Wednesday was Donald Trump’s proclaimed Liberation Day in the United States.
It was the day his administration’s senses were liberated as they mistook tariffs for economic salvation, the day American consumers could look forward to their savings being liberated as they soon pay more for imported goods, and the day U.S. businesses can anticipate being liberated from keeping their workforces on their payrolls as countries eschew and tax American products.
It was staged at the White House’s Rose Garden as a momentous show of economic force that most every expert believes will prove farce, a professed shot across the bow that is really closer to a shot in the foot.
And, even though Canada didn’t get the full force of the dangerous gas, it was a sad day for two countries that like each other – to put it mildly—and whose historic relationship is now held hostage by a misguided handful of revisionists reckless and hellbent with their authority.
There is nothing financially freeing or emotionally empowering about this day, unless it’s an unleashing of harm on both counts to us and to themselves. In other years we would have considered this a transitory April Fool’s prank that arrived a day late, rather than a deadly serious threat that will stick for some time. Given the distorted state of mind that brought about these back-of-the-envelope tariffs scuttling free trade and abrogating a pact, it feels more like Libation Day.
We expected a cruel blow and, tender mercies, got a little less: no tariffs on goods compliant with the Canada-U.S.-Mexico trade agreement, but 25 per cent in the critical auto sector, in addition to existing 25-per-cent tariffs on steel and aluminum.
Now it will be our turn to not turn tail, to pretty much play the eye-for-an-eye game, to double down on the joint jolt to our standards of living in what seems a race to the moral bottom of the barrel of public policy, ideology and leadership.
There is little doubt that Prime Minister Mark Carney is one of the few who can say he has benefited from the shambles. He has rather just stood there and let the winds of public opinion about Trump—and to an extent, by association, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre—ease him into relevance and a lead in the polls on the strength of credentials alone.
He has had the benefit of the office without having properly earned it, and he has employed it shrewdly to cultivate a safety blanket persona, seeing European leaders and King Charles, calling together first ministers and his cabinet to reflect on the tariff threat, and working out what appeared Wednesday to be a form of détente with the U.S. president.
Not quite, I suspect. If he wins the election, he will still have to renegotiate a trade deal with a foot on his neck.
The closer we see Carney, the less he appears as our saviour and mostly just a more acceptable choice of deficient contestants—the guy Canadians believe would be Trumped the least.
He has been cribbing ideas and casting aside his own. His preposterous defence of now-former MP Paul Chiang – who merely called for people to cash in on a bounty of his opponent, so what’s the problem? – was a classic case of how not to let the mistake be amplified by its handling. It was a wake-up call on his inexperience and had echoes of Justin Trudeau’s indifference to common sense.
Mind you, the path to victory for Poilievre is only slightly less improbable than the path to the playoffs for the Vancouver Canucks. How it has come apart this year for the Tories is little different than how it has disassembled this year for the hockey team, two institutions riven by overconfident expectations, overbearing drama and overdrawn complacency.
The true believers will argue there is time for the Conservatives to reincarnate. But their hopes depend more on Carney stumbling than on their own steps, more on Poilievre morphing into Mr. Chuckles from Mr. Knuckles and waging a bloodless attack on Trump that risks the base support in the prayer it builds winnable support.
I wouldn’t—at least, yet—bet on that trifecta.
Kirk LaPointe is a Glacier Media columnist with an extensive background in journalism. He is vice-president, office of the chair, at Fulmer and Company.
