Other than the possibility he’s still seething over the time Melania made eyes at Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Donald Trump’s obsession with beating up Canada makes little sense.
Certainly, it’s been baffling to watch the U.S. president repeatedly threaten to turn us into the 51st state, with designs on Panama and Greenland too.
So, what’s driving Trump’s sudden transformation from a frivolous con artist (best known for boasting he could get away with grabbing women by their body parts) into a menacing territorial aggressor?
Forbes magazine offered a clue in a piece by a prominent Wall Street commentator arguing that Trump and his crowd have “bold geopolitical ambitions.”
Garth Friesen, a former hedge fund manager and central banker, noted that the acquisition of Canada and Greenland would make the U.S. the world’s largest territorial land mass, giving it access to an enormous store of natural resources, rare minerals and freshwater.
“The main prize would be the Arctic,” Friesen wrote, since the annexation of Canada “would counterbalance the growing Russian and Chinese presence in the Arctic while securing control over critical shipping routes.”
So much for the notion that saner people might talk Trump out of his expansionist trance. Here we have an influential Wall Street player writing in the leading U.S. business magazine that Trump’s “brash and bold … geopolitical agenda has strategic merit for the United States.”
Whoa Nellie!
More likely, Trump’s Attila-the-Hun impersonation is about gaining greater control over Canada and making Canada more like the U.S. — without technically erasing the border and actually giving us votes in U.S. elections.
Tellingly, there seems to be support for this deeper integration among some Canadian right-wingers and business interests.
While they’re careful not to express support for Trump at a time when most Canadians consider him Public Enemy No. 1, they’re keen to use this crisis to push their long-time agenda of creating a more privatized, Americanized version of Canada.
In a commentary published by the right-wing Fraser Institute — which receives funding from American private foundations — B.C. economist Cornelis van Kooten argues that Canadians “should be open to economic union with the U.S.”
He fails to mention that Canada would be completely dominated in such a union. Washington would control our fiscal and monetary policy, our regulations and our labour laws (the U.S. federal minimum wage is $7.25 an hour, where it’s been for 15 years). We’d end up with weakened environmental laws, less public health care and lots more guns.
So, we should make use of the 30-day reprieve Canada won to think of strong, creative ways to resist Trump and the acquiescence of Canadian compradors.
In addition to imposing tariffs on products from Republican and swing states, Canada should target U.S. oligarchs like Elon Musk — just as we targeted Russian oligarchs over Ukraine invasion.
Renowned French economist Gabriel Zucman recommends that Canada (and Mexico) put “tariffs” on U.S. oligarchs, whose wealth depends on access to foreign markets.
“If Tesla wants to sell cars in Canada and Mexico, then Musk himself, as main shareholder of Tesla, should have to pay tax in Canada & Mexico,” Zucman tweeted. “Put a wealth tax on him, and condition Tesla’s market access to him paying the tax.”
If that sounds too gutsy, let’s not forget that Brazil took on Musk last fall in a dispute over far-right accounts on his social media platform — and Brazil won.
Also, we could enforce already-existing federal laws aimed at ensuring Canadian ownership of our media outlets. Under these laws, Ottawa could require that Postmedia, the largest newspaper chain in Canada, be sold to Canadians. Postmedia is owned by a U.S. hedge fund based in New Jersey, with close ties to Trump.
What a wild idea: that Canada’s largest newspaper chain be Canadian owned!
Let’s be ready with lots of ideas like this if Trump decides to proceed with his preposterous trade war.
This article was originally published in the Toronto Star.
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