Language matters.
The President is empowered by a Congress controlled by a narrow majority. Rather than the individual they have chosen, I am pissed at the Republican party. And disappointed in the American people. The guy? He was always that way and would have continued to be so at a safe distance from the levers of power without his enablers.
It is the American and especially Republican relationship with Canada that is important in this situation. Those are what endure, that person is only momentarily significant. So, where we can choose the narrative, I think that’s important to focus on.
Plus I suspect he likes the sound of his own name.
This is incredibly stupid as an economic counter plan for a nation whose number one import and export (>50% respectively) is the US. Compare that to the US’s highly diversified trade portfolio. Trump would clap back with a 100% general tariff on Canada.
American trade can survive without Canada. But Canadian trade can’t survive without America.
The bulk of Canadian exports to the US are oil. We can certainly tariff US goods, but export tariffs on Canadian oil and hydro electricity to the US will probably be a big component of the Canadian response.
Even with a big increase on hydro power exports to the US, it’s still cheaper than most other sources of electricity, so they’ll still happily pay it.
As to oil, there are some refineries in the US that are set up to process Canadian bitumen. Canada’s long history of just exporting raw materials and re-importing finished goods give a pretty outsized room to manuever here. This refineries will probably just pony up and pay more.
Where the damage will come is in areas like the auto sector, where there are tightly coupled supply chains.
Paul Krugman points out in his article The End of North America that there is probably already damage done to the concept of North American manufacturing.
Trump is going to do a whole lot of damage, we’re going to take some of that damage, but my favourite quote on the topic:
Canada and Mexico account for about a third of US exports. US businesses may be able to survive without them, but they sure won’t make the shareholders happy.
And we all know that not making the shareholders happy makes America very very sad.
Only in an American hospital will you hear that we need to discharge patient’s faster and do everything we can to keep them from coming back because “we have a duty to our shareholders”
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