The home of the free

This seems like a good Friday to call in sick. (Unless you WFH, and therefore nobody cares.)

Overnight the US president had a hissy and ‘terminated’ all trade talks with Canada. That came after he watched an Ontario government ad on American network TV quoting Ronald Reagan singing the praises of free trade. In his oval office, the biggest portrait Trump displays is one of The Gipper – and here the very words of his hero were being used against him. So unfair.

Moreover there’s a Supreme Court case now being judged on whether Trump has the right to unilaterally impose tariffs, as he’s been doing. So he sees the Doug Ford media blitz as an attempt to influence that decision. (Which it is.)

Trump says the Reagan clips are fake. They aren’t. The former president was truly a free trader, as was our guy at the time, Brian Mulroney. Together they signed the FTA – Free Trade Agreement – which eventually because NAFTA when Mexico joined, and was renewed in 2018 by Trump, renamed as the USMCA.

After Mulroney and Reagan agreed on the deal that would add rocket fuel to Canada’s economy, it went to the people of Canada in the landmark election of 1988. Cons fought for free trade. Libs bitterly opposed it. A shiny new bearded Progressive Conservative candidate in the campaign wrote “A Citizen’s Guide to Free Trade” to dispel misinformation (“They’re going to sell our water…”). That little volume was printed a million times by election day – which was my small contribution to the economic wellbeing and bright future of North America. (You’re welcome.)

Anyway, Mulroney won in a landslide. FTA went through. And for the past 37 years free trade has benefitted our country – as free trade does for any nation. But now, as Marc Carney said in his speech the other night, “it has ruptured.”

The effective tariff rate in the US today is 18% on imports. Under Biden it was 2%. No wonder US unemployment is now rising, the US dollar has been losing altitude and the inflation rate today popped up to 3%. Protectionism does not work. It’s 19th Century stuff. Reagan knew it. Doug Ford is living it, as Stellantis, GM and others buckle and leave Canada amid the current climate of Trump retribution.

Well, word has it Carney was hoping to announce a trade deal next week that would reduce current US levies on our cars, steel and lumber. That may be gone. At least for a while until the orange guy cools off and changes his mind yet again or gets distracted and tears down more of the White House.

The damage Trump is doing to his country is incalculable. Canada’s current leadership is right to try and forge deals elsewhere, build as much as possible within our own borders and continue to blunt the impact of American arrogance, aggression and ignorance on our Dominion.

Do not stop.

About the picture: Cody the Chow likes to sit on this outcrop of rocks, staring across the Niagara River at the shores of New York state, a few huncdred feet away. Invariably there are American tourists around, and virtually all of them say – if the law allowed it – they would move to this side of the water in a flash. That earns a Chowy smile.

To be in touch or send a picture of your beast, email to ‘garth@garth.ca’.