Trump Canadian Tariff Tantrum And Canadian Wildfire Tantrum Not Same Tantrum, He Swears
Donald Trump can have two entirely unrelated tantrums at Canada at once.
Donald Trump says he will impose 50 percent tariffs on goods imported from Canada, including wine, cement, and hockey sticks — that last one to make clear that Trump really knows what matters to Canadians. The White House announced the new tariffs Monday, claiming they were in response to “Canada’s discriminatory treatment of American products,” although in reality the only significant tariff increases by Canada were imposed last year in retaliation for Trump’s first round of tariffs against our neighbor to the north, which were supposedly about fentanyl.
The other likely reason for the new tariffs, though not mentioned in the White House “fact sheet,” is that Trump is big mad about smoke from wildfires burning out of control due to climate change. Trump has repeatedly threatened higher tariffs to punish Canada for not raking its vast northern forests that can’t be reached by roads anyway. Trump grumped on his fake Twitter that Canada must be held responsible “for the fact that they are not properly maintaining their Forests, and Brush therein, and the United States is being unnecessarily invaded by filthy, polluted, and unhealthy air,” which he would probably shoot if he could.
Trump explained today in the Oval Office, though, how these two tantrums are completely unrelated:
But he also had time to immediately start complaining and giving Canada yardwork advice:
An anonymous “Trump administration official” confirmed to the Associated Press that Trump had ordered aides to look into additional tariffs on Canada over the wildfire smoke. Maybe they’ll find some loophole to justify doing that, but it seems unlikely.
There really isn’t a provision in US law for tariffs on the basis of a president having a tantrum, though. Instead of invoking the effects of the global warming that Trump insists isn’t real, the White House is going with that allegation of “discrimination” against US products including autos, alcohol, and cheese. Trump remains very upset that Canadians don’t want their country to become the 51st state, and many administration officials also remain very angry at Canada for having raised its own tariffs last year. The White House’s “fact sheet” even whines that only Canada and China imposed retaliatory tariffs on US products after Trump “liberated” America from affordable imports last year.
Again, the whole bullshit justification for sanctioning Canada is that it responded in kind after the US imposed tariffs for a bullshit pretext — fentanyl — that even Trump seems to have completely forgotten about. Canadian Prime Minister Jay Carney rolled back several of the retaliatory tariffs later last year, although some Canadian provinces have kept theirs in place.
The administration claims that all the alleged “discrimination” allows Trump to take action under “Section 338 of the 1930 Trade Act,” which the Wall Street Journal explains (gift link) is an “obscure section of US trade law” that “grants the president the power to impose levies on countries that discriminate against U.S. companies,” although the Journal adds that it’s never been invoked before to impose tariffs. Get ready for lawsuits from states that don’t want consumer prices to go up even more.
The 1930 Trade Act, of course, is also the Great Depression era law known more widely as the “Smoot-Hawley Tariff,” which is so much fun to say that John Hughes put it in a movie, albeit with the sponsors’ names reversed from the way I’d always heard it.
As the dry, boring teacher played by Ben Stein says, economists and historians agree that restricting international trade worsened the Depression without actually protecting US industries and jobs.
Lessons about economics — even when played for laughs — move pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss them.
The tariffs are set to go into effect in 30 days, and if they actually hit in late August as scheduled, they could lead to higher prices on $20 billion worth of imports from Canada. Boosting inflation just in time for the midterm elections doesn’t seem like a great idea for getting Republicans elected, and as the AP helpfully points out, the 30-day window leaves “time for negotiations as Trump has not always followed through on his announced tax hikes on imports.”
The rest of the world, including Canada, knows that perfectly well, although the AP doesn’t mention how that earned Great Leader the nickname “TACO,” for Trump Always Chickens Out.
The new tariffs specifically exempt a few products including “energy, potash and fish or critical minerals.” But unlike earlier tariffs Trump has thrown on Canadian goods, there’s no exemption this time around for the “U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement,” the rewriting of NAFTA that Trump signed in his first term. As you’ll recall, Trump has complained mightily that the very trade pact he signed was a very bad, very stupid deal that hurts America, put in place by people who don’t know how to negotiate.
Trump has repeatedly threatened to terminate the USMCA, though he hasn’t acted on those threats either. The latest tariff threats might be part of Trump’s small-handed version of Richard Nixon’s “madman theory,” aimed at pushing for renegotiation of the USMCA, which will remain in place until 2036 unless the three countries all agree to extend it. Trump’s trade officials (it’s not like he knows what’s going on himself) opted not to extend the USMCA in July, which doesn’t really do anything to the treaty except to trigger negotiations that could take forever, leaving the whole thing up in the air.
One fun idea being floated by US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer would ditch the three-nation agreement and replace it with two separate deals, one with Mexico and another with Canada, just to make everything more confusing and to give Trump an excuse to fuck over our two biggest trading partners in different ways, depending on his mood. US companies and investors will fucking love the additional uncertainty, because it’s exciting.
Since the US Supreme Court told Trump last year he can’t just go declaring “emergency” tariffs, the administration has been playing around with other pretexts for imposing tariffs on other countries’ goods, so that Trump can feel like he’s sticking it to those foreigns, one of the few things that gives him pleasure. It’s of no concern to him that American consumers pay through the nose for everything and don’t want to vote for Republicans. He’s already got people working on eliminating elections, after all, so nobody will need to bother voting anymore.
OPEN THREAD.
[AP / WSJ (gift link) / NYT / Center for Strategic and International Studies]
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I'm not sure if this is my place to say, but if any of you know Gav Ashdown, he passed away yesterday evening. It was sudden and his wife was by his side. He looked fine one day, then he's in ICU, then he's gone. I don't know more than that, we are all in shock and waiting for updates.
This work of art is called Cat in Box With Ball
Model: Harry.
https://substack.com/@ziggywiggy/note/c-298865703?utm_source=notes-share-action&r=2knfuc