American Politics – Page 20

Does Donald Trump even like America?

November 2, 2017 by Peter Lowry

If President Donald Trump takes any pride in the United States of America, he has a funny way of showing it. Did he run for the presidency as a joke or to get even? Maybe he was tired of being considered a joke? In his ignorance, Trump is giving the bird (as only a New Yorker can) to America’s two best customers and friends. You might think that is stupid. I might think it is stupid. What it can be is also a long-delayed reality for America’s friends.

Trump is trying to bully America’s two best customers over the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). The two countries combine to buy more than a third of America’s exports. If Trump thinks this is a bad deal, nobody has explained to him what it means in terms of the balance of payments. He is setting a phenomenal record as the first person in the world to gamble US$500 billion. And that is just the goods sold each year.

He insults the intelligence of Canadians. To Mexicans, he adds racial slurs. It will take a long time for Americans to repair the harm Trump is doing in race relations with many peoples.

Trump seems to be oblivious to the trade deal Canada has already arranged with the European Union, the ongoing relationship with the United Kingdom and the British Commonwealth and the ease with which Canada can make deals in Asia.

And if Trump starts to play fast and loose with the automotive sector, he will find himself in more trouble with the automobile companies and their unions than he has ever expected. It would be very interesting to know what those companies intend to do if they are faced with drawing back all manufacturing to the U.S. Would Americans stand back and be quiet as Trump bankrupts General Motors?

But for Canadians, this is not only a wake-up call but a new-found freedom. Up-front, Canada can save a billion dollars in not twinning that bridge at Detroit. Niagara Falls, Ontario can have its own outlet malls for price cutting on European and Canadian goods that Americans cannot resist. The best price winter holidays for Canadians will be in the south of France and Spain and for a little more, there are the Greek Islands.

While Canada could take a hit as hard as 2.5 per cent of gross domestic product in the first year without NAFTA, there would be a long line of American manufacturers wanting to bring some of their manufacturing plants back to Canada to take advantage of relations with markets in Asia and Europe. Trump can have his introverted Buy America, Canadians can sell to the world.

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Trump’s Triumph.

October 31, 2017 by Peter Lowry

It could become a bigger parlor game than Monopoly. It seems appropriate to introduce it on Halloween. Our latest board game enables players to have fun ridiculing U.S. President Donald Trump. We are calling the new game Trump’s Triumph. It is both hilarious and horrifying—and how can you beat that? It is based on the most outrageous scenarios and how Trump would pull it off. Every time a player tops all others, he or she gets to be part of Trump’s Roman triumph down Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington.

One of the more interesting scenarios is based on what happens after Trump cancels the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). This assumes that he has been secretly negotiating with Russia to replace Canada and Mexico in the hearts and minds and wallets of Americans. After all it is only $500 billion in trade that he needs to replace. Just do not try to compute that $500 billion in Rubles—you will end up with a headache.

But it will be Trump’s Washington Triumph that will be the most fun. Imagine Trump and Putin sitting on the backs of matching open convertibles. (The armoured shields will only have to be raised as the convertibles pass the Canadian Embassy.)

It would also be fun to have the then current Canadian prime minister and Mexican president in chains walking behind Trump and Putin. They would be followed by the last Canadian-made Chevrolet and the last Mexican-made Toyota. They would be followed by a tow truck hauling the first Russian Lada made for the American market.

As you can see, it is a two-part game with the players coming up with outrageous actions by President Trump that he will carelessly inflict on American citizens. These actions can be done for his fun or profit. It little matters how much he will gain in wealth as his actions will likely destroy the value of the American dollar for a very long time.

The second part of the game is to see who has had enough to drink at the party to come up with the most outlandish but plausible aspects of a triumph for President Trump. The only stipulation is that the player has to find imaginative ways to keep Mr. Trump in office to allow the next player to have a turn.

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Curating the consensus of the crowd.

October 28, 2017 by Peter Lowry

It is most unlikely that Maude Barlow and the membership of the Council of Canadians see Canada’s future as being a pastoral society. It just appears by the collective’s recent policy consensus that this is what they want. What it might be telling us is that Maude’s days as curator for the Council could be numbered. It needs more of the strength and determination she brought to the movement back in the 1980s and 90s.

It is hardly that I disagree with any of the priorities selected by the membership. The problem is that they have selected principles over actions. Of the five top priorities of the membership there was only one pro-active item. National Pharmacare is long overdue and we should have pushed it through in the 1960s when our national politicians were still listening to us.

