Canada Can Make Trump Regret This Trade War | The Walrus

Filed 1h ago · Via The Walrus · The Buffoon Desk

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Circus of Freaks

Kevin MacLeod · incompetech.com · CC BY 4.0

Photo: Bob Jones · CC BY-SA 2.0 · via Wikimedia Commons

Prime Minister Mark Carney ended intensive trade negotiations with the U.S. in August, declaring 'we got attacked' after fresh American tariffs, and this opinion piece argues Canada's best move now is to make the fight costly rather than to try to match American economic power directly.

The essay draws on Sun Tzu and cases like Vietnam and Afghanistan to argue smaller powers can 'win' simply by denying a bigger power its expected quick victory, and suggests Canada target retaliatory tariffs at specific U.S. congressional districts to widen domestic American political divisions.

It cites an August Leger poll suggesting Canadians are willing to endure economic pain, and frames the stakes as Canadian economic independence against what it describes as an American push to restrict Canada to raw-material exports on U.S. terms.

The full dispatch is available from the source below.

✒ FROM THE EDITORIAL DESK

Comparing a tariff fight to Vietnam is the kind of thing that sounds sharp in an essay and a little much once you say it out loud about aluminum and potash. Still, the underlying point holds up without the historical dressing: a country that can outlast a bully doesn't need to out-muscle him. Whether Ottawa has the stomach for a long, grinding standoff is a different question than whether the strategy is clever on paper.

Source: Read the original at The Walrus → Scored: Circus of Freaks · Kevin MacLeod · CC BY 4.0

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