 

Throwing Stones. Et tu Donald?

The other day White House press secretary, on the one hand, Karoline Leavitt blasted the Biden Administration for its lack of transparency, “I can tell you there was certainly a lack of transparency from the former president, from the entire former administration.” Well those in glass houses should not throw stones, especially if the glass house is the White House. Then Leavitt excoriated Amazon over its decision to show the costs that Trump’s tariffs add to consumer purchases on its website calling it a hostile and political act. Huh? Had she no shame for telling the world that Trump’s White House also is less than transparent? 

Why is this different from separating the sales tax from the merchandise price on a receipt? For years, gas pumps broke down the cost of the gas showing how much went to federal and state taxes. Wasn’t Amazon just trying to show the consumer that the seller is not responsible for the increase in prices? If Trump’s tariffs stay in place, the American consumer will see a rise in prices. Is Trump going to blame “greedy” corporations? Is he going to blame the Fed? Is he going to blame Joe Biden? You can bet he will try to shift the blame so naturally he has got to shut down the disclosure from Amazon showing that he is responsible for the price increase. Trump threatened the automobile makers not to raise prices but to eat the increased costs. They may be able to do that for a little while but not so for all the small businesses whose viability will be threatened by the increase in their costs. Again Trump is anti-small business. I hope they all will put a Trump tariff increase on their merchandise and in their advertising. I hope they put it on their sales tickets too. Trump bullied Amazon into backing down. Is this what they mean by “bully pulpit”? But he won’t be able to bully all of businesses to hide the impact of his tariffs on consumer prices.