“You're at war when you get attacked, we got attacked.”
That’s what Prime Minister Mark Carney said when he was asked why it sounded like was going to war after his Saturday morning speech.
Carney used references to war multiple times in his speech and during his Q & A with reporters.
“We’re stronger now than when the United States started this trade war. More unified, more determined, more ambitious,” he said in his speech.
Not sure that I believe that to be the case, though we could be if we take the right steps, something I was writing about in my latest column for the Sun.
Previously, I have questioned whether we should consider this a trade war between Canada and the United States. The Americans say they don’t see it that way, they see it a change in trade policy, an attempt to rebalance trade.
My thinking that perhaps the Americans were right was that calling it a trade war put us in the wrong mindset. Canadians were looking for a fight with the Americans, many still are and are happy that Carney walked away from this deal.
Of course, for the devoted “Elbows Up” crowd, no deal was always the best deal. They foolishly believe we can and should walk away from the United States.
After this latest round of tariffs though, I’m fine calling it a trade war.
That doesn’t mean we should fight it…
As I was arguing in my Sun column, our response shouldn’t be to slap tariffs on American goods and match them dollar for dollar. That only hurts us, makes items imported from the United States more expensive.
The Carney team has already said they are going ahead with the matching tariffs. Let’s hope they come up with a better list of goods to tariff than last time under Trudeau who put a tariff on coffee and other groceries we don’t produce here.
My argument though is that rather than fight the Americans we should focus on unleashing our own economy.
Make Canada such an attractive place to invest in, to start and grow a business in, that the American tariffs don’t matter.
Of course, I’ve been advocating that since I heard Trump’s inaugural address where he laid out his economic plan in full.
Carney was right to walk away from this deal…
I’ve been critical of Carney for being too secretive. Canadians deserve to know what is on the table, what we are getting, what is being asked of us.
The Americans manage to do it and not hurt the negotiations.
So I was surprised when Carney was so open and blunt during his news conference this morning. What he described in his answer to the first question would be a deal breaker for any prime minister.
There are more reasons that just auto for why he walked away, and frankly, I think part of it was due to Premiers Eby, Ford and Fréchette who all opposed it for their own reasons.
New tariff impact won’t be huge, but they will hurt…
In the grand scheme of things, these new tariffs on $28 billion worth of goods won’t crush the Canadian economy. Economist Trevor Tombe from the University of Calgary has a piece in The Hub where he estimates the national impact will shave a couple of tenths of one percent off the GDP.
However…he points out that the impact will be big in certain provinces, certain communities and of course it will be big if you are one of those who lose their jobs.
His estimate, 90,000 jobs losses total.
I’m working on a piece about how we ended up at this spot, the mistakes we’ve made along the way that made things worse.
It’s a deep dive, hope to have it out tomorrow.
Carney was a a full on liar!! I don’t like trumps crap either but carney never has had any intentions of saving this country!! Scary times we are living in!!
We still can't get trade between provinces to be open and free, forget about the US