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And you can’t sign a contract — or a trade deal — with a proven liar, cheat and blackmailer.
And sometimes, you end up having to fight.
Manuel Balce Ceneta / The Associated Press
Yes, we are referring to U.S. President Donald Trump, a politician who obviously confuses might with bright.
Is it smart to pick a fight with a major trading partner — one you depend on for oil, electricity, uranium, potash for fertilizer, aluminum for your own manufacturing operations, and wood for home construction?
Does extending that “trade” battle into issues of a nation’s sovereignty, such as the languages that nation speaks, its dealings with other countries and its ability to set its own health and safety regulations look anything like a trade deal — and does it seem in any way what another sovereign nation would agree to?
Does penalizing that major trading partner by adding tariffs that your own citizens will pay as a tax on products they buy make sense? Only about as much sense as crushing your own beef industry by allowing the import of cheap foreign ground beef.
Prime Minister Mark Carney was right to put the brakes on trade negotiations with the United States on Friday — negotiations that were a step above an ultimatum in name only.
Canada cannot trade away its power to make law, its power to set its own trade rules with foreign nations, surrender control over our own pesticides and health regulations and give in on our cultural industries. Especially not in exchange for the trade crumbs the Americans were offering: they were essentially promising “we’ll only hit you in the face half as much as we were threatening to do.”
A stupid man who, insulated by money, has never had to fight his own fights, actually get his hands dirty on a real job, or understand what it is to have his pay run out long before the next meagre paycheck arrives.
It certainly didn’t make sense to the Wall Street Journal, in which the Monday editorial pronounced “The Dumbest Trade War Revisited: Trump’s decision to escalate a tariff brawl with Canada makes no economic or political sense.”
Where are we now? Prime Minister Carney has paused Canadian retaliatory tariffs until Sept. 8, perhaps to let cooler heads — and smarter people — prevail south of the border.
A weekly look at politics close to home and around the world.
Source: Read the original article on www.winnipegfreepress.com
