It’s time to make Canada great, regardless of what the U.S. does. Pictured: U.S. President Donald Trump. Photo Credit: Donald Trump/X.
President Donald Trump is no lunatic or Canada-hater. He is simply doing what he believes is best for the U.S., and in the long-run Canada might also become stronger for it.
Trump is recalling days in the U.S. (which we also had in Canada) where there were no income taxes. National government revenues relied on tariffs. The American people and their government prospered under this approach in the latter half of the 1800s. The streak ended in 1913 when the Federal Reserve, income tax, and Internal Revenue Service were voted into existence just before Christmas that year.
The American government and other governments, now empowered by new taxes to spend, spend, spend and watch the debt grow, have impoverished their citizens. Their currency, untethered from gold for more than 50 years now, is devalued while the citizens become more reliant on a state, born into public debts that only grow. The state grows every farther in its reach, with perverse incentives that discourage entrepreneurship, hard work, personal savings, and undermine family cohesion.
The globalist dreamers celebrate this oppression because strong, wealthy, and contented people with strong families and clear national identities would never agree to surrender national sovereignty to a global body, a great reset or anything else of the sort.
Trump’s quest is to make the U.S. internally strong to the benefit of its common people, presenting a substantial roadblock to the globalist project and the Great Reset. He justifiably sees the flow of people and drugs over porous borders as a threat to American interests.
Free trade does present economic advantages, but also some thorny downsides. Trade with a country with lower labour standards may allow short term gains but they also create a reliance on foreign labour and goods. If those countries have worse labour standards (Mexico) or are a geopolitical rival (China), such trade may inadvertently facilitate conditions elsewhere contrary to your values or even your national interests.
These downsides are less apparent for Canada-U.S. trade. Even so, the U.S. probably needs free trade less than most other countries. It has a large domestic population, a wide abundance of resources, and tidewater access. It thrived in decades of isolationism and could do so again.
The short-term consequence of tariffs would be increased costs for consumers. It’s helpful, however, to consider how the larger system might function in its incentives and as income streams for the U.S. government.
The reason economists love sales taxes is that they are inelastic. This means people or businesses will pay the state-made levy because they have to. The same thing will apply to these tariffs.
Companies will either pay tariffs because they have no choice or they will find U.S. sourcing. If the latter prevails, governments will get new taxation revenue there too, whether it’s from higher sales tax revenues due to higher prices, higher corporate tax revenues due to more corporate profits, or higher income tax revenues due to larger incomes. Suddenly lower tax rates or even balanced budgets become possibilities.
Canada’s counter-tariffs on imports from the U.S. would have the same effect on us. Import tariffs slapped on the U.S. would allegedly make Ottawa $155 billion annually. That’s more than twice last year’s deficit.
Now both Canada and Mexico are doing more to address drug trafficking, buying at least 30 days of tariff freedom. Like the title of a book on Trump, this is the art of the deal in action. He’s not crazy, just crazy like a fox.
A single highway check on the Trans-Canada highway near Swift Current, Saskatchewan revealed 8 kg of fentanyl hidden under a spare tire. That’s enough to kill four million people, something a nuclear bomb dropped in downtown Toronto would not accomplish. What other drugs, or even people, are getting trafficked in this country. And why did we need Trump to get us to do more to address it?
The tariff kerfuffle has only increased pressure for Canada to improve its own self so we aren’t so reliant on the U.S. We need more pipelines, better rail infrastructure, better ports, better interprovincial trade, better drug enforcement, and better immigration policy and practice.
Trump does not owe Canada anything. He is not our president. But, in the longer term, his moves may lead to a better-functioning Canada and a world less seduced by globalism. It’s time to make Canada great, regardless of what the U.S. does.
