{"id":93995,"date":"2025-02-06T03:00:42","date_gmt":"2025-02-06T08:00:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=93995"},"modified":"2025-02-05T14:10:15","modified_gmt":"2025-02-05T19:10:15","slug":"trump-tariff-diary-day-5","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2025\/02\/06\/trump-tariff-diary-day-5\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump tariff diary, day 5"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The attention shifted away from the BOM kicking the Little Potato around as BOM floated the idea of annexing the Gaza Strip (as Eastern New Jersey?) on social media. There goes at least 24 hours of media hysteria &#8230;<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_93997\" style=\"width: 490px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/Canada-The-Liberal-vision-of-Canada.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-93997\" style=\"float:right; padding: 0px 0px 10px 25px\" src=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/Canada-The-Liberal-vision-of-Canada-480x480.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"480\" height=\"480\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-93997\" srcset=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/Canada-The-Liberal-vision-of-Canada-480x480.jpg 480w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/Canada-The-Liberal-vision-of-Canada-640x640.jpg 640w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/Canada-The-Liberal-vision-of-Canada-150x150.jpg 150w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/Canada-The-Liberal-vision-of-Canada-120x120.jpg 120w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/Canada-The-Liberal-vision-of-Canada-50x50.jpg 50w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/Canada-The-Liberal-vision-of-Canada.jpg 680w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 480px) 100vw, 480px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-93997\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Justin Trudeau&#8217;s vision of Canada<\/p><\/div>\n<p>As I&#8217;ve pointed out a few times, the situation didn&#8217;t blow up out of nowhere (we&#8217;re back to the Trump tariffs, not the Gaza Strip), as Trump had given ample warning that this was an important issue for him. However, as <a href=\"https:\/\/roxannehalverson.substack.com\/p\/tirade-on-trumps-tariff-threat-and\" target=\"_blank\">Roxanne Halverson<\/a> points out, Trudeau&#8217;s government paid it not the slightest bit of attention until Trump forced them:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>This means Ontario Premier Doug Ford who threatened to cancel a $100 million dollar Starlink contract with Elon Musk to provide high-speed internet to northern and rural Ontario communities because of Musk&#8217;s strong ties to Trump. And perhaps BC Premier David Eby shouldn&#8217;t have threatened to take alcohol products from &#8220;red states&#8221; in the US off the shelves of BC liquor stores. And perhaps Team Trudeau shouldn&#8217;t been trying to play the mouse that roared by threatening to slap retaliatory tariffs on American products coming into Canada, given that it means Canadians will pay more for products like fruits and vegetables that we simply can&#8217;t get here in the winter. And that goes for all the provincial premiers, with the exception of Alberta Premier Danielle Smith.<\/p>\n<p>And for all Canadians \u2014 particularly those who voted for Trudeau \u2014 who are so angry at Trump that they are blowing up the internet with memes, threatening never to vacation in the States, and booing the singing of the American anthem at hockey games \u2014 grow up and smarten up and rethink who your anger should be directed at.<\/p>\n<p>Everyone needs to recognize the fact that Trump made it pretty clear about the tariffs when he was campaigning for the US presidency, after he won the presidency \u2014 but had yet been officially sworn in \u2014 and as soon as he entered the Oval Office. And yet everyone seemed so shocked when he did it \u2014 including Prime Minister Trudeau.<\/p>\n<p>Trump also made it pretty clear what he was after \u2014 fix Canada&#8217;s porous border and fix the drug trafficking problem \u2014 and the fentanyl problem in particular. And thanks to the dithering of the Trudeau government \u2014 vacillating between &#8220;negotiating and diplomacy&#8221; and talking &#8220;tough&#8221;, as well as using the issue as a campaign tool, this is what it came to. Because, it would seem, Trump didn&#8217;t think his request was being taken seriously so he made it serious. One thing Trump recognizes is weakness, and it is something he is willing to take advantage of it. And in Canada he saw weakness \u2014 weak leadership and an weak economy. Another thing Trump is very good at, and that is rattling people and he did that in spades on Saturday \u2014 and by Sunday he got results.<\/p>\n<p>For all the Canadians who are mad at Trump for starting these tariff wars, particularly those who voted for Trudeau. Remember this &#8230; if Canada had a strong economy that hadn&#8217;t been driven into the ground by ten years of Liberal economic, monetary, social engineering and &#8220;green&#8221; policies we wouldn&#8217;t be so vulnerable to Trump&#8217;s tariffs.<\/p>\n<p>Trump didn&#8217;t halt the building of pipelines that could have taken our oil products to both eastern and western coasts to be shipped to markets overseas. This would have expanded markets for Canadian oil, meaning we wouldn&#8217;t be selling sell the bulk of it to the Americans at bargain prices. It wasn&#8217;t Trump who drove billions, if not trillions of dollars in investments out of the country by overtaxing businesses with ever increasing carbon taxes and various other in sundry operating costs, or stifling business growth with endless crippling green energy policies and regulations, or extinguishing any chance of expanding our natural gas production to sell to overseas markets by claiming &#8220;no business case&#8221; for it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The business investment picture in Canada shows a clear decline dating almost exactly to the start of Trudeau&#8217;s time in office:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/Canada-US-business-investment-2007-2024.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/Canada-US-business-investment-2007-2024-800x640.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"640\" class=\"aligncenter size-large wp-image-93996\" srcset=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/Canada-US-business-investment-2007-2024-800x640.jpg 800w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/Canada-US-business-investment-2007-2024-480x384.jpg 480w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/Canada-US-business-investment-2007-2024-150x120.jpg 150w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/Canada-US-business-investment-2007-2024-768x614.jpg 768w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/Canada-US-business-investment-2007-2024.jpg 1350w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The Canadian government&#8217;s (and several provincial governments&#8217;) hostility to economic development and infrastructure expansion is clearly illustrated, I think.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The attention shifted away from the BOM kicking the Little Potato around as BOM floated the idea of annexing the Gaza Strip (as Eastern New Jersey?) on social media. There goes at least 24 hours of media hysteria &#8230; As I&#8217;ve pointed out a few times, the situation didn&#8217;t blow up out of nowhere (we&#8217;re [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,84,28,53,13],"tags":[316,1037,119,887,1185],"class_list":["post-93995","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cancon","category-government","category-media","category-politics","category-usa","tag-borders","tag-donaldtrump","tag-drugs","tag-justintrudeau","tag-tariffs"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-os3","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93995","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=93995"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93995\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":93999,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93995\/revisions\/93999"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=93995"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=93995"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=93995"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}