POLI•RANT: Canada Strikes Back Against Trump's Idiotic Tariff Plans

You only have to follow the life-cycle of a piston to see how dumb tariffs are.

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney has done it.

He broke up with America.

Maybe I shouldn’t use that phrase because it makes the move sound almost comical, and it’s not. Carney is ending Canada’s relationship — trade, security cooperation, intelligence, everything — with the United States after Trump threw a 25% tariff on “imported” autos.

"The old relationship we had with the United States based on deepening integration of our economies and tight security and military cooperation is over."

Of course, the market (and car companies in particular) tanked and the damage that’s going to be done is real and widespread.

Beyond the philosophy of free trade that used to be a core conservative principal, it’s amazing that Trump is going 180 degrees away from Trump 1.0. In his first term one of the only things I agreed with (in part) was the renegotiation of NAFTA.

Then re-named the USMCA — the country names — of course Trump (in Warren, Michigan) said it was the greatest thing ever.

I will say that we just ended a nightmare known as NAFTA. (Applause.) They took our — they took our jobs for a long time. They took it for a long time. And we now have a brand-new U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement. It’s a whole different ballgame, and it’s going to be great for this plant. It’s going to be incredible for Michigan and for every place else in our country.

What NAFTA/USMCA has done since it was passed in 1994 is to encourage the financial ties between Canada, the US, and Mexico — especially auto production. Just look at the production of a damn piston:

This is the story for the majority of auto parts and tons of other manufactured goods — all with different paths. My wife worked at Ford for years and visited plants outside Toronto. Those vehicles might have been finished in Canada but to call them Canadian is amazingly simplistic — which is why core MAGA accepts Trump’s lies on tariffs and trade.

For now, at least.

If this continues the damage will be widespread — and very likely hit our house. Most of my entire career in advertising has been tied to autos — GM and Chevy in particular. That includes my current job. When auto sales tank the first thing that’s cut is advertising budgets. And when advertising budgets are cut the first people to be let go are freelancers, which I am.

I hope it doesn’t come to that — for me and the countless jobs tied to the auto industry in this country — my state of Michigan in particular.

And it’s not false hope. This is all so completely dumb and the pain is going to be real, that it’s hard to believe that Trump won’t be forced to back down. Of course, he’ll never admit to backing down even if Canada stands its ground. He’ll come up with some reason to say he won that his cult laps up.

Even if we do get some sort of better deal that’s not the point. This is a petulant dictator man-child doing a bunch of illegal shit based on his own warped mind.

I mean, let’s rewind. How did Canada ever get here? How is this a thing? You don’t treat the economy and the lives of millions of Americans like it’s a fake reality show.

Unless your Trump who has (and will always be) a failure at business and an even bigger failure as a human being.

Update:

It’s still somewhat unclear exactly how these vehicle tariffs are going to work. Specifically what is going to be determined a foreign made vehicle. So many different tariffs have been on and off the table so many times it’s hard to determine what is actually real.

One thing that is real is that since his latest lie-filled rant on tariffs on April 2nd, the markets are tanking. It’s all so chaotic and universally condemned by mainstream economists of all stripes that it’s hard to avoid speculating that Trump is actually trying to purposefully destroy the economy.