If there is any country on this troubled globe of ours that is regarded as pacific and polite, it is Canada. Our Canuck cousins don’t bother anybody. They are a peace loving and genteel people and they have always been a staunch ally of the United States, no matter how crazy it gets. Robin Williams once characterized Canada as “the nice apartment over the meth lab.” That should be amended to, “the nice apartment that got vandalized due to its unfortunate proximity to the meth lab.” Leave it to Trump to alienate our good neighbors to the North and South. And to pull the Chinese dragon’s tail at the same time.
“This Tariff will remain in effect until such time as Drugs, in particular Fentanyl, and all Illegal Aliens stop this Invasion of our Country! Both Mexico and Canada have the absolute right and power to easily solve this long simmering problem. We hereby demand that they use this power, and until such time that they do, it is time for them to pay a very big price!” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social, his social media site.
My apologies to Canada and Mexico. We did everything that we could around here to prevent this horrific shitshow from coming back into town. And the situation with China is not going much better.
In a second post, Trump blasted Chinese leaders for not following through on earlier promises to impose the death penalty on fentanyl producers in China.
The threatened tariffs will affect large swaths of U.S. trade. Goods valued at more than $1.5 trillion move among the three North American nations, while the United States and China exchange about $600 billion worth.
Monday’s social media posts represent Trump’s most detailed comments on his tariff plans since his election victory earlier this month. He said that on Jan. 20, he will sign “all necessary documents” to impose the import taxes via executive orders.
During the campaign, he vowed to impose tariffs of up to 60 percent on Chinese imports, plus a 10 to 20 percent levy on products from other countries.
John Veroneau, a former trade negotiator under President George W. Bush, said the announced tariffs would violate U.S. trade commitments.
Violate is a good descriptor although I think “explode” is a better one. Good luck buying a car. Half-finished vehicles often move across North American borders several times before they are completed. Adding a 25% fee to each movement will erode automakers’ profits or give consumers sticker shock. Most likely both. But this will make for circus and entertainment until it starts to hit people where it hurts the most, in their pocket books.
I know that nobody wants to hear me talk about the 2026 midterms so soon after this last catastrophic election but that is literally the only cure for any of this. Get back one or both chambers of Congress and stonewall this maniac. We have done it before. We will do it again.
so boycott for two years spoiled Americans!
It’s the crazy way that Trump et al think that The USA can act so unilaterally with no pushback from the other parties to international agreements signed and sealed that puzzles me.
It’s not like the rest of the world doesn’t buy Boeing, Cessna, or Beechcraft aircraft, Caterpillar bulldozers, John Deere tractors, Tesla or Cadillac cars, Otis lifts, or Sikorsky helicopters. Made in the USA by American workers and exported widely
Well, the rest of the world still buy them now, but will they when the retaliatory tariffs come on?
And Canada? How about they put a ‘tariff’ of $100 on every movement between Alaska and the rest of the USA, both ways, and reduce the amount of electricity, water and timber that cross the border from them, or just increase the price of, say, electricity or water by 20%.
Trump seems to think that none of that matters and that America has so much power and so much economic clout that he can do what he likes.
It’s a repeat of what’s going to happen with NATO. They’ll be just fine without an erratic ally, it’s easier to not have to deal with someone you can’t trust, than wonder what the hell they’ll do next, like Trump pulling out of Afghanistan.
And with the ‘good riddance’ door slamming, there goes America’s true strength, it’s ‘soft power’. The power of being a trustworthy ally and friend with the same shared values. Gone. In Trump’s transactional ‘someone has to be a winner, someone else a loser’ approach, everyone becomes a loser. Under Biden, everyone was a winner.
America is about to find that everything costs more when you can’t be trusted, like it’s business people already know, risk always increases the price, it’s why we have credit ratings.
And to really drive the point home on trustworthiness.
The new tariffs appear to break the terms of the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) on trade.
The deal, which Trump signed into law, took effect in 2020. It continued a largely duty-free trading relationship between the three neighboring countries.
The deal, which Trump himself signed into law.
He’s now reneging on an agreement he signed only two years ago!
Four years ago, Oops