Murray Wood: Who's scary... and who's scary good?
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Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe made a last-minute appeal to U.S. President Donald Trump on Friday not have any tariffs imposed on Canada.
Trump said he is going forward with 25 per cent levies on imports from Canada on Saturday.
“We would ask the Trump administration to not put those tariffs on, and we would also ask our federal government to address the priorities that President Trump has raised,” Moe told reporters at the legislature.
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“When you break down what has really been articulated as a priority for the President (Trump), it is stopping fentanyl, stopping illegal migrants and our NATO commitment.”
Moe said he thought many Canadians would agree with Trump on fentanyl.
“it’s not a drug at all. It’s poison,” he said. “It’s killing our families and our friends and our community members across this across the nation.”
Earlier Friday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Canada is ready to deliver a “purposeful, forceful but reasonable immediate” response to the tariffs. The federal government has said it has multiple options for retaliatory tariffs ready to deploy, depending on what Trump ultimately does.
Moe also reiterated on Friday previous comments that he thought retaliatory tariffs would be counter-productive.
Terry Duguid, federal Minister for Prairies Economic Development Canada, said the country is prepared for various scenarios of tariffs from Trump.
“We’ve been working on these for months, ever since Trump was was re-elected,” Duguid said.
“We will be ready. We will be strong. We will stand up for the prairies in Canada, and I’m very confident that the ministers who are front and center in this are very prepared.”
Duguid said he can’t speak to the tariffs plan until they are actually put in place, but said the federal government is prepared for anything.
“Everything is on the table,” he said. “We’re not going to reveal our hand until we do hear something final … We see the goal-posts moving every day. So I think we have to be calm and patient, but we have to be ready. And I think we are.”
Lower tariff on oil possible
Moe said the Saskatchewan government had been in meetings with various industry leaders in the agriculture, fertilizer, mining and oil and gas industries on “maybe diverting some of those products to other markets” if tariffs are imposed.
“We are an exporting province, certainly, and we are the highest exporting province of any in Canada, so we are concerned,” Moe said.
But … in Saskatchewan we are the least dependent province on our exports to the United States. That being said, they’re our largest trading partner, our most important trading partner and an ally so this scenario that we find ourselves in is both concerning and challenging.”
Trump also said on Friday he is considering a lower tariff on Canadian oil.
As he signed executive actions in the Oval Office, Trump was asked directly if he intends to hit Canadian crude with tariffs.
“I’m probably going to reduce the tariff a little bit on that,” Trump said. “I think we’re going to bring it down to 10 per cent on the oil.”
Trump claimed tariffs don’t cause inflation. He acknowledged Friday that “there could be some temporary short-term disruption” but said “people will understand that.”
Restricting trade ‘harms people’
Jason Childs, a professor of economics at the University of Regina, said any tariffs would cause harm.
“Anytime you get a restriction in trade, you generally make both parties poor,” he said. “So restricting trade tends to harm people, and that’s that’s something I think we should avoid.”
Childs said if the federal government put retaliatory tariffs on things like food, Canadians would see a price jump right away at the grocery store.
“So with fresh vegetables coming from the U.S. (for example), you’re going to get hit with a higher price fairly quickly,” he said.
Childs said two things would happen as a result of any tariffs.
“The U.S. are going to buy less stuff from us and they’re going to be willing to pay us a lower price net of the tariffs.”
If the tariff war persists, Childs said it would take a huge bite out of the Canadian economy, especially in Alberta and Saskatchewan.
He also said the Canadian dollar could drop.
“If our interest rates fall and the U.S. rates don’t, the Canadian dollar tends to fall in value most of the time,” he said.
“If we get these tariffs and we end up taking the big hit, then that’s going to put negative pressure on the dollar, and the dollar could drop as low as … 63, 62 cents U.S. We could take a big hit.”
He also said he wanted to know the nature of Canada’s “exit strategy.”
“We did this (tariffs) in Trump’s first presidency with steel and some other products, and the exit strategy was essentially a change in government,” he said.
“So is the exit strategy for our federal government four years of pain and misery and wait for the next federal election in the U.S.? I’m not convinced that’s a great strategy.”
Trump wants to recreate revenue like in 1890s
Trump has said that the U.S. government should raise more of its revenues from tariffs, as it did before the income tax became part of the Constitution in 1913. He claims, despite economic evidence to the contrary, that the U.S. was at its wealthiest in the 1890s under President William McKinley.
“We were the richest country in the world,” Trump said Friday. “We were a tariff country.”
Trump, who has aspired to remake America by using McKinley’s model, is conducting a real-time experiment that the economists who warn tariffs lead to higher prices are wrong. While the tariffs in his first term did not meaningfully increase overall inflation, he is now looking at tariffs on a much grander scale that could push up prices if they’re enduring policies.
Trump has fondly called McKinley, an Ohioan elected president in 1896 and 1900, the “tariff sheriff.”
— with files from 980 CJME’s Nicole Garn and Canadian Press
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