In as much as it’s ever possible to discern what motivates U.S. President Donald Trump (other than relishing the sound of his own voice) events on Monday seemed to prove that his threat of 25 per cent tariffs on goods entering the States from Canada was mostly just a way to scare us into doing more to secure our mutual border against illegal drugs and immigrants.
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Over the weekend, of course, Trump signed an executive order imposing 25 per cent tariffs on all goods entering the United States from Canada and Mexico. By the end of Monday, after calls from Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Trump had announced the tariffs would not take effect Tuesday as planned, but rather in a month.
Both countries have 30 days to bolster their border security and negotiate a more lasting tariff suspension with three of Trump’s most influential cabinet secretaries Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Secretary of Treasury Scott Bessent and Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick.
This indicates that while Trump was acting as if he were in this for an all-out trade war, what he really wanted was fewer illegal immigrants and less fentanyl entering the U.S.
It’s hard (impossible?) to tell what Trump really wants because he lets his mouth run on and on, and he seems to change his mind more often than most people change socks.
The trick, then, is to listen to those he puts in charge of issues.
His whole life (including long before he entered politics) Trump has succeeded by spooking those on the other side of the table, then swooping in at the last minute to gobble up what he really wants.
Do I think Trump could still yap us all into a trade war? You bet.
Do I think he truly believes all his own claims about how unfairly Canada has been treating the U.S., like his claim that the Americans subsidize us to the tune of $200 billion a year by buying far more from us than we buy from them? Absolutely.
The way his subsidy figure keeps jumping around $100 billion, $200 billion, $250 billion means he’s not well briefed, he just has it in his head that there is a trade imbalance and the actual totals are immaterial.
(The truth is that while we do have an annual trade surplus with the U.S., if our oil and gas exports are excluded they have a surplus with us. Moreover, they can buy our oil relatively cheaply for their refineries which frees them up to sell their own higher-grade oil on world markets for a premium, which kinda, sorta means we are subsidizing them.)
Trump has long struck me as that hothead uncle at a family gathering who, when talk turns to politics or world affairs, recounts a string of “facts” he has largely misconstrued before then insisting the solutions are real simple.
It’s impossible to make such a person see reason, which is why it’s best to listen for clues among his close advisers.
Last week, at confirmation hearings before the U.S. Senate, Howard Lutnick, Trump’s commerce secretary and one of his most trusted advisers, said that Canada could avoid tariffs if it would work harder to tighten its border.
Secretary of State Rubio, when he had been a U.S. senator, said Canada had to do more to screen out illegal immigrants because extremist organizations such as Hamas were using our lax immigration policies to move terrorists to within striking distance of the U.S.
And as recently as Monday morning, the chairman of Trump’s council of economic advisers, Kevin Hassett, told the business network CNBC that Canada’s safe-injection drug policies and lax enforcement of open use in public was “spreading to the U.S. and it needs to stop.”
Kudos to Trudeau for at least buying Canada 30 days to prove its seriousness on border issues, but now the real work begins for our federal government. Not just talking a good line.