Trudeau Lashes Out ‘Insulting’ New Tariffs On Steel And Aluminum – June 3, 2018
If you haven’t watched the video of Trudeau detailing why “The idea that we are somehow a national security threat to the United States is quite frankly insulting and unacceptable.” as a right-leaning individual I actually agree with the prime minister Justin Trudeau on this but there’s more.
What still bothers me about Trudeau is that he knows little about economics, if you watch the above interview what you should pay the closest attention to is how Trudeau continuously tries to turn an economic issue into a social issue. When I notice this I instinctively know that when it comes to the economy Justin Trudeau is entirely reliant on his team and that to me is scary. What it tells me is that Justin wouldn’t know the difference between a good or bad deal for Canada which in many ways makes him a puppet.
What’s concerning to me also is if Trudeau is serious about going to the WTO regarding Canada, U.S trading practices, that could potentially be a time-consuming endeavor, Canadians as individuals are in more debt than any country in the world, Trudeau’s Liberals are intentionally running a deficit, Trudeau’s great job numbers come from Trudeau growing the government at the expense of the private sector. With that said the portion of Trudeau’s argument I can get behind is the claim that Canada is a national security threat to the United States. I have to be honest when I first heard that. What came to my mind was this statement or position by Trump is not a legitimate one and it’s my belief that Trump took this position with the intent of getting Canada at the negotiation table, something former Liberal Prime minister Paul Martin would know instinctively.
If Trump is able to stall negotiations with this national security threat stance, this is where things for Canada can get really bad, really quick. If the WTO makes a decision again it’s not necessarily a good thing for a Canada, because Trump could again point out violations of the NAFTA deal by Canada. Former Canadian prime ministers have already stated that Canada has been in violation of NAFTA which again is the North American FREE TRADE agreement for years now. As Canadians, we’ve been in violation for so long that we feel entitled to do it.
The problem for Trump are the details because if he were to name out all the specifics of our violations it would require going to the negotiation table and talking about each individual one, that becomes a back and forth discussion, being that Trump has other deals he’s trying to negotiate it would be a very time-consuming endeavor, which is why Trump used the National Security threat as the trigger to force Canada to react.
It’s during this part that economic IQ or economic intelligence comes into play. What Trudeau has effectively done is put Canada in an idle position. Idle in the sense that if Trump is able to keep control of the United States House of Representatives, Canada is severely screwed, however, if sentiment in the U.S changes to where Trump is no longer looked in a positive light Canada could actually win this trade war. With that said as it stands now, Trump has put Canada in position to wait. Which equates to the potential especially with all of Trudeau’s promises to voters that the Canadian economy could crash.
The interesting thing is from what I’m gathering is that most Canadians think Donald Trump is the problem. That’s what I’m finding interesting in all of this, so if Canadians blame any economic crash in Canada on Donald Trump, Trudeau may actually garner more voter support. It’s interesting because I think that for most people that understand economics they assume Canadians should know what’s going on and they’re often alarmed to learn that a large majority of Canadians have no idea what’s going on in their economy.
It’s why I use simple examples like telling Canadians to go to Amazon.com and notice that on Amazon.com when you try to make a U.S purchase, Amazon.com calculates your potential customs charges. If Amazon was doing something illegal Canadian whistleblowers would have blown their whistles long ago.
Think about this for a moment…
If there’s a North American FREE TRADE agreement(NAFTA) in place why would Canadians be charged Candian custom charges for buying retail goods from the United States? Because the average Canadian and even American can’t find the correlation they don’t understand the fairness Donald Trump is trying to achieve. Trumps, not the first U.S President to implement tariffs, but he is the first U.S president to take this approach and that’s why this whole thing interests me.
It will be interesting to see how history writes this event.
Interesting times ahead.