This is a painful column to write. All my life, I have seen the United States as the repository of mankind’s loftiest hopes and ambitions, the nation that would place its flag on Mars as surely as it did on the moon.
Even when the U.S. clashed with my British homeland, as when American troops invaded the Caribbean country of Grenada, a commonwealth member, in 1983, I still saw the U.S. as the good guys. So, indeed, did most Grenadians: The anniversary of the removal of their Marxist dictator is marked every year as Thanksgiving Day.
Most people in the Anglosphere feel the same way. British, Canadian, and Australian troops went into Iraq and Afghanistan, not because they had any interest there but because they felt the trauma of 9/11 as an attack on all the English-speaking peoples. If the U.S. was in a fight, so were they.
But not this time. It is impossible to back President Donald Trump’s aggressive trade war against Canada. Impossible, I hope, whether you are from Canada, the U.S., or a third country.
Canada no more provoked Trump’s tariffs than Ukraine provoked Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion. Trade across the 49th parallel — what Trump calls “a straight, artificial line” — is governed by the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, which replaced NAFTA in 2020. Who dictated the terms of the USMCA? Why, President Trump. And can you remember what he said when it came into force?
“The USMCA is the fairest, most balanced, and beneficial trade agreement we have ever signed into law,” he told factory workers in Michigan. “It’s the best agreement we’ve ever made.”
Before you dismiss that as off-the-cuff Trumpian hyperbole, look at the White House’s press release: “The deal marks a tremendous victory for American workers, farmers, manufacturers, and businesses alike. … Under the agreement, Canada has agreed to expand market access for American dairy, egg, and poultry producers.”
Canada has since done precisely that. I keep being told by the cohort of MAGA tariff enthusiasts who have suddenly sprung up online that Canada is responsible for the row because of its brutal dairy duties. I am reluctant to be drawn into an argument with new and anonymous accounts whose enthusiasm for tariffs is not matched by ability to spell the word. But, for the record, the value of U.S. dairy exports to the Big Dominion is more than three times the reverse, there are more cows in Wisconsin alone than in all the Canadian provinces put together, and, in any case, the tariffs have not been triggered, because U.S. exporters have not exceeded the tariff-free quota they are granted under the terms of the USMCA.
In other words, Trump is impoverishing American carmakers, construction workers, and consumers over a complete nonissue. In doing so, he is dividing the West, delighting Putin and, for what it’s worth, destroying the electoral prospects of the Canadian conservatives, who are, however absurdly, tarred by association with the GOP.
Can the U.S. still be trusted, either as a military ally or a commercial partner? When Australia signed its free trade agreement in 2005, it expressly exempted its steel and aluminum exports from national security tariffs. Yet Australia, too, is being hit by Trump’s levies despite having signed a deal that precluded that possibility in the clearest language lawyers could devise.
The other great English-speaking democracies have until now defined themselves, though they didn’t often admit it, as American auxiliaries, ready to deploy alongside the great power when the call came. As a result, they were free to specialize rather than develop full-spectrum defense capacity. They thought that when the chips were down, they could depend on the U.S. for heavy lift, advanced satellites, and, above all, nuclear protection. All of a sudden, there is talk in Britain of developing a wholly autonomous nuclear capacity, either with Europe or with the other commonwealth realms.
If Americans are not prepared, in the last analysis, to play the good guys, then there are no good guys. We are back to amoral great power jostling.
TRUMP THREATENS 200% ALCOHOL TARIFFS ON EU COUNTRIES
And for what? According to every poll, most Americans disagree with Trump’s tariff policies, a view shared by almost every business organization. The same polls show that most Americans still see the United Kingdom and Canada as allies. Whom exactly is this trade war supposed to impress?
To repeat, I don’t like writing this column. I would much rather be rhapsodizing about the Department of Government Efficiency and spending cuts and anti-woke and all the good things the administration is doing. But when the U.S. picks a needless fight with a friend, a friend that poses no conceivable threat, it is no longer the nation I grew up admiring.
This article was originally published at www.washingtonexaminer.com
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