Time to get tough against Trump’s AntiCs
Trump’s bully campaign opens door to backlash
It’s as if Donald Trump has sent a convoy of frigates down the St. Lawrence.
The potent brew of indignation and patriotism among Canadians at the president’s bully tactics has produced conditions ripe for a Boycott America backlash.
The House of Commons voted unanimously to condemn the attacks on the government by Trump and economic advisers Larry Kudlow and Peter Navarro, who said on television Sunday “there is a “special place in hell” for Justin Trudeau — the most preposterous assault on a Canadian politician since former foreign minister John Manley was burned in effigy in the West Bank for agreeing to Palestinian refugees resettling in Canada.
Former prime minister Stephen Harper did more good for Canada than any other single intervention when he appeared on Fox News on Sunday morning, pointing out that the U.S. runs a current account surplus with Canada, and that this country is the biggest single purchaser of American goods and services in the world.
“It seems to me that this is the wrong target and, from what I understand of American public opinion, I don’t think even Trump supporters think the Canadian trade relationship is the problem.”
Canada is staring down the barrel of Trump’s potentially devastating threats to impose a 25-per-cent tariff on autos crossing into the U.S.
Their imposition would provoke immediate retaliatory moves by Canada but the government knows that even this might not deter a president who former CIA director Michael Hayden on Sunday called “unstable, erratic and thin-skinned.”
But something Harper said hints at Canada’s real leverage — the consumer choices made by its people.
Senior officials have bandied around the idea of a national effort similar to the Second World War “Victory Gardens” — a symbolic but material patriotic mobilization that saw individual Canadians build vegetable plots to help the war effort.
The government is wary about being seen as an advocate for such an effort but it is keen to broaden the involvement of individual Canadians by encouraging them to express their displeasure by boycotting American goods.
The Town of Halton Hills in Ontario voted Monday on a motion that would see it encourage its residents and businesses to consider avoiding U.S. goods, “where Canadian substitutes are reasonably available, and communicating with U.S. businesses and individuals Canadian concerns about the decisions of the U.S. government.”
Maclean’s columnist Scott Gilmore has launched his own effort, encouraging his readers to boycott companies associated with the Trump family.
Canada certainly needs to stockpile additional firepower because the prospect of retaliatory tariffs have not given pause to a president who believes he can win a trade war.
The prize for Trump is that some automakers might shift production to the U.S. to avoid tariffs.
In the early going, before retaliation and price rises took effect, the auto tariffs might create some jobs. U.S. Steel recently re-started an idle blast furnace plant in Illinois, bringing back 500 workers, following the first round of steel tariffs.
But there is a consensus among economists and business groups that protectionism will prove disastrous for everyone.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce suggested the U.S. could lose 1.8 million jobs in the first year of the North American Free Trade Agreement being scrapped.
“These are dangerous trade policies that threaten to undermine recent economic progress and eliminate millions of good paying jobs across America,” it concluded in a report last week.
The Peterson Institute for International Economics looked at the impact of a 25-per-cent duty on autos and said the measure, accompanied by the inevitable retaliation, would kill 624,000 U.S. jobs and see auto production fall four per cent.
Trump has ordered a national security investigation into autos, which is due to report next February, with public hearings this July.
GM, which produces around 80 per cent of its vehicles in the U.S., could perhaps emerge as a net winner, but other companies like Ford, with just 64 per cent of production in the U.S., would suffer.
Charlie Chesbrough, senior economist at Cox Automotive, said he believes the threat is a negotiating ploy to get a NAFTA agreement on the president’s terms.
He said, even if Trump did impose auto tariffs, manufacturers would be reluctant to close Canadian plants and shift production south, unless they were convinced the president’s protectionist policies were going to survive successive administrations.
Those trying to fathom the unfathomable in Trump’s foreign policy philosophy are advised to read Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, who has been talking to senior officials in the administration to get to the root of “Trump Doctrine.” It can be summed up in three pithy quotes: “No friends, no enemies” (Trump doesn’t believe the U.S. should be part of any alliances; “permanent de-stabilization creates American advantage” (keeping allies and adversaries perpetually off-balance benefits the U.S.), and, “We’re America, bitch” (Trump doesn’t feel the need to apologize for anything America does).
The president may be pursuing policies that undermine the Western alliance, empower Russia and China, and demoralize freedomseeking people around the
NO FRIENDS, NO ENEMIES, PERMANENT DESTABILIZATION CREATES AMERICAN ADVANTAGE, AND WE’RE AMERICA, BITCH.
world, but they enable him to direct a middle finger at a world that no longer respects American power and privilege, Goldberg writes.
Canada’s most powerful response to this diplomatic dissonance, short of the mutually assured destruction of blocking energy exports, is a popular mobilization that gives individual Canadians a stake in the trade war effort. The government of Canada can’t be seen leading a Boycott America movement but it does not take much imagination to visualize business groups and municipalities being encouraged to champion such a response.
Trump has demonstrated time and time again that the only language he understands is toughness. En masse, Canadians have decided, it’s time to get tough.