Pieter - you must totally reject Stephen Punwasi’s argument regarding Canadian fentanyl superlabs - one of which had 95 million doses on hand. It seems logical you would also deny the existence of phenomenal money-laundering that Canada’s fentanyl manufacturing has allegedly produced - which many experts say is the source of real estate in affordability in major Canadian markets.
What is needed is an immediate election, since Trudeau will soon be gone, and a PM who actually has Canada’s interests at heart to negotiate. Trudeau has strangled Canada with globalism such as net zero. and has facilitated the rapidly growing influence of the Chinese Communist Party over Canada’s government, and resources.
Hysterical overreaction towards America is not called for., and is completely
misdirected.
Canada is a ship that is presently exhibiting a severe list, threatening to capsize. You seem sanguine about it.
Oh, I think all we are seeing is a political bashing maneuver such that Canada unites under the Liberal brand to fight a common enemy thereby putting Poilievre in line with Trump. It is sad that Trump, IMHO, at the root core, is reacting to the fall of our Canadian Dollar from being roughly at par with the US Dollar between 2007 - 2013 to what it is now. At the time we had a high Canadian Dollar because of our income derived from oil exports and Steven Harper’s fiscal policies. Then in 2015, Justin Trudeau and the Liberals got elected, with the intention to move away from a high income oil export type economy and towards an inflationary debt driven green economy all the while getting a back scratch from the central banks to hide any economic wrongs by further reducing interest rates. Then when interest rates could not fall any further (in Europe they had negative interest rates), a pandemic came out of the blue, so as to rationalize the need for more spending that was otherwise frowned upon. I feel Trump wants a Canadian Dollar at par with the US Dollar and that the Liberals have acted politically in such a way that they have driven the dollar down to 69 cents where it is now. Nobody talks about a 69 cent Canadian Dollar being effectively the equivalent of a 44% tariff on American goods imported into Canada. If one adds the HST/GST/PST to that, then that amount well in excess of 50%. It means that under todays Liberal government we are paying 50% more for American goods that we did under Steven Harper. People are laughing at the Liberal solution to engage in a tariff war causing this current 50% figure to double such that we could almost cut off trade entirely with the United States causing our economy to spiral downwards. This crazy tariff war could echo a historic precedence everyone which is silent on, namely US President Benjamin Harrison and the McKinley Tariffs of 1890, which lead up to the 1893 overthrow of the Hawaiian Monarchy by the Citizens Committee of Public Safety due to the unemployment which the Tariffs created. We clearly lack leadership in Canada as we clearly have little knowledge of history.
Furthermore, in light of the fact that our Canadian Leaders likely own American securities whereby there is a strong personal motive to devalue our Canadian dollar and in so doing receive 44% greater return on those investments all the while hurting Canadians having to compete with Americans by giving them a 44% discount wanting to buy homes in Whistler and the Sea to Sky region. Trump’s Tariffs at 25% are nothing when compared to the 44% discounts Americans get (when compared with 2007-2013 exchange rates) when paying for Canadian products. Trudeau and the Liberals have just put Canada in a precarious situation due to unfair play.
Trump, IMHO, seems to be echoing Brian Mulroney’s election campaign of 1984 and 1988 whereby our Prime Minister initially wanted to eliminate our income tax system entirely through tax reform which was subsequently watered down due to the opposition to become the GST/HST at much lower but more agreeable rates. I see this Tariff thing evolving to a North American wide Value Added Tax or VAT just like they have in Europe. The VAT in Europe varies between 15% and 27% depending which country the trade is with. It is interesting that Canada is currently looking towards a Comprehensive Economic Trade Agreement (CETA) with Europe, meaning that there exists a tax on Canadian exports of up to 27%, whereas Trumps Tariffs are only 25%.
So again, I see our Liberal and NDP leaders oversimplifying this in an attempt to push the Conservatives in an anti-patriotic pro-Trump stance. Political Chess play, that is all.
Thanks Jan. Agree with your thoughts here, in particular on the exchange rate, not everyone sees this. The Harper years were a golden period for Canada and he also produced some balanced budgets. Let’s hope we can get back to that approach soon.
