Editor’s Note: Since winning re-election in November, President-elect Donald Trump has revived threats of high tariffs, targeting Canada and Mexico with a 25% levy. He, Republicans, and the right-wing media have mused that if Canada wants to avoid the tariffs, it should just become the U.S.’ 51st state. Trump even resorted to publicly trolling and humiliating Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on social media, calling him the “Governor of the Great State of Canada.” In this guest op-ed, People’s Voice Editor Dave McKee argues that what Canada really needs is economic, trade, and foreign policies that chart a path independent of U.S. dominance – and he says working people can’t count on monopoly capitalists or the mainline political parties to craft that future.
It sure didn’t take long for Hurricane Trump to make landfall. Less than a month after the U.S. election, the president-elect announced his intention to impose 25% tariffs on all products from Mexico and Canada along with higher penalties on Chinese imorts.
Trump’s feverish flip-flops during his first term in office are the stuff of legend, but that doesn’t mean threats like this shouldn’t be taken seriously. Regardless of whether or not these tariffs are implemented, the announcement is a sharp indication of where the incoming executive branch stands.
Clearly, one of Trump’s priorities is the renegotiation of the USMCA (the “new NAFTA”) so that things like Canada’s agricultural supply management policies and the country’s public healthcare are put on the table and up for grabs. The tariff threat is a nasty but evidently quite effective way for him to bully the Canadian government (and perhaps that of Mexico) into delivering this big prize.
In a kind of neo-Manifest Destiny, Trump is trying to put the whole of the North American economy at his disposal. No doubt, this would be accompanied by unrelenting pressure to sell off public institutions and assets and privatize public services.
Of course, a 25% tariff would be devastating for working people in Canada as well as the United States and Mexico. In all likelihood, it would spark a severe recession which would lead to major loss of both public and private investment in the most useful areas of our economy – public services and infrastructure, productive industries, housing, etc.
It would certainly sound the death knell for the forestry industry, which is already suffering from the doubling of customs duties imposed over the past year. The auto industry would likely face a harsh and “permanent” downturn or even bankruptcy. The same could be true for the aeronautics industry; following Trump’s tariff announcement, Bombardier declined 9% on the stock market.
The Canadian business community has opportunistically jumped on this issue, pressing for an all-party united front to respond to Trump’s threat (in a way, of course, that serves the interests of private profit.) So, rather than oppose Trump and his anti-social, anti-democratic, anti-union and warmongering policies, private monopoly corporations are hoping to consolidate and extend their power by integrating with them.
After all, free trade is just a euphemism for “protectionism of monopoly interests.” The “protectionism” that Trump promotes is really just a globalized capitalist economy in which all countries open their borders to serve U.S. imperialism. Either way, corporate monopolies get more powerful at the expense of working people.
This is important for working people to know, especially since many labor and “left” leaders don’t seem to get it. Certainly, there has been a sharp reaction from Canadian unions and progressive organizations, noting the incredible destructive potential of Trump’s proposed tariffs. A lot of it is quite good and very welcome.
But there’s often also an underlying naïve belief that “our” monopoly corporations and “our” capitalist government will suddenly adopt some kind of altruistic nationalism and act in Canadian public interest against big bad Uncle Sam.
This isn’t the time to be cozying up to the corporate execs and flirting with tripartism. The only way out of this situation is to confront the power of the monopolies – including Canadian ones.
We need to mobilize and press for nationalization of key sectors of the economy – banks and financial corporations, energy, telecommunications, steel, and auto, among others.
We need to intensify the fight against U.S. imperialism and fight for independent foreign, trade, and industrial policies which put people’s needs ahead of corporate profit.
And we need to break away from the destructive logic of capitalism and build the movement for socialism.
People’s Voice
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