For all its posturing, Canada will struggle with Trump’s new tariffs
Yesterday, Trump made good on his promise to punish the nations responsible for bringing fentanyl to America: China, which provides the raw ingredients, and Canada and Mexico, which provide factories to make the fentanyl and open borders to transport it. Canada instantly announced that it was going to war against America, but a scathing report by Elizabeth Nickson, a Canadian journalist, says that this is posturing because Canada is a failed state with nowhere to go but down.
Trump is unique in that he does not use tariffs to benefit specific industries (often, industries that have been profitable for a president and his party). Instead, Trump uses tariffs to benefit America at large. For him, tariffs are a negotiating tool that is predicated on the fact that America is the single largest consumer nation in the world.
According to the Office of the United States Trade Representative, in 2022, America imported $562.9 billion in goods from China while exporting only $195.5 billion, for a trade deficit of $367.4 billion. When it comes to Mexico, in 2022, we had a $131.1 billion trade deficit, and in that same year, we had a $53.5 billion trade deficit with Canada.
In the fact sheet about the tariffs, the White House explains why each of those nations was targeted:
- The orders make clear that the flow of contraband drugs like fentanyl to the United States, through illicit distribution networks, has created a national emergency, including a public health crisis. Chinese officials have failed to take the actions necessary to stem the flow of precursor chemicals to known criminal cartels and shut down money laundering by transnational criminal organizations.
- In addition, the Mexican drug trafficking organizations have an intolerable alliance with the government of Mexico. The government of Mexico has afforded safe havens for the cartels to engage in the manufacturing and transportation of dangerous narcotics, which collectively have led to the overdose deaths of hundreds of thousands of American victims. This alliance endangers the national security of the United States, and we must eradicate the influence of these dangerous cartels.
- There is also a growing presence of Mexican cartels operating fentanyl and nitazene synthesis labs in Canada. A recent study recognized Canada’s heightened domestic production of fentanyl, and its growing footprint within international narcotics distribution
The same fact sheet also explains why he thinks that the United States has all the leverage in this brute-force negation:
While trade accounts for 67% of Canada’s GDP, 73% of Mexico’s GDP, and 37% of China’s GDP, it accounts for only 24% of U.S. GDP. However, in 2023 the U.S. trade deficit in goods was the world’s largest at over $1 trillion.
Moreover, the tariffs are carefully calibrated. Thus, the tariff on China is only 10%, acknowledging our (currently) greater dependency on that market, while the tariffs on Mexico and Canada are 25%. However, regarding the energy we buy from Canada, the tariff is only 10%.
Canada instantly struck back, imposing a 25% tariff on all American goods while encouraging Canadians to “buy Canadian products and holiday at home.” Perhaps they’ll take their “medical holidays” at home, too—you know, the trips across Canada’s southern border for health care without months-long waits that end with a euthanasia offer. In a little vindictive twist, Canada said it would target Republican states, blaming them for the horrors of the Trump administration.
So, a lot of tough talk out of Canada. There’s only one problem. If Elizabeth Nickson, a conservative journalist, is correct, Canada has nothing left but talk. She is blunt about modern Canada: It is a failed state, and the tariffs will destroy it.
Here are selected excerpts from the essay, but I cannot urge you strongly enough to read it, re-read it, share it, and then share it again:
25% tariffs will ruin us. The tariffs mean one million small businesses - all which sell to the U.S. - will contract and many will close their doors. And then Trump, as he promised the unions, will pull “our” auto industry. Then we’re done.
[snip]
That country [the formerly cheerful, safe, self-reliant Canada] was killed by the Laurentian elite, weak, cosplaying Marxism to stay in power, themselves outwitted by investment bankers who plan to steal everything not nailed down. In so doing new elements were forcibly injected into the population: envy, resentment of the successful, sloth, the refusal to grow up, be strong and independent. We effectively sit on top of the U.S., seething with envy, in wet diapers.
[snip]
The following is what closeted socialism has done to us.
Canadians make 60% of an equivalent U.S. salary. With the same educational status of Americans and the same resources, our wealthiest province, Ontario, is only as wealthy as the poorest U.S. states: Mississippi and West Virginia.
Our “free” healthcare is the worst in the G7. Last month, hundreds of old people lined up in sub-zero weather for a new doctor in the heart of the country, where all the money is: your “free health care”. The average Canadian pays about $15,000 a year (on average via taxes) for their health care and are lucky if they get cancer treatment within a year. That is about twice as much as U.S. Major Medical.
[snip]
There are so many homeless, we need 2,000,000 new houses. Two. Million. In the U.S., you need about 3.5 million. If you were us, you’d need 20,000,000. The government has spent billions analyzing the problem.
[snip]
In 2023 nearly 60% had to choose between heat or food in the winter. People are desperate beyond the imaginings of anyone in the developed world. Think behind the Iron Curtain, circa 1983.
[snip]
Violent crime has skyrocketed. Since 2014, by 40%.
[snip]
The CCP runs cartel crime syndicates through Vancouver. We import the chemicals for fentanyl and the human slaves to make the pills, (who are then no doubt harvested for their organs), through Vancouver’s port. The pills are made everywhere, in factories where no police dare to visit. We pour drugs across the border. Mexican and Asian cartels launder most of the drug money generated in North America through casinos and real estate in Vancouver. Gorgeous houses built by and for the Anglo-European middle class in the early 1900’s are now lived in by violent Asian cartel gang leaders and children of CCP leadership.
There is so much more in this essay, and it will help you understand why Trump thinks that, in the game of tariff chicken against Canada, the latter is in a no-win situation. Looking at the wreck that is Canada, one can't help thinking that, when it comes to Canada's disastrous leadership class, there's a reason one of their first acts when taking power was to disarm the Canadian people.