The dossier Trudeau took to Mar-a-Lago
Facts and figures that turned out to be useless in trade dispute
Last fall, before the Trump shitstorm, advisers to the prime minister saw the black clouds gathering to the south. The new president had not yet been sworn into office, but it was clear Canada was in the crosshairs.
Then-prime minister Justin Trudeau flew to Trump’s Florida resort of Mar-a-Lago to try to mitigate any potential damage. During the flight to that sad Nov. 29 dinner, he was briefed with a blizzard of facts on Canada-U.S. trade, and was provided with biographies of key American players.
You can read the 27-page dossier, significantly redacted, here. It was obtained under the Access to information Act:
As events turned out, facts mattered not at all to the Trump White House. The self-described “very stable genius” was in full tariff mode, determined to loose voodoo economics upon the whole world. Then he went golfing.
Facts do matter to most of us, though. The dossier concisely lays out, in retrospect, the exquisite insanity of the tariffs. The new import taxes against Canada not only shoot America in the foot. They wound the other foot, along with both arms and the neck. And we’re just one of the countries targeted.
To highlight an aspect of the dossier, the U.S. is a huge source of drugs coming into Canada, including fentanyl, heroin and cocaine:
America is also a significant source of illegal firearms:
The claim that Canada is somehow a drug corridor into the heart of America is bogus. If any country had reason to declare a border emergency, it’s Canada - but we know that solving real problems requires real cross-border co-operation.
The dossier goes on to outline how the two economies complement one another, in energy, critical minerals and auto manufacturing.
Many of the statistics are not new, but the compilation is a powerful rebuke to the continuing chicanery of Trump and his enablers. Submitted for your approval, as we enter the Twilight Zone.
Soooo…not exactly “useless” as headline says. :-)