Foreigners boycott Trump’s America
Nation’s reputation is casualty of trade war
Trump’s trade adviser Peter Navarro immediately piled on, opining on TV that there is a “special place in hell” for, of all people, the mild-mannered Trudeau. This was not short of insane. This
insane.
And so Canadian restaurants are wiping California wines off their menus. Canadians now have a “patriot’s guide” to shopping during a trade war with the U.S. And the country’s largest privatesector union is running an “I Shop Canada” campaign. Canadians, meanwhile, have been canceling their planned summer vacations in the U.S.
It’s not as if Canadian leaders didn’t try to get along with the American president. Sure, they regarded Trump’s nutty “American carnage” inaugural address as “obviously a surreal moment,” as a Canadian business adviser in Washington told Maclean’s magazine. Nonetheless, the Canadian Embassy held a party that night to mark the occasion.
Canadians are well aware that many of the Americans they are boycotting regard Trump as a major humiliation for their country. “It’s not me!” Paul Dyster, mayor of Niagara Falls, New York, said at a meeting near the border. “I think he’s crazy, too.”
The war plods on. The U.S. has just sued Canada, the European Union and others for retaliating against Trump’s new tariffs on them.
Trudeau is wisely giving Trump a wide berth. He is not alone among old allies, apparently hoping that adults in Washington will grab the wheel and the fever will break.
That does not mean that our former friends are sitting on their hands as Trump throws tantrums in the family room. They are pursuing their own interests. The EU, for example, just cut an enormous trade deal in which Japan is cutting tariffs on European wine, cheese and cars.
Trump’s cracked compulsion to abuse our allies is turning the “made in America” label into a heap of burning rubber. Even if the madness stopped tomorrow, there would be so much repair work to do. Really, after all this, how will America get its reputation back?