Nollaig Shona daoibh-Christmas Show

More than half of my content today is about this current rift between Donald Trump (I won’t be calling him president anytime soon) and Canada, Mexico and the rest of the world to a lesser degree. Mostly Canada as Mexico’s new el Presidente has told Trump to stick it where the sun doesn’t shine. Not in those words but, she has given Trump notice that he can either work with Mexico or not but she can get along without the U.S. since they have expanded their trade agreements with a lot of other countries now, most notably, China.

Don’t get me wrong but Mexico would take a serious economic hit by this twenty five percent tariff tax, if imposed, but Canada will take an even larger hit and that is my focus this week. Although Europe is also scrambling over this threat as well.

I found several news articles from the CBC Canada news that talks about how the provincial MP’s are gearing up to meet Trump’s demands for tighter border security to keep out the drug dealers and illegal immigrants, which are all good things. But Canada is struggling a bit to put this all together in a cohesive program.

The MP’s are implementing their own systems within their provinces, bypassing Ottawa for the moment, in a scramble to appease Trump. Trudeau is working on a federal response but the provinces aren’t waiting. Especially Alberta and Ontario.

The MP’s are upset that PM Trudeau went to Mar-A-Lago to try and convince Trump not to impose the tariff’s but all that did was convince the biggest bully on the planet to insult Canada even more. Calling Trudeau the governor of America’s 51st state, with Mexico the 52nd. Mexico blasted the notion and that was the end of it so far, but Canada? They took that insult pretty hard and are attempting to meet Trump’s standards at the same time, setting up retaliatory tariffs of their own in case they need them.

Canada exports four million barrels of oil a day to the U.S. Canada exports electricity and other energy products to 1.5 million U.S. customers from Minnesota to Maine. The MP’s could shut all of that off. They don’t want to and it would be a last resort scenario but the threat is there.

Canada exports a lot of raw ores to U.S. manufacturers, what few there are left, and they would take a huge hit if Canada were to impose retaliatory tariffs. I don’t think the U.S. corporate world will let that stand. If he doesn’t listen to anyone else, Trump does listen to the corporate billionaires when there are billions of dollars in profits at stake.

Canada also has other political problems as well. Their prime minister is very unpopular these days and the right wing nationalists under Poilievre are doing all they can to discredit poor Justin Trudeau and get him out of there. If the conservatives take over the federal government in Ottawa soon, Trump could see a different attitude from its northern neighbor and it won’t be a nice one. Canada’s conservatives are all about closing ranks against their aggressive neighbors to the south and telling Trump and company where to stick their 51st state idea.

To give everyone reading this a sense of just how the average Canadian views these insults from Donald Trump, I present a blog article from a Canadian writer who lives in the Canadian Maritimes. She doesn’t mince words and, although she talks about brotherly love, she says that ship has now sailed. Canadians from all spectrums of society are livid and stand behind whatever the Canadian government wants to do to preserve Canadian sovereignty and dignity.

Li in Medium.com