Tirade on Trump's Tariff Threat and the Trials of Team Trudeau

Trump should not be the target of Canadian's anger

Now that the panic has settled, as Canada has gotten a one month reprieve from the threat of a 25 percent tariff on all Canada goods headed for the US — perhaps clearer heads can now have prevail on the part of everyone from ordinary Canadians to our political leaders.

This means Ontario Premier Doug Ford who threatened to cancel a $100 million dollar Starlink contract with Elon Musk to provide high-speed internet to northern and rural Ontario communities because of Musk’s strong ties to Trump. And perhaps BC Premier David Eby shouldn’t have threatened to take alcohol products from ‘red states’ in the US off the shelves of BC liquor stores. And perhaps Team Trudeau shouldn’t been trying to play the mouse that roared by threatening to slap retaliatory tariffs on American products coming into Canada, given that it means Canadians will pay more for products like fruits and vegetables that we simply can’t get here in the winter. And that goes for all the provincial premiers, with the exception of Alberta Premier Danielle Smith.

And for all Canadians — particularly those who voted for Trudeau — who are so angry at Trump that they are blowing up the internet with memes threatening never to vacation in the States, and booing the singing of the American anthem at hockey games — grow up and smarten up and rethink who your anger should be directed at.

Everyone needs to recognize the fact that Trump made it pretty clear about the tariffs when he was campaigning for the US presidency, after he won the presidency but had yet been officially sworn in — and as soon as he entered the Oval Office. Yet everyone seemed so shocked when he did it — including Prime Minister Trudeau.

Trump also made it pretty clear what he was after — fix Canada’s porous border and fix the drug trafficking problem — and the fentanyl problem in particular. And thanks to the dithering of the Trudeau government — vacillating between ‘negotiating and diplomacy’ and talking ‘tough’, as well as using the issue as a campaign tool, this is what it came to. Because, it would seem, Trump didn’t think his request was being taken seriously so he made it serious. One thing Trump is good at is recognizing weakness, and it is something he is willing to take advantage of it. And in Canada he saw weakness —weak leadership and an weak economy. Another thing Trump is equally good is rattling people and he did that in spades on Saturday — and by Sunday he got results.

Canadians who appear to be suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS) and are mad a Trump for starting these tariff wars, particularly those who voted for Trudeau need to remember something. And that is if Canada had a strong economy that hadn’t been driven into the ground by ten years of Liberal economic, monetary, social engineering and ‘green’ policies we wouldn’t be so vulnerable to Trump’s tariffs.

Trump didn’t halt the building of pipelines that could have taken our oil products to both eastern and western coasts to be shipped to markets overseas. This would have expanded markets for Canadian oil, meaning we wouldn’t be selling sell the bulk of it to the Americans at bargain prices. It wasn’t Trump who drove billions, if not trillions of dollars in investments out of the country by overtaxing businesses with ever increasing carbon taxes and various other in sundry operating costs, or stifling business growth with endless crippling green energy policies and regulations, or extinguishing any chance of expanding our natural gas production to sell to overseas markets by claiming there was ‘no business case’ for it.

It was not Donald Trump who allowed for an open border policy that flooded our country with migrants — many of them illegal and unchecked — that have strained our economy, our social welfare network, our health care services and our housing markets to the very breaking point. Never mind that our loose ‘immigration’ and ‘refugee’ policies have allowed for known terrorists and criminals to enter our country causing a serious national security problem for Canadians and Americans alike. It wasn’t Trump who reduced economic growth and caused inflation to rise to point where the Canadian standard of living, which was once equal to that of our American neighbours — is now considerably lower — making the average Canadian much poorer.

He also didn’t ‘invest’ billions of taxpayer dollars into useless green energy policies, such as coercing people to buying electric vehicles by doling out thousands in rebates to those wishing to buy one — in a country where the harsh winter climate makes the operation of electric vehicles impractical if not impossible.

These are all policies imposed on Canadians by the Trudeau Liberals. And while Canadians jump up and down over Trump’s 25 percent tariff threat they seem oblivious to the fact that those tariffs will make Canadian products more expensive for Americans. This, of course, may deter them from buying Canadian products. Yes, that certainly could have a big impact on our economy — which is already weak — which again — is due to the Trudeau government’s policies. But any proposed retaliatory tariffs on American products coming into Canada — of which there are many — will become a ‘tax’ that Canadians will have to pay — which will go into our governments’ coffers. And then of course there is that hike the carbon tax coming in the spring which will again, make everything Canadians buy more expensive. So I ask again, who should Canadians be mad at.

Because perhaps if the Liberal government had taken border security seriously for the past ten years and kept unchecked illegal migrants out of the country and addressed the serious problems related to drug trafficking and the production of fentanyl in our country, there may not have been a tariff war at all. So the question to ask, is why the Trudeau government is now so ready to acquiescence to things that a responsible government should have had in place already, or should have been addressing for years. They are now only committing to it because of a threat from Trump, rather than doing it for the sake of Canadian’s and Canada’s welfare — and then again I ask, who should Canadians be angry with?