Donald Trump on Thursday announced a 35% tariff on Canadian imports, starting Aug. 1, citing that Ottawa had retaliated with tariffs against Washington.
“Instead of working with the United States, Canada retaliated with its own Tariffs,” Trump said in his letter to Mark Carney, prime minister of Canada, posted on Truth Social.
Well, Canada’s only meaningful land border and a vast amount of transportation infrastructure is to the US, so any reasonable leader would probably try to maximize trade with that neighbour as long as they are an ally. Carney has definitely focused on more European trade, but yes, perhaps there should have been more diversification even before Donny.
The is reasonable but very short sighted. You don’t put your eggs in 1 basket as the saying goes.
While this is obviously true now, in hindsight, it’s certainly not fair. The entire western world put all of their eggs in the USA basket… why? Because after WWII there was a real sense that the USA was trustable. That they would work toward freedom, democracy, and (importantly) expanding markets in the world. The USA made the basket and the rest of the world piled in their eggs. Despite plenty of evidence to the contrary (Panama, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc all), the world continued to believe the lie that America was happy promulgating. Nobody reasonable believed America would take a hard right turn to fascism and voluntarily elect a leader that would throw the basket — the basket they made to always favour America — in the trash. But here we are. Yes, the world never should have agreed to America putting itself at the top of the pile. But we did and now the world is busy re-orienting without America. I think that’s for the better, but then again I’m not American. I think Americans are in for a rude awakening when the Trump policies actually come home to roost… of course he’ll be gone by then and they’ll just blame whatever democrat inherits the burning hulk of America that he leaves behind.