Let’s face it. Canadians have become complacent over the last 20 years. America was buying Canadian products, to the tune of 75% of all Canadian exports. However, Canada should have learned from Trump 1, when he unilaterally tore up the North American Free Trade Agreement what the future held in store.
All the signs and symptoms were there, that Donald J. Trump was not to be trusted, but naively, Canada took Trump’s lies and did nothing to act on them. Trump has been called a transactionalist. I like to simply believe he is what he has always been, a liar.
To trust Trump is to automatically err in logic. Trump doesn’t care if he lies and gets caught, because he will never, and has never, admitted to his lies.
Trump is like the five-year-old boy in a family that has been spoiled without end.
So, move forward to Trump 2, and low and behold, Trump tears up CUSMA a simply newer iteration of NAFTA, which Trump also tore up, that Trump thinks is a better deal for America, which, of course, he signs.
Only this time Trump decides that Tariffs are the answer. Trump doesn’t understand the basics of economics, of free trade, tariffs, or subsidies, so he decides that the best route to a kleptocracy is to essentially embargo nations, and then force them to come to him, personally, to sign new trade deals.
It doesn’t matter if a tariff is 154% of 80% or 50%, as they essentially end up creating an embargo.
So here we are, no closer to resolution than we were on January 20th.
Americans are celebrating the fact that the tariffs have been lowered, and all is right with the world. The reality is that the lunatic who started the trade war is still in place awaiting another opportunity to disrupt the economic system so that he can ‘deal personally’ with nations that can’t withstand the instability.
All this means is that Trump can then extort those nations to provide ‘Presidential Perks’, like a 400 million dollar aircraft for his personal use. At no time in American history has it been so obvious that America is being run by a family of thieves, whose only goal in the next three years will be to enrich their wealth, extorted from former American allies and naive Americans.
We don’t trust America, and fortunately, Trump was the catalyst that woke Canadians up.
But For Canada, There Is A Silver Lining
Trump has proved to Canadians that their future does not lie with America. Canada will continue on its mission to diversify and seek new markets and ink new trade agreements with those nations around the world that want an ‘honest broker’.
Canada is signing new agreements with the E.U., Korea, Japan, and China, and will continue to do so with less familiar markets farther afield like Indonesia and India.
The world needs what Canada produces, and it’s evident by the new relationships being developed. Canada aims to disentangle its economy from the United States, so profoundly, that Trump or whomever the next Kleptocrat in Chief in America is, cannot effect pain on the Canadian economy.
This week the Chinese foreign minister proposed a long-term trade relationship with Canada that is truly tariff-free. Canada should pursue this avenue as Chinese economic interests align themselves much closer than America now does.
Regardless of ideology, Canada can do business with China, just as America does, while America pretends to disavow Chinese products as less technically competent.
The fact is that China has caught up with America.
Were it not for the fact that Americans consume more than anyone on earth per capita, America would be, just another market, out of 8 billion people.
Canada has work to do, both in developing the capacity to create all of the finished products that will have formerly been completed in the United States, and to then ink free trade agreements with Korea, Japan, and China for those finished products.
Capacity also means expanding rail, pipelines, and the necessary infrastructure to ship Canada’s products to the world, North, East, and West.
The final element is to militarize.
Canada needs to double the size, but more importantly, the capability of the Canadian Armed Forces. The army must double in size and orient its protection and force towards the Arctic and Europe.
Most importantly cannot must develop a strategic second-strike nuclear capability and purchase 12 new ballistic submarines as part of that strategic protection force.
Once that has been accomplished, America will not be able to extort Canada any further, and except for the fact that we share a border, will then mean little to Canada and Canadians.
Canadians have, in numbers, begun to sell their American assets and to take their vacations in Mexico, Cuba, or the Caribbean and throughout the Gulf of Mexico.
America has awakened Canadians to the threat that America is, and I for one am grateful for that.
Canada, for Canadians, is the future.
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