I am not sure that tariffs are the best response by the govenment. I understand the urge to respond but if American tariffs are bad for Americans Canadian tariffs will be bad for Canadian. There are other things we could do. Have export levies on those things critical to the US economy (electricity exports, rate earths, certain other targeted resources and technologies, and yes digital services.
The US only has a trade deficit with Canada if we ignore services. And trade in digital services is rapidly growing and highly profitable. This is the greatest potential risk and pressure point. I would love to have your insights on trade in digital services.
Then there are other high impact things we could do that would get a lot of attention. Cancel the F35 purchase and invest the money (a multiple of the money) into made in Canada, four season, arctic capable drones - surface, subsurface and aerial. There are also a lot of IT and consulting contracts with US firms that should be ended.
The Canadian government should stop purchasing any US treasuries and investigate ways to disincentive purchases by investment funds. Canada is a drop in the budget but China, Japan, etc. actually have a club they can use on the US.
Agree with your suggestions on targeted trade sanctions/boycotts. What we are hearing now may play well in the media, but it lacks vision and may indeed do more damage than is good for Canada.
I agree that it is a baffling move by Trump. While riding a wave of support, he is pulling the rug from under the feet of all Americans. If his purpose is to sow panic and confusion, he's done it. Our politicians currently in power (Note I didn't say leaders) are shooting from the lip. From Doug Ford arranging to borrow more billions and create further indebtedness to David Eby punishing US States by the way their vote turned out (could have been 49%-51% either way. One way you're punished, the other you're not.....Brilliant, no.) I haven't heard our politicians in power even explore any common sense solutions that you have put on paper (so to speak.) Ford should be immediately ramping up mining permits and using our steel factories to make pipe for energy transport. Eby should be clearing the way for as many LNG plants on his coast as there is money to build them. It won't be US money, but is that a bad thing? Canadian, European, South American, it will help us to mitigate the fact that we sleep with an elephant. And most of all, the provinces should be immediately dropping ANY interprovincial barriers be they trade, labour, skilled professionals, you name it. But most of all let our energy and natural resources flow from east to west to north to south and back again. No more selfish children saying no, no, no.
Pieter - you must totally reject Stephen Punwasi’s argument regarding Canadian fentanyl superlabs - one of which had 95 million doses on hand. It seems logical you would also deny the existence of phenomenal money-laundering that Canada’s fentanyl manufacturing has allegedly produced - which many experts say is the source of real estate in affordability in major Canadian markets.
What is needed is an immediate election, since Trudeau will soon be gone, and a PM who actually has Canada’s interests at heart to negotiate. Trudeau has strangled Canada with globalism such as net zero. and has facilitated the rapidly growing influence of the Chinese Communist Party over Canada’s government, and resources.
Hysterical overreaction towards America is not called for., and is completely
misdirected.
Canada is a ship that is presently exhibiting a severe list, threatening to capsize. You seem sanguine about it.
Oh, I think all we are seeing is a political bashing maneuver such that Canada unites under the Liberal brand to fight a common enemy thereby putting Poilievre in line with Trump. It is sad that Trump, IMHO, at the root core, is reacting to the fall of our Canadian Dollar from being roughly at par with the US Dollar between 2007 - 2013 to what it is now. At the time we had a high Canadian Dollar because of our income derived from oil exports and Steven Harper’s fiscal policies. Then in 2015, Justin Trudeau and the Liberals got elected, with the intention to move away from a high income oil export type economy and towards an inflationary debt driven green economy all the while getting a back scratch from the central banks to hide any economic wrongs by further reducing interest rates. Then when interest rates could not fall any further (in Europe they had negative interest rates), a pandemic came out of the blue, so as to rationalize the need for more spending that was otherwise frowned upon. I feel Trump wants a Canadian Dollar at par with the US Dollar and that the Liberals have acted politically in such a way that they have driven the dollar down to 69 cents where it is now. Nobody talks about a 69 cent Canadian Dollar being effectively the equivalent of a 44% tariff on American goods imported into Canada. If one adds the HST/GST/PST to that, then that amount well in excess of 50%. It means that under todays Liberal government we are paying 50% more for American goods that we did under Steven Harper. People are laughing at the Liberal solution to engage in a tariff war causing this current 50% figure to double such that we could almost cut off trade entirely with the United States causing our economy to spiral downwards. This crazy tariff war could echo a historic precedence everyone which is silent on, namely US President Benjamin Harrison and the McKinley Tariffs of 1890, which lead up to the 1893 overthrow of the Hawaiian Monarchy by the Citizens Committee of Public Safety due to the unemployment which the Tariffs created. We clearly lack leadership in Canada as we clearly have little knowledge of history.
