By Victor Davis Hanson
I want to talk, in two parts this time, about President Donald Trump’s problems he’s having with both Canada and Mexico, but let’s look at Canada first and we’ll talk later about Mexico.
He’s in hot water with the Canadians. He’s aroused a dormant nationalism. Justin Trudeau—who will step down as prime minister and hand the Liberal Party directorship and with it the prime ministership, under their parliamentary system, to Mark Carney—was headed toward defeat.
That whole party was headed toward defeat when Donald Trump started to troll them—“Art of the Deal”—sort of goad them in bombastic style that they should be the 51st state in the union of the United States. They got very angry about it, especially when he brought up a series of outstanding issues.
And the result is that a Conservative politician, Pierre Poilievre, may lose the election. And that would be tragic because Canadians are basically saying, in their anger at us, that if you’re liberal and you are anti-American, we’ll vote for you, but if you’re conservative and pro-American, they won’t.
We’ve got to correct that. But Donald Trump does have a point on a number of issues.
No. 1, Canada runs up a $50 billion surplus with us. It usually has, except for a few years, always run a surplus. But it’s getting bigger and bigger. It’s based on a couple of facts: exports to us, a lot of gas and oil and electricity, and it protects, in two different ways, both with tariffs and with state subsidies, its agricultural and timber industries. And it puts tariffs as high as 250% on things like American butter or milk or lumber and timber—things like that.
So, it’s running up a sizable trade surplus. I think it’s about the sixth nation in the world in terms of its surplus with the United States.
The second issue that Donald Trump has mentioned is the open border. Now, usually, we just think of border problems with Mexico. After all, we’ve got this long, long, historically calm border—unfortified, no fence, no wall—with Canada. But lately, there’s been some fentanyl—not as much, hardly as much as Mexico. Maybe 2% of fentanyl comes across from Canada. But there have been terrorists and there have been illegal aliens. So, Trump wants that border secure.
Third, Canada is a member of NATO. In 2014, there was an agreement that all NATO countries would supply 2% of their gross domestic product and defense spending. Canada is one of the lowest—it’s 1.3%.
This is astounding because in World War II, the Canadian Navy was the third largest in the world. Juno Beach, on D-Day, was reserved for the First Canadian Army. It had one of the most successful armies on the Allied side. It has a wonderful military tradition, and yet, they just laugh at the idea that they’re going to rearm.
And they’re not meeting their NATO commitments. And to be frank, in some ways, they’re subsidized by the United States with our North American NORAD shield. And they know that if any country were to threaten Canada—and I think that would be unlikely—the United States would step in and shield it and protect it.
So, there’s a trade surplus. There’s this problem with Trudeau that Trump does not—whom he does not like. And there’s a problem with an open border. And there’s a problem, as I said, with defense spending.
What’s the remedy? I wish it could be solved, this divide, by the absence of Pierre Trudeau, but it won’t. These other issues are outstanding.
We don’t want Canada as a 51st state. Donald Trump knows that. “Art of the Deal,” as I said, trolling style, he knows that. Canada is a very left-wing country. Socialized medicine. State-run industries. Its GDP is not as great as similar-size California, which also has 40 million people, but its per capita income averages about like Mississippi. I don’t think it’s as large as Mississippi’s per capita income.
But more importantly, if it was a state, it would get—the whole country as a state—it would get two left-wing senators and probably 50 left-wing House of Representatives.
So, let me just finish. How do we resolve it? All Canada has to do is lower its tariffs on certain American products and get the surplus down from $50 to $20 billion.
First published in The Daily Signal
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4 Responses
The author is apparently unaware that much of Canada despises liberalism/deathocratism.
@nad — Where is the alleged unawarenrss pertinent in the Canada/USA beneficient suggestions made by VDH?
Seems to me that the above beneficent suggestions are hampered by the country’s being stoney-broke; we have no money, despite the high taxation we all have to endure.
There are some (apparent) facts that seem to be missed, one of them being that almost half of the country works directly or indirectly for the government (at various levels: federal, provincial and local). Not a good position.
As for the extreme tariffs on milk products; Canada relies hugely on (government-run) “supply management” which is designed to cause shortages and therefore higher prices. So in this respect we are faced with a kind of double-jeopardy (and I happen to like cheese… when it’s affordable).
As for there being few, if any, external threats to Canada, we are a nation, as VDH indicates, that has a population of 40 million; about the same as California, spread out over a vast land. Seems to me that just about any country could invade and take over; China, with its enormous population, comes to mind; if it weren’t for the proximity of the US…
There’s more, much more, but as NaD indicates most of Canada despises “liberalism”… except for Ontario (which is the most populated) which contains two cities owned by liberal thinking: Ottawa (the capital) and Toronto….
One problem I have found with Americans is that they expect to be a power in the world, or exist in the world at all, and be entirely “safe”. Kathryn Jean Lopez once wrote “SAFE” or something like that in all caps in NRO as the core mandate of the US government. This is not the attitude of real people. National security is something one can manage better or worse. One is never “safe” in any absolute sense. Basically, stop whining.
Another is that most terrorists in the US have been born there, or raised there, or entered as adult immigrants, or on airline pilot training courses…. But one way or another, produced on home soil or directly imported. So when the occasional one comes in via Canada or tries to, then gets caught by us, OR missed by us and caught at the US border [which is where they really should be caught, since it’s the job of the US to protect the US] that’s called normality.
The same applies to fentanyl. The fentanyl problem is of American making- American drug companies, doctors, and some other forces that seem to mean a lot of Americans really want to be drug addicts. If anything, the US exported this problem to us. It’s not as bad as the drug wars of old, which were about denying supply to people who became addicts recreationally- at least this time it’s something that could actually happen to ordinary people. So when under 1% of the fentanyl that comes into the US from the outside comes via Canada, that’s rounding error stuff to be met by ordinary law enforcement cooperation that already exists.
On trade, yes. Free trade between us gutted some sectors of Canada, took moderate money from some sectors of the vastly larger US economy, and profited sectors of both countries. We perceive it as us having tied our fortunes to the US, which not all of us voted for, and now getting penalized. Yes, there are tariffs on things like dairy because we still want to have farmers up here. We’re like France, that way. It’s too small to make any difference to the American sector.
Ironically, I’m sympathetic to those defence ideas as things in the interest of Canada. Alas, under current circumstances, it sounds like another US effort to be SAFE from an as yet theoretical threat by exporting their defensive perimeter to include us, under threat of punishments.