Conventional warfare
Once more unto the breach, dear friends. Or as Henry V might have put it were he a Canadian trade negotiator: Once more unto the beech. And spruce. And pine.
I got into column-writing in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and softwood lumber was a big deal then. Shakes and shingles, too, though to us urban types that sounded more like a medical condition than fodder for a trade dispute. I learned in my early reading on Canada- U. S. forestry disputes that we’ve had them since the EIGHTEEN eighties, if not earlier.
Trade Minister Chrystia Freeland — who did well in her first responses to the Trump administration’s tariffs — told the world that while we’re famous for being polite, it’s no accident hockey is our national sport. Apart from mastering the offside rule, one of the true distinctions of being Canadian is that at an early age you learn what a “stumpage fee” is. I assume it’s on the quiz that would- be citizens have to pass.
King Henry would have sympathized with Ms. Freeland’s implication that we’ll be going into the corners with the Americans with our elbows up and sticks ready. In the speech where he says “once more unto the breach,” he’s urging his English troops to rush through the hole they’ve just blown in the wall surrounding the besieged French city of Harfleur. And most of the rest of the speech is a paean to war-lust: In peace there’s nothing so becomes a man As modest stillness and humility: But when the blast of war blows in our ears, Then imitate the action of the tiger; Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood, Disguise fair nature with hard-favour’d rage … In another speech Henry threatens the terrified citizens of Harfleur with the not very “English fair play” tactic of impaling their children on pikes. Quite sensibly, they surrender.
Some Canadian reaction to the Americans’ announcement of new tariffs, their fifth set since the 1980s, has been tiger-like in its belligerence. Let’s show the Americans what we’re made of. Let’s respond in kind. Let’s pick the crucial sector where a Canadian boycott will bring their economy to its knees and let’s slap our own tariffs on it. We’ll show them! It will be such a glorious day in Canadian history that “gentlemen (and ladies) now a-bed/ Shall think themselves accurs’d they were not” at the negotiating table when brave little Canada stood off the American bully and made him retreat, cowed and shaken, his orange mien blanched white.
Just one problem. Which industry would that be, exactly, that if we stop buying or selling in it will bring them to their knees? Your answer, please? Sorry! Final Jeopardy time is up.
In 15th- century Europe, France and England were relatively balanced militarily, so Henry, through Shakespeare, could indulge in marvellously eloquent pugnacity. But in 21st-century Canada, we depend on the American economy much more than they depend on ours. So, yes, responding in kind would make us feel good, at least on the day we introduced our counter- measures. Nothing is more satisfying than a retaliatory elbow — until the ref sends you to the box, that is. But could we really bring overpowering pressure to bear? Not likely.
The perfect state of our world would be an open border in which the Americans never called us on subsidizing our exports. ( We do keep winning the legal disputes but does any Canadian doubt that our provincial governments subsidize local foresters by any and all means they can get away with? “Subsidies are us” is most provinces’ motto.) To get perfection, we’d have to adopt U. S.- style stumpage auctions. That would mainly force their industry’s lawyers to find new means of harassment, for their politicians, like ours, will always be eager to mollify constituents seeking protection. Even if we up and joined the U. S., lumber lawyers would probably still look for ways to disrupt exports from the new northern states.
With perfection unavailable, Canadian producers have to decide which imperfect alternative is best: continuing to sell into the U. S. market, despite regular administrative harassment, or diversifying our exports to other countries farther away, less familiar commercially and culturally, where we would be no more immune to harassment at their borders. Would we really prefer arm- wrestling with the Chinese trade authorities than the Americans?
“How long until Trump’s first war?” the blue- chip U. S. magazine Foreign Policy asked ominously in the same morning brief in which it reported the new tariffs on Canada. Let’s hope it’s a little longer yet and that we’re not the target. In fact, at bottom the most important thing about Trump’s tariffs is their normalcy. If you had predicted Donald Trump’s first foray against us would be over softwood lumber, you’d have been accused of thinking deep inside the box.