I thought the reason for trashing trade agreements and taking a wrecking ball to the Canadian economy with extreme tariffs was because of fentanyl coming from Canada at the border?
Apparently not, says Trump, from his speech at Congress tonight: “… Tariffs are about making America rich again and making America great again”.
By his own words, he has just shown his big lie.
Very disturbing.
US has an auto surplus with Canada. Vast overall trade, with exports 2% of GDP.
Tariffs are a sales tax that is somewhat regressive. What he’s saying is more tax cuts for the rich can be financed by taxes on the non rich, but with a cost to production/output/employment too. Canada should be acting now, but sooner or later, if auto and other industry is destroyed, there are much higher value options than what’s made in US, (and we subsidize auto industry heavily) and blacklisting US goods in Canada is not going to make the US richer, even if the oligarchs get lower taxes.
But the supremacist attitude to destroy Canada, whether or not “it pays off”, is a betrayal that needs counter actions/diplomacy with others now instead of waiting/hoping that supremacist domination will be rationalized away.