For the liberals a trade war is just good politics
Mark Carney refused to sign a trade deal with the US at the 11th hour. The official excuse parroted by the bought and paid for Canadian media is that Donald Trump threatened Quebec’s French language laws. That flimsy lie didn’t even survive the week. There are 2 reasons Mark Carney walked away from the deal.
- There were 3 byelections in Canada that Carney wanted to win. Carney’s liberal supporters are hysterically anti-American. Every one of them suffers from severe Trump Derangement Syndrome. If Carney made any concessions to the US before the byelections he risked losing. His ploy worked and the Liberals won all three by elections.
- China would never allow Carney to sign a deal that would prevent China from circumventing US Tariffs.
Carney has cynically stoked fear of America and fear of Trump, and used them as a means of obtaining and keeping power. He believes that the more Canadians are afraid of Trump, the less they will question Carney’s own decisions. We’re talking about the high priest of “Project Fear” (the attempt to scare the British into voting to remain in the EU with predictions of economic armageddon), after all.
But that’s far from the truth. Trump wants fair treatment for the US, but he also wants Canada to free itself from the toils of China. That can’t happen in a weak and demoralized country. The Trump administration would serve its own interests if, following on the heels of Trump’s post about loving French Canadians, it began publicly differentiating between the Davos darling who holds the reins and the many common-sense Canadians who see the urgent necessity for a trade deal.
Mark Carney did the wrong thing for purely selfish reasons and Canadians love him for it. Canadians hate Donlad Trump and the US more than they like being able to afford groceries. The author Gad Saad coined the term suicidal empathy to describe how western liberals do the wrong thing in a misguided attempt to help migrants who abuse their hospitality. Canada is proof that it is not just empathy that drives western liberals to suicide. Sometimes it is just hatred. TDS in Canada might best be described as Suicidal hatred. Canadians are willing to kill their country and future livelihood to show Trump how much they don’t like him.
Canadians hate Donald Trump because they believe Donald Trump is destroying free trade and attacking Canada. Neither is true. Free trade is as big a myth in Canada as “diversity is our strength”. Canada has never had free trade. Previous trade deals with the US were preferential trade deals that favored Canada. Or rather favored Canadian Liberal politicians. There were exceptions that sheltered Canadian industries in liberal strongholds. It might have been freer trade, but it was not free trade. This is hardly surprising for a country that doesn’t even trade freely with itself. Trumps new tariffs aren’t even as high as the tariffs Canadian provinces impose on each other.
I am not saying we walk away from the Americans or write off CUSMA. But there is something maddening about flying our negotiators to Washington to argue for access to someone else’s market while we are still charging admission on our own.
We are thirteen economies draped in one flag.
Canadians can’t even figure out how to have free trade internally, but they still expect Trump to provide tariff free access to the US. Liberal Canadians Childishly believe that the president of the United States should consider Canada’s needs first. Trumps refusal to put Canadians ahead of Americans is seen by Maple Maoists (liberal Canadians) as an attack on Canada. They can’t wrap their WOKE-addled brains around the fact that this is not an attack. Trump is just not willing to give Canada concessions any more without getting something in return.
Trump’s tariffs are not an act of aggression against an ally. They are the predictable consequence of a negotiation in which one side finally stopped accepting asymmetrical terms it had tolerated for years.
TDS is so strong in Canadian Liberals that they can’t see straight. A trade war with the US was completely avoidable. It is not like Donald Trump woke up one morning and decided to impose Tariffs on Canada. He told us more than 2 years ago that this was coming.
Although Trump’s tariffs have escalated in recent weeks, the key point is that Canada’s politicians have known about his tariff plans for well over a year. He has made no secret of it.
But instead of taking real action, Canada’s politicians have chosen to procrastinate, launch consultations and make grandiose announcements that have, in reality, achieved quite little.
We had 2 years to prepare, and we didn’t because a trade war was politically useful for the liberals. Canadians are irrationally angry with Donald Trump when our real enemy is not in Washington. The greatest threats to Canada come from Ottawa, Beijing, and Davos. Trump is just a convenient scapegoat.
