Trying to figure out Donald Trump’s position on tariffs with Canada is like trying to nail jello to the wall, it’s pointless. He and his administration keep changing their mind, they keep changing their reasoning, they keep changing the narrative.
On Monday, Trump said there was no room for Canada or Mexico to escape tariffs he said were about drugs and illegal immigration. On Monday morning, his Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick was on CNBC defending the tariffs by saying Canada doesn’t buy much from the U.S. anyway.
“They import from us very little and they export to us huge amounts,” Lutnick said about the April 2 tariffs — another batch that may come through.
During his appearance on CNBC, Lutnick said there hasn’t been enough movement on drugs like fentanyl crossing the Canada-U.S. border, and then by afternoon, he went on Fox Business to say things may change and tariffs may roll back.
“Both the Mexicans and the Canadians were on the phone with me all day today trying to show that they’ll do better, and the president is listening,” he said. “So I think he’s gonna work something out with them. It’s not gonna be a pause. None of that pause stuff. But I think he’s gonna figure out, you do more, and I’ll meet you in the middle.”
In between, Trump threatened harder tariffs on Canada if Canada imposes retaliatory tariffs.
“Please explain to Governor Trudeau, of Canada, that when he puts on a Retaliatory Tariff on the U.S., our Reciprocal Tariff will immediately increase by a like amount!” Trump wrote.
These guys are up and down more than a toilet seat.
How can anyone negotiate with that?
Over the past several months, I’ve spent countless hours trying to understand the rationale for Trump going all in on tariffs. I’ve read the paper by Steven Miran on how tariffs would be used to reshape the global trading system. I’ve interviewed Steve Bannon on his Alfred Mahan naval theory of national security. I’ve looked to the writings of advisers like Peter Navarro, who I’ve interviewed in the past, to try and make sense of it all.
At times, you could see a thread of theory, an idea that could make sense, a rationale behind what was going on.
The last few days have blown all that up.
Perhaps the people who laid the intellectual groundwork for Trump’s tariff plans have a rational sense of why they want to move in that direction. The White House clearly does not have a clear rationale for what they are doing.
If they did, they wouldn’t be changing their minds from one day to the next, one part of the day to the next.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau gave a strong speech in response to the tariffs on Parliament Hill on Tuesday morning, but a strong speech is about all he can do. Trudeau is about to be replaced this weekend by the winner of the Liberal leadership race.
“Today, the United States launched a trade war against Canada, their closest partner and ally, their closest friend,” Trudeau said.
Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre supported the idea of retaliatory tariffs but said we must do more to pivot our economy to ensure we can thrive in the face of the new order being imposed by Trump.
“The obvious place to start is to get rid of the Liberal carbon tax, then axe the sales tax on new homes. We need to reverse the Liberal capital gains tax hike and slash income tax so that hard work pays off,” Poilievre said.
We need to shift our economy in the face of Trump’s tariffs, in the face of his plans to unleash the American economy. If we don’t make ourselves more nimble, less reliant on the United States going forward, then we will continue to suffer.
The status quo is not an option.