Why Piss Off Canada?
By
Leonard Zwelling
https://www.wsj.com/opinion/canada-our-friend-deserves-better-than-this-america-tariffs-protectionism-trade-policy-ac9d7d48
I have traveled to Canada several times. I have been to the big cities in the east and the plains and Rockies in the west. I have even been on Victoria Island near Vancouver and to Quebec City which is like going to Europe. French is the preferred language there, but they are uniformly friendly to English-speaking Americans. At least, they were.
It is difficult to capture an entire country in a sentence, but Canada is one of the most welcoming places I have ever been. Canadiens are polite, friendly, hard-working, and proud of their history, which interacts with our history but is not identical to our history. They are also fond of the special relationship they have had with their neighbors to the south. At least, they were.
Mr. Trump’s attempt to antagonize our special friend to the north is outrageous and uncalled for. It is bad enough that he is slapping tariffs on our neighbor with whom we do so much business, but to say that the entire country ought to be the 51st state is just insulting. It surely shows that Mr. Trump has never paid attention to the country around him if he has ever gone to Canada. (And if it were the 51st state, he might not win their many electoral votes when he runs for a third term.)
By now, it is abundantly clear that at best, the aggressive tariffs placed on the goods coming into the United States from virtually every major trading partner have pissed off the world. Mr. Trump thinks it is a matter of fairness. He thinks the other countries have been taking advantage of us. If they have, the way to solve that is with negotiations, not extortion. My hope is that these tariffs are just a line in the sand that will lead to constructive negotiations with all of our trading partners to eliminate the tariffs. If that does not happen quickly, the American people will be paying a heavy price at the supermarket, the car dealership, and the toy store.
Even if tariff reversal occurs, Mr. Trump has broken trust with our closest allies and created a world that is more Darwinian than the one into which he asserted himself rudely on January 20.
In the short term, there is very little that Congress or the courts can do to stop what Mr. Trump has started—a trade war. The stock market, as always, has given the world the answer to how it feels about these barriers to free trade.
In her editorial from The Wall Street Journal on April 5 (above), Peggy Noonan goes even deeper into our unique relationship with Canada and what Mr. Trump has done to damage it.
It was the Canadiens that hid the Americans that escaped from our embassy in Iran in 1979 that was depicted in the film Argo.
Canadiens fought and died with Americans on D-Day.
Canada has always been there for us and we have been for them. Why on Earth would anyone seek to defame the Canadiens, let alone the American President?
I do not know how much of what Mr. Trump says I can believe. I tend to believe most of it. I think he really does want Canada to be one of the United States. I think he doesn’t care how much his tariffs on our neighbors are likely to drive up the cost of an American car.
Mr. Trump has had this notion of tariffs as weapons for years. Now he is wielding this idea like a Sith with a light saber. I don’t know how this ends, but, for now, the United States looks like a bully striding the globe trying to force its will on friends and foes alike.
Excuse me if I consider our current President an embarrassment.
4 thoughts on “Why Piss Off Canada?”
“It was the Canadiens that hid the Americans that escaped from our embassy in Iran in 1979 that was depicted in the film Argo.”
Just a minor footnote, but for anyone who’s seen the film (and it’s a good one), there are many events that were fictionalized for dramatic aspect. The first is that the part played by Alan Arkin, that man never existed. But a significant fault was how the film had the Canadien embassy staff eventually telling the 6 Americans that they could no longer stay, which never happened. They were smuggled out in the ‘Canadian Caper.’
Thanks for the clarification. I still have no idea why Trump is beating up on the Canadiens.
Recently I met two Canadians visiting Davidson College where the great basketball player Steph Curry attended. When I recognized their Canadian accent, I asked, “Where are your from?” Their reply with tongue in cheek, “Your 51st state!” Then they both laughed as I did, and we discussed how we three Trump is a foolish politician and that we hope that America will eventually move beyond MAGA and begin the LONG process of rebuilding the America that our ancestors envisioned. We are going to Quebec City this summer for the innumerable time in my life, and we hope that the hospitality is as warm as ever. I will let you know! (If necessary, I will FIGHT for Canada. I have family there and will support them to my end.)
We love Quebec City and were greeted warmly last summer. Let’s hope they are laughing at Trump, too.