But the rest are platitudes. The care of our lakes and rivers is automatic and motherhood. You can get that from the Green Party, and nothing much else. Deals such as the Nestlé water grab are a matter of some serious talk with the politicians. Pipelines for bitumen from the tar sands are anathema to anyone who gives a damn about the environment.

But then you have to clear the collective’s head on the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). To fix NAFTA, you have to know what clauses and how you are going to fix them. You cannot just say you are going to protect people’s jobs. Why would you do that? Free trade is designed to get around that old, out-dated attitude. The way to handle that problem is to save the other guy’s workers. You do not tell him to get rid of child workers, you make him send them to school. You make sure nobody is being exploited. You have to be assured that all workers’ rights are safe-guarded. Then you have a level ground for your trade agreement.

Think about it: who is President Trump really protecting when he talks about an unfair NAFTA? Is he speaking of protecting the hourly-wage worker or the profits of his corporate cronies?

In a business career working with computer companies, I never saw computer automation replace a human worker that did not open up two better, more challenging jobs. The attitude should always be: if your job can be done better by a machine, it should be.

But you hardly need to worry about automation and trade deals in a pastoral society. Our Council of Canadians need to get out and tend their sheep.

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Bad bodings for Brown.

October 26, 2017 by Peter Lowry

A large piece of the Ontario provincial Conservative’s election campaign went bye-bye the other day. Brown and his buddies must have been sitting around the party headquarters war room contemplating what might have been. The directed verdict of a Sudbury, Ontario judge cut the campaign off at the knees. The campaign using Donald Trump’s “Corrupt Hillary” theme would not work.

The problem for Brown and buddies is that any claim of corruption had to have a believability factor. You not only needed people who dislike the premier anyway but you needed that “maybe” factor. Without that maybe factor, the voters would know you were blowing smoke.

Consider how unlikely it would have been for Trump to win that election in the United States if there was not a question mark in many voters’ minds that maybe Hillary Clinton really was corrupt. And then, it was the credibility given the claim, in the last few days of the election, by the former Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, that threw the election. Finding out that the information was wrong after the election does not get your vote back.

Donald Trump had the money and the cunning and the lack of scruples and the luck to create the perfect storm. He also had a woman as an opponent who expected him to try to act like a politician and make mistakes. Trump was a political mistake from the get-go. His money made his campaign possible and his naiveté worked for him.

Brown’s problem is that his life is politics. He seems to have no problem doing what is mean, vicious and uncaring but his reflexes are directional and predictably political. He is unlikely to survive a debate with Kathleen Wynne. He does not operate on that plateau. It could be good television if it happens.

Brown’s buddies will have to find a stronger way to link Kathleen Wynne with corruption. We have seen in the test commercials that they are taking a reading on the idea of some mysterious “friends of Kathleen” being the benefactors of corruption but that is unlikely to catch on. The older gas plant kafuffle cannot do the job alone as the premier was never directly involved.

It would be nice to say that we are sorry that Patrick Brown is having these problems: But we are not.

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Bad business at Bombardier.

October 22, 2017 by Peter Lowry

You sometimes wonder what kind of business people are running Bombardier. They got sucker punched by Boeing in the United States and they ran crying into the arms of Airbus. This was a desperation move and was too soon. Airbus smelled the fear and they ended up owning the Canadian company’s C Series aircraft business.

Bombardier is a company built on Canadian dreams. It grew with the country. It reflected our complexity. The original company had élan and nerve. It set out to serve its market. It developed the machines that could traverse our winter snows for business and pleasure. There is nothing more Canadian than hockey and the Ski-doo.

Bombardier, based in Montreal, has become am international corporation with more than 60,000 employees and revenues of over $16 billion. Today, it is in the business of building planes, trains and trams.

Mind you, it has hurt its business relationship with constant delays in delivering new street cars to Toronto. With Toronto being the financial capital of Canada, the city is a customer they should be eager to please.

There have also been continuing delays in meeting its schedules with the C Series regional jets. This is a market niche that Bombardier can dominate if it can just meet deadlines.

It also did not help that in answer to the Boeing complaint, the American government slapped a deal-blocking 300 per cent tariff on Bombardier’s sale of C Series planes to Delta Airlines. Despite Boeing having no competitive product for the regional carrier market, the Americans gave Canada the dirty end of the stick.

Boeing would not have wasted its time in this squabble if it not for the current review of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). If the Trump administration can be belligerent bullies and unreasonable, why should Boeing not take part in the same game?

If Canada had proper representation in Washington, we would not be putting up with the crap being fed us by Trump. It is time Canadians stood on their hind legs and said enough is enough. Just because the United States is next door, does not make it the best trading partner. There has to be fair trade before there can be free trade.