Furthermore, in light of the fact that our Canadian Leaders likely own American securities whereby there is a strong personal motive to devalue our Canadian dollar and in so doing receive 44% greater return on those investments all the while hurting Canadians having to compete with Americans by giving them a 44% discount wanting to buy homes in Whistler and the Sea to Sky region. Trump’s Tariffs at 25% are nothing when compared to the 44% discounts Americans get (when compared with 2007-2013 exchange rates) when paying for Canadian products. Trudeau and the Liberals have just put Canada in a precarious situation due to unfair play.
Trump, IMHO, seems to be echoing Brian Mulroney’s election campaign of 1984 and 1988 whereby our Prime Minister initially wanted to eliminate our income tax system entirely through tax reform which was subsequently watered down due to the opposition to become the GST/HST at much lower but more agreeable rates. I see this Tariff thing evolving to a North American wide Value Added Tax or VAT just like they have in Europe. The VAT in Europe varies between 15% and 27% depending which country the trade is with. It is interesting that Canada is currently looking towards a Comprehensive Economic Trade Agreement (CETA) with Europe, meaning that there exists a tax on Canadian exports of up to 27%, whereas Trumps Tariffs are only 25%.
So again, I see our Liberal and NDP leaders oversimplifying this in an attempt to push the Conservatives in an anti-patriotic pro-Trump stance. Political Chess play, that is all.
Thanks Jan. Agree with your thoughts here, in particular on the exchange rate, not everyone sees this. The Harper years were a golden period for Canada and he also produced some balanced budgets. Let’s hope we can get back to that approach soon.
I am not sure that tariffs are the best response by the govenment. I understand the urge to respond but if American tariffs are bad for Americans Canadian tariffs will be bad for Canadian. There are other things we could do. Have export levies on those things critical to the US economy (electricity exports, rate earths, certain other targeted resources and technologies, and yes digital services.
The US only has a trade deficit with Canada if we ignore services. And trade in digital services is rapidly growing and highly profitable. This is the greatest potential risk and pressure point. I would love to have your insights on trade in digital services.
Then there are other high impact things we could do that would get a lot of attention. Cancel the F35 purchase and invest the money (a multiple of the money) into made in Canada, four season, arctic capable drones - surface, subsurface and aerial. There are also a lot of IT and consulting contracts with US firms that should be ended.
The Canadian government should stop purchasing any US treasuries and investigate ways to disincentive purchases by investment funds. Canada is a drop in the budget but China, Japan, etc. actually have a club they can use on the US.
Agree with your suggestions on targeted trade sanctions/boycotts. What we are hearing now may play well in the media, but it lacks vision and may indeed do more damage than is good for Canada.
I agree that it is a baffling move by Trump. While riding a wave of support, he is pulling the rug from under the feet of all Americans. If his purpose is to sow panic and confusion, he's done it. Our politicians currently in power (Note I didn't say leaders) are shooting from the lip. From Doug Ford arranging to borrow more billions and create further indebtedness to David Eby punishing US States by the way their vote turned out (could have been 49%-51% either way. One way you're punished, the other you're not.....Brilliant, no.) I haven't heard our politicians in power even explore any common sense solutions that you have put on paper (so to speak.) Ford should be immediately ramping up mining permits and using our steel factories to make pipe for energy transport. Eby should be clearing the way for as many LNG plants on his coast as there is money to build them. It won't be US money, but is that a bad thing? Canadian, European, South American, it will help us to mitigate the fact that we sleep with an elephant. And most of all, the provinces should be immediately dropping ANY interprovincial barriers be they trade, labour, skilled professionals, you name it. But most of all let our energy and natural resources flow from east to west to north to south and back again. No more selfish children saying no, no, no.
Thanks Doug. Agreed, I think there is a lack of political leadership and real vision in most western democracies at the moment.