I think I first recognized how serious this Trump tariff stuff was when my sister called from the southern U.S. For the past couple of winters, she and her husband have driven south to escape the toughest part of winter.
But when the president of the United States first hinted at absorbing Canada as a 51st state, almost overnight my sister and brother-in-law responded.
“We don’t like where this is going,” she emailed. “We’re coming home.” And within a couple of days, they’d crossed the border and texted, “Home, sweet home.”
On Tuesday morning I caught Anita Anand, federal minister of transport and internal trade, explaining the latest on all this on radio. In an interview on CBC, she calmly announced what amounts to an international trade war between Canada and the U.S.
“The executive order that Donald Trump signed at the beginning of February – 25 per cent tariffs on Canadian products and 10 per cent on energy – came into effect on Monday evening.” She said and added that Canada had responded at 12:01 a.m. Tuesday morning with what will begin with $155 billion in retaliatory counter tariffs immediately.
Well, economics are not my strong suit, and there are too many stratospheric figures being exchanged between Donald Trump and the Canadian government for me to understand. What I do understand, however, is the fascinating (and maybe encouraging) grassroots response here in Canada.
It seemed every other person I’ve met online or in the street the past few weeks, talks about choosing to avoid anything, absolutely everything American. Like my sister, a lot of friends – mostly average people with average incomes and average aspirations for their families and themselves – have pulled the plug on any notion of spending discretionary income travelling to the U.S. until Trump changes his mind or is gone.
And, like a lot of people I bump into in town, I’m reading plenty of labels in both the big-box stores and shops downtown; I’m consciously buying anything but American-made products. And I gather that it’s already having an impact; a Leger Marketing poll taken on Monday March 3 reported that fully two-thirds of Canadian consumers are buying fewer American products. Economists call the phenomenon “the pain of sentiment change.”
I also caught Doug Ford declaring on Monday night, “If they want to annihilate Ontario, I will do anything, including cutting off their energy, and I’ll do it with a smile on my face.”
He told NBC News that pulling the plug on American centres would amount to turning off lights and electrical heating to 1.5 million homes and manufacturing facilities in New York, Michigan and Minnesota.
Again, I cannot conceive of the massive number of kilowatts eliminated, but it all reminds me of a time 50 years ago when some in this country foresaw the need for Canada to become more self-sufficient than we were. Coincidentally, my author friend Tom Taylor texted me also Tuesday morning, reminding me of history repeating itself.
“Back in the 1960s and ’70s, the Committee for an Independent Canada (CIC) warned that the U.S. would call the shots if we let ourselves become too dependent on their trade and their ownership of our industry,” Taylor wrote.
At the time, Canadian business, political and cultural leaders (such as Mel Hurtig, Walter Gordon, Abraham Rotstein and Pierre Berton) petitioned the federal government to limit foreign investment and ownership in Canada; eventually, then prime minister Pierre Trudeau harnessed such thinking for the creation of the Canada Development Corporation (CDC), Petro-Canada and the Foreign Investment Review Agency to help generate homegrown products and services.
I fully endorsed that nationalistic dream of nurturing things Canadian, even if they might cost more to buy. I started then, and continue today, to seek out banks, books, broadcasts and other products and services that are Canadian made.
It’s tougher than ever, because over time all those products and services I favoured or needed, ended up being bought up, gobbled up or squeezed out by foreign ownership. The CIC and CDC disappeared long ago and so ever since, my search for things Canadian often ends in failure.
However, I still buy certain products from the U.K. as opposed to the U.S. I apologize, but I haven’t bought a North-American-made car in nearly 50 years. And if it comes to a choice, I’ll buy a Canadian book, CD, DVD, or vinyl before anything offshore.
When asked how this international tariff war ends, Anita Anand said simply, “We need to … buy Canadian, hire Canadian, travel Canadian and choose Canadian.”
I guess that makes it official.