Times occur in history when major changes resonate for generations, if not centuries. The 18th century industrial revolution transformed nations from agrarian to industrial societies. The 19th century was the age of tools and machines – railroads, telephones, dynamite and plastics. The 20th century brought us the automobile, vaccines, agricultural fertilizers, the atomic age and space exploration.
Today’s century may become the most glorious if we can avert a universal environmental calamity.
In the face of this, America has elected a climate-deaf president who promises to singlehandedly ‘make America great again’ by redirecting the principal sources of US federal revenues from taxes on personal and corporate incomes to imposing tariffs on offshore country imports. More importantly, control of these funds will now shift from the legislative branch to the Office of the President.
With this comes the intentional presidential power to dictatorially intervene in the American economy, including imposing a major influence on who lives and works from where and for whom. Mr. Trump’s move to have the White House assume absolute control of his country's manifest destiny may be modified in four years’ time, but dismantling US tariff barriers may well prove just as chaotic as putting them in place.
In response, Canada will now move away from having become an American economic and military protectorate. At the same time, doing this by a precipitant walking-away from the US would carry serious Canada-wide consequences. Not the least of these is economic as 73 per cent ($416 billion USD) of our annual global exports ($561 billion USD) go to the US. China is next at five per cent ($28 billion USD).
That does not mean that we should abandon using our sharp elbows in negotiations. Our gross domestic product (the annual value of all goods and services produced in Canada) is $2.29 trillion USD. In other words, 82 per cent of our national wealth is generated from domestic activity and from non-USA export trading sources. We would survive.
Furthermore, we are not naive in international trading. As the world’s 10th largest exporter, we presently account for 23 per cent of the global market share in petroleum products, four per cent of the gold market and rank fifth in agricultural commodity exports. We can competently compete with the USA for exports where the rest of the world raises tariffs on USA products in retaliation for Trump’s global trade war. Eliminating our own interprovincial tariff barriers will add at least three per cent to our domestic GDP.
That does not mean we are in smooth waters. Our 10 per cent global market share of the automotive industry is under attack. Given the dishonesty of the Trump presidency, it would seem timely to redirect our automotive manufacturing sector to Asia-based EV partnerships and European NATO-oriented military equipment production. Actively encouraging the BRICS group and its allies (exclusive of Putin) as major trading partners is important..
Kananaskis helped. Good on ya Prime Minister. Now on to NATO and the European Union.
