The United States decided to throw the North American Free Trade Agreement out the window and impose tariffs on Canadian and Mexican goods.
This could mean interesting and hard times ahead. The Canadian economy is very dependent on selling to the United States. Consider this a wake up call for Canada to expand its customer base. The question will be if we as citizens are prepared for the economic pain that may mean. We have had all our eggs in one basket for a long time.
It also may be advantageous for Canada to expand it’s own manufacturing of products. Something we have always been poor at, instead happy to export raw resources elsewhere to be processed.
Regardless, nothing is going to happen overnight, except, of course, the tariffs.
The Whitehouse says the tariffs are necessary in Canada due to fentanyl and people entering the United States through the northern border. Although the problem is minuscule compared to the southern border it doesn’t mean we can’t do better, and we will and have put in measures to do so.
The underlining truth is the White House may see tariffs as a way to pay down their massive deficit. Fentanyl and people entering the United States illegally probably has nothing to do with implementing tariffs. Just as weapons of mass destruction had nothing to do with Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld justifying invading Iraq.
Canadians may have to exercise our own, often understated yet proven, resilience and patriotism to weather the coming storm.
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AND speaking of the weather! Our mild winter continues. A bit of blowing snow. Swans in the wetlands seem early to arrive, maybe they are holdouts. The clouds continue to push down. It would be nice to see some blue sky this season.
I smoke marijuana every chance I get. – Allen Ginsberg
Part of being Canadian is listening to American politics. It dominates most of TV channels and internet news. It also headlines much of Canadian news sources. CBC News, for instance, often opens with what Donald Trump has been up to. It has been said, Canadians know more about American politics than our own Canadian government and it’s goings on.
Our Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, has done his fair share of stupid things in recent years including being caught red handed in scandal; sexual, legal and political. He even dressed in blackface with a banana down his pants. However, he has skated through it all unscathed. Of course, it helps when the leader of the free world, Donald Trump, is stealing all the headlines with his own shenanigans. It’s like having a bad brother. Just when you think you are in trouble with Mom he has done something worse and let you off the hook.
If you follow American news you know Trump’s nemesis Nancy Pelosi was caught on security footage getting her hair done in a closed salon and. . . wait for it. . . the 80 year old Speaker of the House of Representatives, didn’t have a mask. Furthermore the owner of the Salon, not the person doing her hair, was outraged that she is closed while a politician, seemingly skipped protocol to have her hair styled.
Okay, I know what you are thinking, how can this be news!
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But it gets better.
Pelosi released a statement saying, she was set up. Caught red-handed getting her hair done, using her influence to have her hair washed, cut and styled without a mask. I know, I know these are serious allegations.
A set up that must have had America’s greatest evil Republican Party minds working overtime, night and day to pull off.
Now here is the punch line ( if you didn’t think it could get any funnier).
Donald Trump, as he is known to do, tweeted:
“Nancy Pelosi says she got ‘set up’ by a beauty Parlour owner. Maybe the Beauty Parlour owner should be running the House of Representatives instead of Crazy Nancy?”
Okay, all I can say is Holy Fuckin’ Shit! The whole thing is beyond funny. All the writers from Saturday Night Live, Late Night With David Letterman and Conan O’Brien couldn’t come up with anything funnier!
And it’s all coming from old people, Trump, Pelosi, Biden, Schiff, Sanders. Cripes, it’s like the Golden Girls meet the Muppets. And not the good muppets like Kermit and Grover, but those old grumpy men in the balcony.
People should consider Trump isn’t serious about his position, he enjoys driving people crazy. When he ran he probably didn’t even want to get in. Now President he is making a joke of it, getting back at all the people that laughed at him over the years. After all he has been a joke his entire life.
If he was a Canadian politician, Trump would have ran as a Rhinoceros Party candidate, promising to tear down the Rocky Mountains so Albertans could enjoy the West Coast sunsets.
I can’t imagine Trump getting back in for a second term, even going up against ‘Sleepy Slow Biden’, (Trump’s nickname for Mr. Biden not mine).
Once Trump is out I hope he writes a book saying he was never serious, it was all a joke and America had to be reminded to laugh at themselves.
This may seem flippant, but I don’t mean it that way. America under Trump has killed fewer poor people overseas in the name of justice, oil or weapons of mass destruction (opps sorry about that. . . bad intel.) than his predecessors.
In a perfect world, perhaps, history will look back on Trump as a comic satirist in the same vein as Sacha Baron Cohen or Mark Twain.
All I know is I can’t take it all too seriously, and when it shows up on CBC it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s news.
Like Allen Ginsberg asked a long time ago:
America this is quite serious. America this is the impression I get from looking in the television set. America is this correct?
Palliser Pass 