The Expositor, like many businesses and consumers around the globe, has been following the tariff narrative(s) being proffered by The Donald, but it isn’t easy—the goalposts move so rapidly they might well be located on the backs of a herd of rabid squirrels.
With each erratic pronouncement coming from the White House, stock markets bounce about, mostly downward, thereby impacting the retirement savings of most of the US electorate (and more than a few Canadians), this despite intense lobbying from American and Canadian businesses begging the POTUS to stop the insanity.
One is left to wonder what the actual end goal might be. The stated goal, to onshore manufacturing jobs back to the US after decades of globalization, is obviously a long-term destination, given the many years it takes to build manufacturing facilities on the scale necessary to fill the gaps that will be left in the consumer stream by the loss of those products. The billionaires in control of the levers of power in the US say it is a sacrifice worth making—but it needs to be pointed out, they will have no problem feeding, clothing and housing their families.
Of course, the more conspiratorial minded amongst us might also wonder how much lucre people with an inside track on where things are going to end up can garner in all this chaos. Is it America that is being made great, or the bank accounts of the oligarchs currently in “control” of the speaking points? We put the word control in ellipsis because there is little indication that there is more than a “conception of a plan” in the mind of The Donald—using his own words.
There is scant hope that anyone will be able to delve into the truth for a very long time, as the current US president and his minions are busy sacking the very guardians of governmental ethics that might prove uncomfortable, while the oligarchs are snapping up those members of the Fifth Estate who might have the wherewithal to look into corruption.
The free market is fundamentally based on human greed and the US is proudly seated at the very epicentre of avarice–it is a foundational theme of America, albeit cloaked in expressions of freedom and liberty for all. For generations, the dispossessed of the world and those seeking a better life have flocked to its shores. Today, the gates to those dreams are being shut tight—the current population has got theirs, and they have no intention to share.
The influx of innovative minds into the US has long been an engine of growth and development of the American economy. The flood of desperate and hungry economic and social refugees has provided a steady source of cheap labour for the US economy since even before the country’s formation. As we write, legislators in the State of Florida are now seeking to overturn child labour laws in hopes of filling in the gaps in their working population created by that state’s overzealous deportation efforts.
Today, Wednesday, April 2, we will learn if The Donald has gone through with his threatened destruction of the integrated North American auto sector. There is little indication that he will, in fact, pull back yet again—but who knows. Well, you dear reader might, but this is Monday before The Donald’s vaunted Liberation Day, and we have no real idea how things will play out in the end. If we did, we could make ourselves a fortune on the futures market.
In the meantime, the world will likely continue to turn in the short term. There will be heartache and tragedy as those whose livelihoods are dashed on both sides of the border, but we will survive—likely much better than our counterparts to the south.
With a national health care system, much better than that of the US by the by, a social safety net that has yet to be gutted by privatization dreams of the more rabid on the right and a robust unemployment insurance system, we have the wherewithal to weather stormy weather, at least in the short term.
The decision facing Canadians in the coming weeks will centre on who would be better at protecting Canadian workers, our national health care and the social safety net that is there to catch us when we fall.
A federal election has never been so consequential.
