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If this can be a warfare, we’ve been shedding it for many years — lengthy earlier than the primary tariff shot was threatened, then holstered, by Donald Trump.
Printed Feb 07, 2025 • Final up to date 4 hours in the past • 3 minute learn
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Our present financial predicament is our personal fault: Look again over the previous 4 many years, and also you’ll see a Canadian economic system that has largely coasted on the again on the US. Photograph by Tony Caldwell /POSTMEDIA
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The 30-day pause of a possible 25-per-cent American tariff on Canadian items has simply detonated in our nationwide consciousness, shaking up our political class, industries, farmers and shoppers alike. All quarters are calling this a “trade war” and crying foul over U.S. President Donald Trump’s clear intent to violate the U.S.-Mexica-Canada commerce deal.
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However right here’s the uncomfortable fact: If this can be a warfare, we’ve been shedding it for many years — lengthy earlier than the primary tariff shot was threatened, then holstered, by Trump. Reasonably than lose ourselves in anger at Washington, we should always direct our frustration inward for the following 30 days. This so-called commerce warfare is definitely a jarring wake-up name to confront our longstanding financial atrophy.
Look again over the previous 4 many years, and also you’ll see a Canadian economic system that has largely coasted. For a time, our fortunes rose together with these of the People’: their spending, their progress, their demand. We eagerly stuffed our vehicles and pipelines, waved them south, and patted ourselves on the again for our “strong” exports.
However beneath the floor, our productiveness progress has stagnated at an alarming charge. We hover at a meagre 0.8 per cent annual productiveness enhance over the previous 20 years, whereas our greenback, which stood shoulder-to-shoulder with the buck simply 12 years in the past, now limps alongside at 69 cents. Our GDP per capita has fallen off a cliff relative to the US since 2013. That’s not a momentary dip; it’s a transparent signal we’ve grown much less aggressive through the years.
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Blaming the White Home for this disaster misses the bigger level: We’re on this predicament as a result of our complacency has allowed our personal economic system to atrophy. When was the final time we took a tough have a look at the choke factors hampering interprovincial commerce? When have we really streamlined vitality infrastructure approvals with out descending into partisan political skirmishes that stall the whole lot for years? And the way usually can we shrink back from frank discussions about rebuilding our army, which additionally occurs to be a driver of innovation and manufacturing? We desire to guess on the comfy establishment. Nicely, that guess has simply come due.
Make no mistake: If these tariffs materialize, they are going to damage Canadian industries, and within the quick time period, the results on all of us can be brutal. All the things from our lumber to our auto elements will abruptly face limitations that threaten layoffs and rising prices. Households and small companies alike will really feel the squeeze.
Higher from an ally than an enemy
But when we wanted a shove off the sofa and out of our complacent financial slumber, and the acute motivation to repair the structural points that plague our economic system, it’s infinitely higher that it comes from an ally than an enemy. America, for all its flaws, essentially requires our financial success. We’re their largest buying and selling associate and share probably the most peaceable border on Earth, in any case. Think about as an alternative if the wake-up name got here from a real adversary — China or Russia — who may relish our financial downfall. This isn’t that.
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Now now we have a possibility to repair what’s damaged, and the catalyst to really do it. We will begin by breaking down the ludicrous interprovincial commerce limitations that make it simpler to ship items from Ottawa to Buffalo than to British Columbia. We will streamline our environmental evaluations so essential vitality tasks don’t expire in regulatory purgatory. We will lastly meet our defence spending commitments and stimulate an ecosystem of analysis and innovation with actual business spin-offs.
Now now we have a possibility to repair what’s damaged, and the catalyst to really do it.
Our battered greenback must be a wake-up name that we have to put money into upskilling our workforce, modernizing our infrastructure and fostering homegrown entrepreneurship. And we have to diversify our buying and selling companions past simply the U.S., constructing stronger ties with Asia, Europe and rising markets — as a result of no single market ought to maintain us over a barrel ever once more.
So, no, this isn’t actually a “trade war.” This can be a long-overdue second of readability. We will preserve calling it a commerce warfare if that helps us vent our frustration, however that might be a ineffective option to spend the following 30 days.
Let’s seize the possibility to refocus on what really issues: an economic system that stands by itself two toes, pushed by innovation, productiveness and braveness. If that’s the course these potential tariffs push us, then perhaps — unpopular although it could be to say so — we must be grateful. Canadians have lengthy prided themselves on resilience. Now’s the time to show it.
Matthew Lombardi is an teacher within the MBA program at York College’s Schulich Faculty of Enterprise.
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