A Reminder that Launching a Trade War With Canada is Galactically Stupid
https://danieldrezner.substack.com/p/a-reminder-that-launching-a-trade?r=rjjdx&utm_medium=ios
A Reminder that Launching a Trade War With Canada is Galactically Stupid
https://danieldrezner.substack.com/p/a-reminder-that-launching-a-trade?r=rjjdx&utm_medium=ios
3 Comments
“In addition, most leaders of most countries since the invention of national borders would fall to their knees in gratitude if they had the kind of relationship with a neighbor that we had with Canada. They would be singing glad hosannas and slaughtering fatted calves in thanks.”
Lol.
These people…
Obviously don’t want the economy to collapse, but ever since I can remember (so mid-80s) all the momentum in Canada has been towards integeration and (de facto) subjugation to the United States. People need to be reminded that this country did walk a more independent path for most of its existence. It can be done and I suspect that now, finally, it will be done because we have no choice.
Mulroney, Chretien, Martin, Harper, Trudeau, none of them made any serious moves to increase Canadian sovereighty on any file. Hearing Chretien brag for the eight millionth time how we didn’t go to Iraq – well great, we didn’t go, but that’s a negative decision, it’s not on the level of Pearson in Suez or anything. It was a political decision based partly on morals but mostly on polls.
Even if this hurts, it will be better for us in the long term because we were headed for irrelevance as a political entity, ten parts with virtually nothing to do with one another. That has to change – for example, what happened to lowering the provincial trade barriers? Is that ever going to happen?
The more I see the trends in the United States, the more convinced I am that we should distance ourselves as much as possible. They can’t be trusted, even if and when Trump goes, even if they elect Democrats across the board, even if they apologize and reimburse us for all the damage they’ve caused.
The fact is that almost all Americans don’t respect us and don’t think this is a substantially different country than theirs. They basically don’t think we exist. We’ve done little to convince them otherwise. But that’s the root of all this, and it’s the reason it will continue beyond Trump. You can’t make serious agreements with people who don’t take you seriously.
It’s not entirely their fault in a way, because we haven’t really taken ourselves seriously, and now we’re going to have to think about actually developing a Canadian foreign policy, an industrial strategy, a defence plan, and trade infrastructure that isn’t just “Let’s wait and see what Washington does.”
>The Canadians also pressed the United States for a level of certainty that the deal would not be scrapped overnight by the Trump administration. **But the United States maintained that it would retain the power to change tariff policy against Canada at any time**, irrespective of the agreement, officials said. Mr. Carney would say in his seething Saturday address to Canadians: Sometimes, the United States signature is “written in pencil.”
Despite all the noise about French labelling (and the distraction about attacking the use of French in Quebec, which was never really at issue), this is the key point. Essentially making the trade agreement binding in only one direction is a batshit insane ask, and makes the whole thing pointless. Any time Trump needs another distraction he’ll just break the deal. Written in pencil indeed.