Late Monday afternoon, President Donald Trump offered Ontario and Canada a reprieve from the tariffs that were due to kick in at midnight. Odds are we’ll be back on the same cliff-edge in 30 days’ time. But if Ontarians imagined the provincial and national response would just mean paying a bit more for American orange juice, appliances, sports equipment and spirituous beverages, campaigning Premier Doug Ford put that dream to rest in recent days.
Normally election campaigns promise people more access to things they want and like, not less. But these are not normal times, and the Ontario Liberals and New Democrats — a distant second and third, respectively, in the polls — have been struggling to shift the discussion away from Trump.
For one thing, Ford announced Monday, 15,000 rural Ontarian households would not be getting broadband internet: Ford said he was tearing up a $100-million contract with Starlink, the satellite-internet concern owned by Trump ally Elon Musk.
“Ontario won’t do business with people hellbent on destroying our economy,” Ford thundered, as he prepared to make the rounds of U.S. cable news. Ford also announced that all other American companies were henceforth banned from provincial contracts.
Devotees of American wine and spirits would not be paying a bit more. They would not be buying American booze at all — not at the LCBO, which was busy clearing its shelves of Yankee liquor when Trump reversed course, and not at bars and restaurants, for whom the LCBO is the sole wholesaler.
This would hit particularly hard for whisky drinkers. American wine accounts for 15 per cent of the LCBO’s wine sales by volume — second only to Ontario itself — but every bottle from California, Oregon or Washington has a reasonable replacement waiting from France, Australia or New Zealand. The same cannot be said for bourbon or Tennessee whisky.
“There’s never been a better time to choose an amazing Ontario-made or Canadian-made product,” Ford said in a statement Sunday.
“If you have to switch to Crown Royal as part of (showing) patriotism, I think that’s a pretty good deal,” Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew said on Sunday, announcing his own province’s boycott. (Nova Scotia and Quebec have also issued outright bans, while British Columbia is cracking down on booze from Republican states specifically.)
It’s just a window into how ludicrously simplistic Trump’s view of the North American and global economies really is. And all we can really do is be ludicrous in return
Given that my grandfather worked for Hiram Walker Distillers for 35 years, I must insist on Canadian Club as the one true Canadian whisky. But of course, Hiram Walker himself was American. The Canadian Club brand is currently owned by Manhattan-based Suntory Global Spirits, which is a subsidiary of Osaka-based Suntory Holdings Ltd. That American subsidiary used to be known as Beam Inc. — as in Jim Beam, the Kentucky bourbon the company produces along with Maker’s Mark, Knob Creek and other red-state hooch.
Crown Royal, meanwhile, started off as part of the Bronfman empire. It’s now in the hands of London (England)-based Diageo … which also owns whisky brands in Kentucky and Tennessee. For that matter, the Beer Store is co-owned by Chicago-based Molson-Coors.
In theory we might ban all Diageo or Suntory or Molson brands from Ontario shelves for daring to do business in the U.S., but that would leave gaping holes: Between them they own a remarkable number of the global liquor brands you’ve heard of, from English gins to Scotch whisky to tequila, Guinness and Staropramen.
So Ford’s logic is sound so far as it goes: booze made in America is verboten; booze made elsewhere is fine.
It’s just a window, as if another were needed, into how ludicrously simplistic Trump’s view of the North American and global economies really is. And all we can really do is be ludicrous in return: Impose higher prices (or outright product bans) on Canadians because Trump decided to impose higher prices on Americans.
Pugilism is all Trump seems to understand, and while we’ll always be the mouse to Washington’s elephant, we don’t have zero leverage. Just one example: On Sunday the traditionally GOP-friendly American Farm Bureau pushed back hard against Trump’s tariffs, and the counter-tariffs they beget. In a statement, president Zippy Duvall noted that 80 per cent of the U.S. supply of potash comes from Canada, and will now presumably cost farmers 25-per-cent more while their export market shrinks significantly. And for what?
All of Ontario’s retaliation measures are now on hold, Ford announced Monday evening. But at least until the pain really starts hitting, Ontarians seem united behind retaliation should it become necessary. Many days before Trump actually followed through on his threat, an Ipsos poll found that just 13 per cent of Ontarians (and 18 per cent nationwide) disagreed with hitting back. If anything it’s probably fewer now. And when (if?) the pain comes Ford is essentially promising to print money to ease the blow: $22 billion for infrastructure; $10 billion in “cashflow support” for businesses; the list goes on.
It’s an awfully difficult narrative for the New Democrats and Liberals to counter, because they fundamentally agree with all of it. On Monday NDP Leader Marit Stiles released a plan to “build a tariff-proof Ontario” — essentially to diversify our export markets, which no one disagrees with.
Liberal Leader Bonnie Crombie, meanwhile, rather clumsily tried to combine the tariffs issue with the sorry state of Ontario’s health-care system, which she (and Stiles) would far prefer voters focus on. As such, among other things, she proposed “offer(ing) a bonus to patriotic nurses and doctors who want to come back home to Canada from the U.S. and help solve Doug Ford’s health care crisis and get you (a) family doctor.”
Canadians might be willing to forego Jack Daniel’s for the cause. It’s harder to imagine significant numbers of them upping stakes to make less money back home, especially in an economy hobbled by Trump’s unhinged crusade. But now, at least, Ford’s opposition may have a few days to make this election about something other than Tariff Man.
National Post
[email protected]
Get more deep-dive National Post political coverage and analysis in your inbox with the Political Hack newsletter, where Ottawa bureau chief Stuart Thomson and political analyst Tasha Kheiriddin get at what’s really going on behind the scenes on Parliament Hill every Wednesday and Friday, exclusively for subscribers. Sign up here.