In a continued quest to destroy America’s international reputation, Trump decides that now is the perfect time to piss off Europe.
When Trump threatened Canada with 25% tariffs, the mainstream media was surprised. However, they quickly defaulted back to their standard position of being Trump apologists. They spent weeks arguing that these threats are simply negotiation tactics or that he would never follow through with this in general. After a while, the media even went so far as to go back to arguing that it’s all about border security and that if Canada just strengthened border security, this whole tariff thing would simply go away. This even after I pointed out that border security was nothing more than a red herring.
Well, this month, the completely predictable happened. It turns out, the mainstream media was dead wrong and I was right all along. Trump implemented those tariffs. During a question and answer section, Trump was asked what Canada could do to avoid the tariffs and Trump simply answered “nothing”. He was pressed on what concessions he was after and Trump simply responded that he isn’t after concessions. In that moment, the mainstream media’s push to say that he didn’t mean what he said went kersplat in just two questions.
By this point, even the Canadian government knew this had very little to nothing to do with border security since it was nothing more than a cover story. This was a dementia ridden senile old guy bullying other people just for the sheer fun of it. In response, both provincial governments (with the exception of Alberta whose Premier advocated for unconditional surrender to the American’s) and the Federal government initiated their plans to push back with counter-measures. American alcohol was taken off store shelves, Elon Musk faced sanctions over Starlink and Tesla products, and Canadian’s quickly got on board boycotting American goods and services.
When it became obvious that Canada and Mexico was prepared to hit back, Trump immediately backed down and delayed the tariffs by 30 days. Canadian’s and government officials obviously didn’t declare victory over this because it was clear that we were all going to go through this song and dance in a month anyway.
If there was one good thing out of all of this, it’s that this whole stupid affair kickstarted much needed conversations about Canada’s obvious over-reliance on the US for trade. Expanding Canada’s trade relationships with other countries was needed to happen at least a decade ago, but the “business as usual” mentality was so strong that the Canadian business sector simply didn’t even look at the possibility that the US might one day so something really stupid like this. Canada put all its eggs in one basket and that has finally bitten Canada.
Either way, the damage America has inflicted has already been done as Canadian’s begin working on kicking America out of their basket of goods. This as Canadian businesses rethink their total reliance on America.
In the aftermath of all of this, the immediate question for a lot of people is whether Trump got anything out of all those “deals” he got in exchange for delaying the tariff threat. Increasingly, the consensus is that he really didn’t get much of anything. From the Associated Press:
President Donald Trump’s threatened tariffs against Canada and Mexico — now on hold for a month — risked blowing up North America’s economy. What did the United States get out of his deals to pause the import taxes against the two nations?
Not all that much, according to people outside the administration looking at the agreements.
The Associated Press observed more than 100 members of the National Guard boarding a plane Tuesday morning in the southeastern city of Merida, bound for Ciudad Juarez. Additional units were scheduled to depart Cancun and Campeche, while still others were expected to move north by road.
They would join the more than 10,000 troops already stationed along Mexico’s northern border, whose presence has been unable to stifle persistent violence in a region closely held by organized crime to allow the smuggling of drugs, migrants and guns.
“It did not get the United States much at all from what it already had substantively,” said Josh Lipsky, a senior director at the Atlantic Council, a foreign policy think tank in Washington. Lipsky said Trump could have achieved the same results without the bad will generated by tariff threats.
In short, Trump got two geographic neighbours to get pissed off at the US and Trump got basically nothing out of it. A lot of what was agreed to was already in place from the Biden Administration. Regardless of how badly Trump lost after he blinked when other countries hit back, Trump naturally declared victory anyway despite basically accomplishing nothing and causing a huge diplomatic mess.
Fresh off of all of this, Trump decided to try and push the same scenario for Europe. Trump decided to rehash the same bullshit lies that Europe has treated America unfairly (same bullshit lies about Canada and Mexico) and threatened to put tariffs on the whole continent. From the Guardian:
The Polish prime minister, Donald Tusk, has said the EU should do all it can to avoid ‘totally unnecessary and stupid tariff wars’ after Donald Trump threatened to impose tariffs on European goods.
Germany’s chancellor, Olaf Scholz, said such a move would be ‘bad for the US and bad for Europe’ and stressed the need for cooperation.
The bloc’s foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, added there would be ‘no winners’ from the threatened trade war. Trump imposed tariffs on goods imported from Canada, Mexico and China on Saturday, leading to retaliation from all three countries.
The US president said on Sunday night that new tariffs on the EU would ‘definitely happen’
So, understandably, Europe is pissed off at Trump for his obvious stupidity. The thing is, European officials were watching what was happening with Canada and Mexico closely. It doesn’t take a super genius to learn that standing up to the bully president pays off. The threat of countermeasures was enough to get Trump to back down. After that, agree to commitments that were already made and Trump will have his phony victory lap.
Chances are, in the aftermath of such a trade war, Europe will likely find itself having similar questions on why the hell they bothered relying so much on the US in the first place.
Ultimately, beyond the concessions and threats, something much more valuable is being lost for the US: trust. Fewer and fewer people have a reason to trust that America would continue to be a reliable partner in the world. While temporarily truces and deals might be struck, it’s going to take a lot more to restore any kind of trust that America can be reliable in any way. Sure, Trump can get kicked out of office, but what’s stopping American’s from electing another person who is equally insane further down the line? Honestly, I don’t think there’s anything stopping that from happening. Much like what my open letter implies, stronger ties between nations outside of the US is badly needed. The sooner there is a mechanism in place for other nations to work around whenever the US goes full stupid, the better. After all, there’s a good possibility that nations like Canada will continue to be threatened for the next four years already. Might as well find some way of stabilizing the global economy.
