'Trade wars are good, and easy to win,' Trump tweets

[robkelk]

Trump wants a show with NAFTA, not a deal with Canada "NAFTA negotiations aren't about trade. They're politics."

Perhaps it's time to consider the possibility that none of this drama is actually about NAFTA, that it's never been about NAFTA. Likewise, it's not about the border wall, either, or the Mexican drug dealers or the travelling Muslims, MS-13, or the migrant kids now holed up in converted Walmart, some separated forever from their families.

America has legitimate concerns on all these files: crime, illegal immigration, global trade. But all mass movements require common enemies and outrages by which to galvanize their supporters.

That's what is so frustrating about President Trump. It's not that he lies so promiscuously. It's that, like the best liars, he knows to spike his outrages with a touch of truth.

The Americans do have some fair complaints about NAFTA. For example, our supply management system does make it difficult for U.S. egg and dairy producers to sell here — to the detriment of both our countries. But Donald Trump isn't the guy who is pointing out America's problems because he is trying to fix them.

Donald Trump is the guy trying to exploit those problems.

Trump doesn't want a deal on NAFTA. He wants a show.

So, yeah - you've got a Balseraph in the Oval Office, and you put him there.


Why Trump's trade war makes sense — if you're Trump "If the U.S. escalates its trade war, the rest of the world, starting with Canada, will be collateral damage"

Sure, we know all about America First, Rust Belt jobs and Canadian dairy subsidies, but certainly, even U.S. President Donald Trump knows how much trade has helped to make Americans rich, many Canadians say to themselves.

The country's prosperity is so undeniable that it's easy, reasonable even, for Canadians to brush off Trump's anti-trade jeremiads as equal parts bluster, negotiating tactics and base-galvanizing political rhetoric.

Even with trade barriers now going up between U.S. and China, it remains hard to imagine that Trump would blow up the global trading system given how much U.S. workers would suffer, right?

Maybe not.

The national security reasoning the Trump administration initially used to justify steel and aluminum tariffs was widely seen as a pretext that allowed the White House to bypass Congress and use executive power to regulate trade and charge unilaterally down the path of protectionism.

Even more troubling for Canada's economic fortunes, though, would be if that justification were sincere. In that light, Trump's reliance on Peter Navarro, an economist best known for his radical views on China, as one of his top trade advisers is an ominous sign.

As much as it strains credulity that Navarro's theories on the dangers of China's economic rise could play a role in reshaping the global economic order, that becomes more likely with every step down the slippery slope of trade protectionism.

So, yeah - somebody who believes in the "Yellow Peril" is advising the Balseraph-in-Chief, and together they're going to wreck the world's economy so that they can look good.