I believe that Trump is the greatest president of modern times and has chalked up many triumphs that have strengthened and benefited the nation in innumerable ways. But he has made a couple of catastrophic errors that he could have avoided.
The most obvious blunder from his first administration was to heed the lies and mis-directions of Anthony Fauci and Deborah Birx, leading to the COVID travesty that crippled the nation’s economy, shattered social cohesion, destroyed iatric trust and severely damaged the educational prospects of both youngsters and adult students. It was obvious to my wife and myself after the first few weeks, when the curve was not flattened, that COVID was a universal scam, that masks didn’t work, that social distancing was made-up nonsense, that lockdowns were an act of monumental stupidity, and, by the end of December 2020, that the vaccines were toxic.
All it took was a little common sense, a few encounters with bribed or myopic doctors who could not answer basic questions, reasonable mistrust of government leaders and legacy journos all reading the same word-for-word script, and some diligent research.
Today, in the midst of Trump’s string of victories and successes, we have the continent-based tariff scandal, the effects of which are uniformly unsettling. Reciprocal tariffs make good sense, especially levied against manifest exploiters like China, the European Union, and possibly Mexico, but are contra-indicated when it comes to Canada. It is what I would call an unforced error.
The problem is, first, that our economies are so tightly integrated with respect to lumber, the automotive industry, and energy — oil, gas, electricity — that any serious disruption would hurt not only Canadians but American producers and consumers as well.
Secondly, Trump’s ignorance of the political dynamic in Canada has generated malign consequences for all of us. Pierre Poilievre’s Conservative Party enjoyed a 30-point lead over the infinitely corrupt and Woke Liberal Party of Justin Trudeau. Thanks to Trump, Conservatives and Liberals are now neck and neck, as the Liberals play the patriotic, Canada First card to a chorus of plaudits from a dim and gullible electorate. Trudeau’s likely successor in the new electoral sweepstakes, whether an imbecile like Chrystia Freeland, who menaces the U.S. with British and French nukes, or reporter-shy, tax-ducking, platitude-spouting, globalist banker and dodgy investor Mark Carney, may well be elevated to the leadership in the upcoming election. They would be far worse than the witless Trudeau. The U.S would find a totalitarian state in all but name, subservient to Chinese influence and lax on protecting its Arctic region from Russian naval expansion, sitting on its northern border.
Thirdly, the market is now experiencing a veritable tremblor, all the indices sinking like bodies encased in mafia cement. This is far more critical than a market correction. What will this unforced error and market shake-up do to Trump’s reputation as a prudent and common-sense commander and to his congressional majority when the Democrats and the media start screaming bloody murder? There are fewer than two years before the midterms, when the Dems might retake the House and the Senate.
Any sensible person would have advised the president to go slow. And to remember that the trade pact with Canada he renegotiated the first time around is the same deal he is now denouncing as a rip-off that needs to be cancelled or re-renegotiated. He needs to be consistent. The fentanyl crisis is real, but a credible political threat coupled with continuing discussion, muscular diplomacy, tactical patience, and strengthening the border not only from the Canadian but from the American side as well would plausibly have done the job or would at the very least have been a better way to jump-start the dialogue. Applying a 25% tariff pretty well across the board, then pausing it for a month, does not reflect well on the president’s foresight, merely creates more political and economic uncertainty, and does not pacify the market.
I would guess that Trump did not consult with anyone before unleashing his economic missile against a weak, ill-led, complacent, and self-inflated nation, but followed his own bent — a winning strategy generally, but one occasionally liable to unforced errors. Canada may deserve a long-delayed spanking and a wake-up call for its slide into third-world status and for taking the U.S. for granted, but this was the wrong way to go about it.
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