American President Donald Trump seems to understand that if the Keystone XL pipeline were to be revived, it would carry Canadian oil.
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But he seems incapable of putting two and two together on pipelines and tariffs.
On the very same day Trump posted on social media that he wants Keystone construction restarted “NOW!” he also confirmed he will be forging ahead with tariffs on all Canadian imports to the United States, including the oil that would be carried in a future Keystone XL.
Trump posted Monday, both on his Truth social media and his buddy Elon Musk’s X, that he wanted “the company building the Keystone XL Pipeline … (to) come back to America, and get it built — NOW! I know they were treated very badly by Sleepy Joe Biden, but the Trump Administration is very different — Easy approvals, almost immediate start! If not them, perhaps another Pipeline Company. We want the Keystone XL Pipeline built!”
Trump seems to understand the company he is referring to, TC Energy Corp, is Canadian. After all he wants them to “come back to America” right away and finish the job.
But it never seems to have occurred to him that the oil he envisions flowing through Keystone (over 800,000 barrels a day from Alberta) would be subject to the tariffs he intends to impose this weekend.
Sure, his tariff on oil (10 per cent) is substantially less than the tariff he intends to impose on nearly everything else (25 per cent). But what makes him think Canada is going to be eager to ship him extra oil if it comes with a 10 per cent penalty?
Trump wants us to increase our shipments to the U.S. by about 20 per cent. (Keystone wasn’t called an XL pipeline for the fun of it.)
And normally we’d be only too happy to ship all that extra oil to a trading partner. But Trump no longer sees or treats Canada as a partner. We’re a foe or a rival to be crippled until our jobs and prosperity are transferred stateside.
Why would we want to co-operate with him?
Don’t get me wrong, I would love to see Keystone built, plus pipelines to the east and west coasts.
But why would a company lay out as much as $15 billion to build a pipeline to a country with a leader whose ideas on trade change with the breeze?
After former president Joe Biden cancelled all the federal permits for Keystone in 2021, TC Energy pulled up some of the pipe it had already laid and laid off nearly all its workforce.
Even if the equipment and labour could be reassembled quickly, plenty of the construction permits have since expired.
It’s all well and good for Trump to say that things have changed in the States since his election, and promise the cross-border and other federal permits would be reissued promptly.
But Trump’s confidence overlooks the state and even county permits that were needed. It took TC years of complicated applications and regulatory hearings, followed by drawn-out court cases — brought by U.S. Indigenous tribes and environmentalists — to get all the permissions lined up before Biden demolished it all with the wave of a hand,
It cost TC Energy nearly 12 years and more than $1 billion just to get all the ducks in a row to begin building.
Who wants to go through that all over again when there is a solid chance that before the first shovel is in the ground, Trump decides there is something he can gain by dangling approval over Canadians’ heads — again?
If he wants Canada to be a reliable trading partner, one that treats America with respect, he has to show that respect is a two-way street.
And how does he square this with his boast to the World Economic Forum last month that the U.S. doesn’t “need their oil and gas,” and with continuing to insult us that Canada should be the 51st state?