You could find a lot to laugh at over the past week, like the reciprocal tariff “formula” used by the White House, if it wasn’t so sad. And, serious.
This post is about politics. If you are not interest, skip it.
The American President appears to see life as a zero-sum game, where win-win solutions don’t exist. By contrast, most folks who have been successful in business over long periods of time know this is not true.
He does not appear to understand or embrace capitalism. His often expressed ideas are those of an 18th Century mercantilist. This was the dominant economic theory before Adam Smith came along.
Since then, only two US presidents before him have been so enamored with tariffs: McKinley and Hoover. As a member of Congress, in 1890 McKinley pushed President Harrison to impose tariffs of nearly 50% on Canadian goods. This had three purposes: raise money to pay down debt, protect workers and coerce Canada into annexation. (Sound familiar?) As a result and in spite of raising huge amounts of money, domestic prices got so high McKinley and many of his compatriots lost their seats. Canada turned away from its southern neighbor and built a new trading relationship with Britain.
Nevertheless, William McKinley bounced back and became president. Interestingly, in 1901 McKinley eschewed tariffs in favor of reciprocal trade treaties on the day before he was assassinated.
Then, there was Herbert Hoover who started a tariff war in 1930, just in time to exacerbate a recession into the Great Depression. The Smoot-Hawley Tariff is remembered as one of the most catastrophic acts in congressional history.
Deja vu, anyone?
Some Facts – if it wasn’t so sad
The trade war has grown far beyond Canada, but I want to share some facts. First, U.S. has a trade deficit with Canada only because it buys so much of our oil and gas. Otherwise, it’s a big trade surplus.
Second, let’s look at the actual tariff situation between Canada and U.S. If you are actually interested in some facts about tariffs, you can look them up in WTO World Tariff Profiles 2024.
| Duty Free Trade by Value % | Agricultural | Non-Agricultural |
|
US Imports into Canada |
97.2% | 99.4% |
|
Canada Imports into US |
99.5% | 100.0% |
| Trade Weighted Average Tariff Rate | ||
|
Canada 3.4% Overall |
14.4% | 2.2% |
|
US 2.2% Overall |
4.0% | 2.1% |
If you want a real hard laugh, read about the President’s tariff inspiration from “Harvard trained expert Ron Vara“.
1. As has been pointed out, trade deficit is a totally crap way of setting tariffs… smaller nations have less buying power.
2. 3 Greek letters don’t make you scientific (much less, intelligent).
3. Trailer trash voted in a trailer trash “president” who went on to trash his home economy. What do you expect?
4. The big gob with no brains won on a ticket emotive to MAGons. Afghanistan over again.
5. Mafia Donnie cares only about his credit rating, doesn’t give a flying f*k about friends and allies.
6. Ukraine will be the biggest loser.
Hi John.
It’s tragic to see a Canadian doing a better recounting of US trade and economic history than could be done by maybe 80 percent of Americans, and a large fraction of US legislators, but that’s what it’s come to.
And even sadder that you provided the amped up official version of that equation, where the first two terms of the denominator taken together equal 1, in the interest of generating what appears to be complexity if you don’t do math.
I don’t know whether to blame incentive licensing or dropping the cw requirement.🤪
But practically speaking this continued slide down does affect ham radio. Pretty sure the balance of US hams tilt to the right, and the continued polarization of views impacts the fraternal nature of this hobby in ways subtle and otherwise that it did not 10 years ago.
Here’s hoping we can still interact positively with our friends to the North, if we have many left!
I’ve always been a big Trump supporter, but as a Canadian 25% Tariffs are going to devastate us. It’s not going to happen but I know a quick way to stop this nonsense. You want to play Hard Ball? Let’s play Hard Ball! Just cut off Hydro Electric power from flowing South. Cut off Oil and Gas from flowing South. Oh, but we have contracts! Yup. We sure did. It was called the Free Trade Deal, and Trump tore it up. Fair is fair. I think it would end quickly, but my Canadian brothers don’t have the b@lls to stand up to bullies.