- cross-posted to:
- bbc@rss.ponder.cat
- cross-posted to:
- bbc@rss.ponder.cat
Summary
Mark Carney, frontrunner for Canadian Liberal Party leadership and potential prime minister, stated Canada will stand up to a bully after Trump imposed 25% tariffs on Canadian imports.
Carney vowed to retaliate by matching the US tariffs dollar for dollar, asserting Canada would not cave in despite mounting pressure.
He criticized Trump for undermining trade agreements, warning that the tariffs would damage the US global reputation and economic stability.
Outgoing Prime Minister Trudeau promised a forceful, immediate response, emphasizing unity as Canada defends its economic interests, ensuring national prosperity.
There’s a few comments like this, but what would rolling over look like and / or why would a country do that?
The entirely expected and appropriate response is to apply retaliatory tariffs. This doesn’t take bravery and isn’t “standing your ground” it’s just the obvious default response.
Look no further than Colombia, who was likewise threatened with tariffs by Trump if they refused to accept our deportees. They caved and accepted them after initially refusing them.
Now, in that case, I’m sure some people in the Colombian government likely did the math and determined that it would be cheaper to just accept the few hundred people Trump deported than to have the tariffs damage their economy by depressing the demand for exports like coffee.
It is if the tariffs were meant to stand on their own merit. Trump has only historically used tariffs as a threat to get what he wants. The one time he implemented targeted tariffs on China in his first term, it led to him having to bail out farmers with the money that was collected from the tariff revenue as a result of the retaliatory tariffs on agriculture exports. You would think he would have learned his lesson about using tariffs as a bluff and then following through anyway when it’s called, but then again, we are talking about Trump here. You don’t get to bankrupt a casino and still claim to have a shred of business acumen.