U.S. President Donald Trump may be okay with the “little disturbance” caused by American tariffs on Canada and other trading partners, as he claimed Tuesday night.
The Republican lawmakers who, after Trump’s speech to a joint session of Congress, fluffed his gargantuan ego, congratulating him on delivering a “homerun” address, may be okay with it too.
They might be willing, as Trump urged nervous American farmers in his 100-minute monologue, to “bear with me” as Washington sows economic chaos and runs roughshod over the world, in a bid to make America great again at the expense of the country’s longtime partners.
But will we, the allies, be so forgiving and forgetful?
Twice now in the space of just over two months, Canadians have gone onto a trade-war footing. Each time, it has been a diplomatic, bureaucratic, logistical and emotional tidal wave.
We have cleared Yankee booze from liquor store shelves and cancelled southern streaming subscriptions and vacations. We have scanned product labels for “Product of Canada” assurances, booed the Star Spangled Banner and even cast an angry eye toward our own Wayne Gretzky, the hockey icon and Trump intimate.
The first time that Canada faced down the tariff threat, in early February, a diplomatic push and retaliatory threats — combined with a $1.3-billion investment in a beefed-up border — earned the country a one-month extension from America’s trade wrath.
On Tuesday, Canada’s reprieve ran out (as did Mexico’s) and 25 per cent tariffs on exports to the U.S. came into effect. Hearts sank across the country even as the population bore down for the fight ahead.
The ostensible reasoning for the imposition was that, in four weeks, American deaths from fentanyl had shown no appreciable signs of decline. That was the explanation provided Tuesday by Howard Lutnick, Trump’s Commerce Secretary, in a Fox Business TV interview.
“I want Americans to stop being murdered by opioids and fentanyl,” he told host Larry Kudrow, who was an economic advisor during Trump’s first presidential term.
Lutnick, a loquacious Long Islander, credited Ottawa and Mexico City of doing “a nice job on the border to start.”
“But fentanyl deaths are just not declining in the way that we expected. So, what do you think the President’s going to do?”
The argument that entry from this country of migrants and fentanyl amounts to less than one per cent of the total American scourge appears to carry little weight.
But from the northern side of the Canada-U.S. border, Canadians might put their own twist on Lutnik’s question.
Despite increased investments and enforcement — and the pandering to President Trump’s whims — the threats of economic warfare are not declining in the way that Canadian expected. So, what should the prime minister, the premiers and the population do?
The only practical, immediate option is to continue deal with the Trump administration, which brandishes emergency powers allowing it to effectively do as it pleases on cross-border trade.
Economically and politically, there is no alternative.
And Canada is working on this, apparently to some effect.
Trump’s address to Congress used the word “tariffs” like a rhetorical cudgel, as if the simple act of saying the word 17 times would somehow be enough to restore the country’s economic might.
He mentioned Canada along with a list of foreign countries that, in his estimation, has “ripped off (America) for decades.”
But he gave not the faintest hint as he was talking that Lutnick had been on the telephone all day Tuesday to his Canadian counterparts working on some sort of agreement that he said could be announced as early as Wednesday.
“It’s not going to be a pause — none of that pause stuff,” Lutnick said. “But I think he’s going to figure out, you do more and I’ll meet you in the middle somewhere.”
Lutnick said the deal could involve the Canada-U.S.-Mexico free trade agreement, known by its acronym, CUSMA, which was renegotiated during Trump’s first term.
“If you live under those rules then the president is considering giving you relief,” he said. “If you haven’t lived under those rules then you’ve got to pay the tariff.”
It’s unclear how or if any potential deal would cancel or only reduce current tariffs, or if it would apply to future rounds of planned American duties. Those include March 12 duties on imported steel and aluminum and April 2 actions against what the U.S. considers to be unfair taxes and trade practices —among them Canada’s 5 per cent Goods and Services Tax and the 3 per cent Digital Services Tax.
Whatever the details, they will do little to change the overall tone that has been established in a relationship between two continental confidantes that stand now as economic adversaries, albeit unequal ones.
A tone that leaves Canada of a kind with Ukraine, whose president was chided and humiliated in the Oval Office before the eyes of the world and then forced to write a letter of apology lest his war-battered country lose out on America’s assistance in reaching a peace deal.
It is of a kind with the Arctic island of Greenland, which Trump told Congress Tuesday that he would welcome as an addition to his country if that was the wish of the population, before adding: “I think we’re going to get it, one way or another.”
Even if Canada reaches a tariff-exemption deal with the U.S. — today, tomorrow or even four years from now when Trump is gone — it would be folly for Canada to forgive what has happened and forget this feeling of vulnerability.
Now that Canada has its guard up and is braced for a fight with its belligerent southern neighbour, a more prudent course of action would be to channel the energy, sense of purpose and funds into preparing future defences.
And to follow the example of Donald Trump when an assassin’s bullet grazed his right ear and his life flashed before his eyes.
On that campaign stage in Butler, Penn., bloody but unbowed, Trump raised his fist in the air and bellowed: “Fight! Fight! Fight!”
