Donald Trump is causing a lot of controversy around the world.
Not everyone is happy about him standing up for U.S. interests.
And now a major threat has been delivered about what one foreign leader might do to Trump.
Donald Trump has been flexing U.S. power globally in a new way that presidents have not utilized in a very long time.
For years, presidents have tried to stand up for American interests through the use of military power by invading and occupying other countries around the world.
But Trump has instead been using economic power via the threat of tariffs to get his way on important issues.
This is arguably far better, as it doesn’t require mass bloodshed in order to accomplish America’s mission.
But it still makes some foreign leaders very upset and causes them to want to retaliate against Trump.
That is exactly what Justin Trudeau’s former deputy prime minister is saying he is going to do in response to Donald Trump.
She is predicting that Trudeau will respond with heavy tariffs against the U.S., despite the fact that Canada’s economy is so heavily dependent on the U.S.
According to Breitbart, “Former Canadian Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland said Tuesday on CNN’s ‘OutFront’ that Canada would retaliate against any Trump administration tariffs by targeting Elon Musk’s Tesla and Wisconsin farmers.”
Here’s what Freeland said: “Our response is going to be smart and targeted. The tariffs that the U.S. is threatening Canada with are across the board, and they’re going to hurt you. Take aluminum, aluminum is basically electricity in solid form and in imposing a 25% tariff on Canadian aluminum, you’re hurting yourselves. You’re putting a 25% tax on electricity, and you actually need more electricity today in this AI race with China.”
She may be right that they will hurt the American economy, but they will hurt the Canadian economy far worse.
Canada has a smaller and far more dependent economy than America does and they cannot afford to lose access to the American market.
Freeland continued, “Our retaliation is going to be a lot more surgical than that. We are going to go after American stakeholders who matter to the White House. I have proposed a 100% tariff on all Teslas. I am calling on all the countries that are affected by this tariff to join us and our retaliation will target specific Trump constituencies. Another group that we’re going to go after is Wisconsin dairy farmers. We know how important they are for the president, and we’re not going to let them sell their products in Canada anymore.”
It seems that the goal is to hurt Trump’s political allies, but the smaller her target is, the easier it is for Trump to simply make up the difference by implementing policies to help those groups.
There is essentially no way for Canada to keep up with the type of tariffs that Trump is threatening them with, and they’d be best served to simply work with Trump on his goals.