Conrad Black: Carney is fearmongering his way into the PMO

As was widely predicted, including in this column, U.S. President Donald Trump’s initial brinkmanship remarks about Canada and tariffs were his usual shock and awe technique for commencing negotiations. At his “Liberation Day” ceremony on the White House lawn on Wednesday, almost no new tariffs were proposed for Canada and his only direct references to Canada were about our exorbitant and antediluvian supply management measures that cushion the incomes of a large number of Canada’s farmers with artificially inflated prices. This has been a particular bugbear of People’s Party Leader Maxime Bernier and a ludicrous anomaly that we should not have needed the president of the United States to highlight for us. The best way to deal with farm income insufficiencies is direct income supplements to the farmers, not forcing the entire population to overpay for what they put on their breakfast table.

The tariff on Canadian automobiles will be substantially mitigated by the portions of them that originate in the United States. We certainly have a full arsenal of replies to the tariffs on steel, aluminum, oil and potash. We should offer a reciprocal abolition of all tariffs between the U.S. and Canada, and if that is not acceptable, we should ignore U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s advice not to retaliate. Canada is a fair trading country and should not turn the other cheek. Trump has legitimate complaints against many other countries and is right to update tariff policy, but Trump’s complaints against Canada are bunk. He has said he will negotiate and it will not be difficult to reach a reasonable compromise. -- More...