Tariff tit-for-tat

Trump’s given excuse for tariffs on Canadian products is so we stop sending fentanyl, but:

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/30/world/canada/canada-fentanyl-trump.html

“Last year, U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents intercepted about 19 kilograms of fentanyl at the northern border, compared with almost 9,600 kilograms at the border with Mexico”

That’s 500 times as much crossing your southern border. We are already fully engaged in shutting down Canadian fentanyl production any way we can.

Capitalism can’t work if contracts and treaties are not honoured. USMCA was a treaty with resolution mechanisms in it. Trump’s real reason for violating it with tariffs is because he wants the immediate income and does not care that it will damage his own economy in the long run. He will get away with it because the law will take too long to enforce and because of power imbalances.

Canadians know that appeasement wouldn’t work. He has no real complaint for us to mitigate. He just wants an excuse to tax American consumers instead of rich people. The only potentially functional Canadian response is to levy countervailing tariffs. We Canadians are not upset, just *sigh* determined. We will feel pain no matter how this thing goes; We must make sure American voters also feel some pain. Sorry to the nice Bulwark people, but we just have to do this now.