I'm no politician but I've read about politics a lot. This new era of Trump imposing tariffs on different countries seems not easy to handle, particularly for a country like Canada which has its most of its trade with the US. The good thing is many of the merchandise do not fall under the list because of CUSMA but the ones which are affected, have little chance to survive and the government has plans to provide assistance.
Trump does all this to help to improve his country which is, of course, not understood by the other simply because they suffer from it. Let's look at a short list of the decisions that Trump administration has made since he took the office:
1) Throwing many border-jumpers out and securing the borders.
2) Increasing the cost of H1-B visa so high that the companies can barely thinking of using a foreigner.
3) Imposing tariffs on many imported goods to induce domestic businesses to make them at home. Whether it will work or not, I can't be sure. many say it won't at least not in a short term as the infrastructure does not exist.
4) Shutting down assembly plants in Ontario and perhaps in places in Mexico to transfer them to the States and increase employment rate. What would happened to the cost to the end-user? I don't know! Would the potential customers be willing to pay the difference?!
5) Imposing fees to frequent travelers to the US, mostly the Snowbirds from Canada.
6) Shutting down many radio stations and websites including VOA and Radio Free Europe (I think that was the name!).
7) Stopping the US aid to many organizations around the world.
Every different nation has reacted to the tariffs differently. The Chinese have upper hand so they came back with their own tariffs and pushed the US to an agreement. Canada is not as strong. The only thing Canada has done is reducing the number of visitors which has significant affect on the south of the border businesses which enjoyed the Canadians visitors for decades and the By Canadian policy which has not been bad but not very effective. Every thing else has not been futile. PM Carney has had meetings with Trump but not much has come out of them. In one case Canada had to take back the imposed tariffs.
The Ontario Premier, Ford, is the one who has been trying to land powerful punches on Trump but hasn't been much successful. His last attempt was cutting a part of Ronald Reagan speech regarding tariffs and sending it to the American networks by paying them!
That pissed Trump a whole lot off! He immediately put a sort of pause on the negotiations! Ford suspended the ad(!) but why would you do that in the first place?! That's stupid! You're telling another country how to select their policies and then pocking bear! Do you not know that this guy is crazy?! You need to have a good plan before approaching him! The Chinese had a Bear Spray! What the hell did you use? Beside that is the responsibility of handling the bear is the PM's?! You just ruined everything that he had built, you moron!
(Photo: The 40th President of the US is seen here shortly before being assassinated in 1980. He survived that)






