NAFTA: Equalizing trade and political posturing...

Canada’s Liberal Politics Behind Trudeau’s Antagonistic Trade Positions…

Posted on May 8, 2017 by sundance

Actually, seeing this outlined in Reuters is a very good sign of things to come.  The pending NAFTA trade renegotiation between the U.S. (Trump/Ross) and Canada (Trudeau) correctly viewed through the prism of Canadian politics.  This is exactly the correct perspective.

The larger liberal need is for Trudeau to pander to the constituencies of Quebec, even if it means economic disaster and crushing collapse for the entire country of Canada.  This reality is exactly the ideological zero-sum perspective of the liberal mind and worldview.

Complete economic disaster is what Prime Minister Trudeau will do to Canada if he chooses to continue positioning against the U.S. with President Donald J Trump.

VIA REUTERS – Canada escalated a trade dispute with United States by making threats Washington called inappropriate in part because Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is under pressure to secure support in a key region ahead of the country’s 2019 elections.

Washington last month slapped tariffs on timber imports, prompting Trudeau to say he was considering a ban on exports of U.S. coal through Pacific ports.

As well as lumber, the administration of President Donald Trump has targeted Canadian dairy farmers, while Boeing Corp (BA.N) launched a trade challenge against Montreal-based planemaker Bombardier Inc (BBDb.TO).

All three are vital to the economy of Quebec, Canada’s second most-populous province. And Quebec is seen as vital to Trudeau’s hopes of maintaining a strong grip on power in a national election set for October 2019.

As contentious talks on renegotiating NAFTA draw closer, Trudeau has little choice but to defend dairy farmers and offer help to the lumber industry, even though that is likely to prompt fresh U.S. challenges.

“Quebec is the key,” said one senior Liberal organizer.  (please read full article)

President Trump, Secretary Wilbur Ross and Trade Rep Robert Lighthizer will absolutely crush any international trade opponent in direct bilateral trade deals.  It’s really not hard for them to do; we are the biggest market in the world.

Shutting down access to the U.S. ($20+ trillion) market is the ultimate leverage and entire national economies can be forceably wiped out.  In an applied fair market system the end result of any renegotiated trade deal will be vastly more beneficial to U.S. workers and business interests.  Stunningly so.

In addition to the size of our economy, America is profoundly unique in that there is almost no product on the planet that cannot be replicated in the United States.  We are blessed with an abundance of energy, raw material, minerals and rich fertile land that can provide the basis for domestically manufactured/created products.  It is a remarkable point of distinction not found in any other region.

Additionally, our inherent American DNA strain is one of entrepreneurial existence.  We know how to do things, create things, and think completely outside the box on new and innovative ideas for things.   Yes, we are exceptional like that.

Reminder:

• Florida Power and Light won the prestigious International Edward Demming award for excellence in multi-platform engineering and efficiency superiority. They didn’t blow every global PhD business intellectual out of the water with slide rules, CAD programs and engineering acumen. They did it with hard hats and dirty fingernails.

Because they lost the award, the Japanese spent 6 months studying FPL and later published a 1,000 page dissertation essentially saying FPL “wasn’t really good, they were just lucky”….. FPL field leadership laughed, took out markers and wrote on the back of their hard hats: “WE’RE NOT GOOD, WE’RE RUCKY”….

• When every single Kuwaiti oil field was blown up by Saddam Hussein, they said it would take 5 years to cap them all off and restart their oil pumping industry. The Kuwaiti’s and Saudi’s called Texans, who had them all capped and back in working order in 6 to 10 months.

We are a nation that knows how to get shit done.

• When the Northern Chile mine workers were trapped two miles underground, they said no-one could save them. Who did they call for help? A bunch of hick miners from USA coal country who went down there, worked on the fly, engineered the rescue equipment on site, and saved everyone of them….

That’s our America.

• When a half-breed Islamic whack job, armed with an AK-47 and a goal to meet his fourty-seven virgins, began opening fire on a train in France – the Americans on board didn’t run to the nearest safe room and hide themselves amid baguettes and brie. They said “let’s go”, and beat the stuffing out of that little Islamic nut with a death wish.

Legion d’Honneur or not, that’s us.  That’s just how we roll.

Lady Liberty can stroll along the Champs-Elysées with a swagger befitting Mae West because without her arrival they’d be speaking German in the Louvre.  Yet for the better part of the past decade a group of intellectual something-or-others have been teaching an insufferable storyline that it’s better to be sitting around a campfire eating sustainable algae cakes and picking parasites off each other.

Enough.

When I hear Donald Trump say “Let’s Make America Great Again”, I also hear the familiar echo “cowboy up” people.

It’s high time we stop being embarrassed about our exceptional nature, and start being proud of it again.   Because when it matters most, when it really counts, when it’s really needed, there’s a whole bunch of people all around this world of ours that are mighty happy when swagger walks in to solve their problems.

Yeah, “let’s make America great again”.  Swagger on !