So Donald “frontotemporal dementia” Trump has decided to launch a trade war on Canada.
He is using fentanyl as a pretext in order to avoid having to involve Congress in this action, even though for the past 3 years US seizures of fentanyl coming in from Canada have added up to a few kilograms of the stuff. There is far, far greater cause for Canada to take action against the United States for the thousands of firearms that cross the border into Canada yearly. But that is neither here nor there.
There’s a trade war and Trump is imposing 25% tariffs on Canadian goods coming into the USA, except for oil which for some reason is only subject to 10% tariffs. This essentially cancels the previous North American free trade agreement which was negotiated by… Donald Trump.
Trump is a chaos agent who’s good at two things: breaking stuff, and running businesses into the ground. In other words, we’re not dealing with a rational force here. The doddering old fool has already said various times that he wants Canada as the 51st state. But of course that won’t be happening, and certainly not under Trump. I will personally pick up a rifle in anger to defend my country against Americans if it comes to that. And this country will fight until the last bullet has been fired. We would expect Americans to do the same if we invaded them.
Anyway, the point is that Donald’s goal is completely insane, and therefore we cannot rely on the tools with which people usually “fight” trade wars. You cannot negotiate with terrorists like Donald Trump, period. They are neither honest nor sane.
Therefore we, as Canadians, need to approach this with the idea that we need to squeeze the American economy until the Yanks do something about their crazy old fool. I don’t know, “regime change” or something.
Prime Minister Trudeau has already declared targeted retaliatory tariffs concentrating on goods manufactured in red states, which is smart, but is nothing near enough.
We need to go on the offensive and use our knowledge of current events in the USA to better target those industries that most need Canadian goods. And we need to pull the rug from under Donald’s feet.
As such I would suggest a multi-pronged approach to strike America where it would hurt the most, and make money doing it.
1- fight the US import tariffs with Canadian export duties. Trump figured that politically he can instantly kick inflation up 25% and survive. However if we impose 25% export duty on things going to the United States they will effectively rise in price by 50%, which is not tenable for the US economy. Also we get the first 25% of tax revenue, not the USA.
2- stop all energy exports to the USA. That includes electricity and oil.
3- implement 100% excise duty on any and all goods and services from companies where Elon Musk is CEO. That means Tesla vehicles, Starlink service, anything spent on X in terms of ad campaigns, etc. There are plenty of other EV manufacturers out there, and unlike Tesla they can build cars properly.
It’s only by fighting aggressively and proactively that we can defeat Donald and the Oligarchs. Let’s not waste this opportunity.