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Trump stands steadfast, Justin.

October 13, 2017 by Peter Lowry

Prime Minister Trudeau dropped in to the White House to see President Trump the other day. It is likely that two minutes after Trudeau left the Oval Office, Donald Trump had forgotten what they had said. It is not just that the man has a short attention span but he has absolutely no interest in what the Canadian wants. He is stuck in the tangles of his own agenda.

It is like his wall. All he wants to do is build a wall across the southern border of the United States to keep out the Mexicans who, he thinks, want to take the jobs of loyal Americans. And he hardly wants to worry about who is going to pay for the wall at this stage. He wants to build the wall and figure out how to get the Mexicans to pay for it later.

Or take Obamacare. The poor guy cannot even negotiate a deal to get rid of Obamacare. He just cannot understand why these elected politicos in Congress are so reluctant to deprive millions of Americans of their only chance for medical programs?

And, not being a politician, Trump has no understanding of how to weasel out of political promises you cannot keep. Justin Trudeau could tell him how—he is getting some practice at that himself lately.

Trump said on the platform throughout that awful campaign of 2016 that he was going to end the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). The people who were supporting Trump were too ignorant to know that the trade deal benefitted America, lowered prices and created jobs. They saw it as a threat to jobs for Americans and moving them off-shore. So, Trump promised to Kill NAFTA for them and they roared their approval.

But Trump has no clear way to end NAFTA, Under the terms of the agreement, there is a six months clause to a cancellation but American law does not make it clear how this can be done. NAFTA was approved by Congress more than 25 years ago and Congress is not about to let Donald Trump usurp their authority. Whether Congress controls the agreement or the American President can unilaterally cancel it could end up being decided by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Justin Trudeau’s father once made some remarks in Washington about Canada-U.S. relations being similar to sleeping with an elephant. Donald Trump has turned out to be a nightmare.

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Americans bomb Bombardier.

October 3, 2017 by Peter Lowry

Quebec Premier Philippe Couillard and the prime ministers of both the United Kingdom and Canada are furious and have spoken out angrily about the proposed 219.6 per cent duty on Bombardier planes purchased by Delta Airlines. This is a direct and brutal attack on the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and on the very existence of an aircraft industry anywhere other than in the United States.

Mr. Trump has found a way to make America great again—all he thinks he has to do is beggar his neighbours.

With the completion last Wednesday of the Ottawa round of NAFTA negotiations, it is now obvious that the Americans are not bargaining in good faith. They have laid out no expectations for the more contentious issues. While publicly stating that the 62.5 per cent American content on automoniles is not good enough, there does not seem to have been information received by Canada or Mexico on a way to increase American content, or if it is even possible under NAFTA.

It is the same problem with Canada’s supply management in agriculture. Without some indication as to what they want, Canadians are left with President Trump’s ranting about milk and cheese. The problem is that Mr. Trump is totally ignorant about Canada’s approach to this and his NAFTA negotiators seem to have no direction.

It is obvious that the American negotiators were blind-sided by the Bombardier ruling as much the Canadians. It is hardly a simple duty charge when you increase the purchase price by as much as three times. It is as much to say as ‘Get out and stay out.’ Why the American negotiators did not go back to Washington and resign does not speak well for their moral fibre.

Mind you, the Canadian and Mexican negotiators and their political bosses share the problem. The serious question is can diplomacy work when you are dealing with an blow-hard such as President Trump. He does not speak ‘diplomacy.’ The only language Mr. Trump seems to understand are the spread sheets of the financial managers who did the funding of his grandiose development projects.

If I were in Justin Trudeau’s or Chrystia Freeland’s shoes, I would go to New York and talk to bankers who funded some of Trump’s better projects. They might learn how to communicate with the son of a bitch.

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It will be news when Trump says it is.

October 1, 2017 by Peter Lowry

For the longest time, Americans have been struggling with the concept of ‘Fake News.’ Is it fake if Donald Trump says it is fake? Or is it fake because Donald Trump says it? And if you are puzzled by the nuance between those two questions, you have a problem.

In fact, it is more of a moral disaster. It is something like the first time you heard him talk about ‘Corrupt Hillary.’ You were not sure you heard right. You waited to hear him explain what he was talking about. You waited to hear him offer some proof. It was a description of his opponent that he was unqualified to make. The arrogant bastard believed it.

And Trump’s claque loved it. They did not just believe but they wanted to believe. And in the dying days of that awful election campaign, the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation as much as said it was true—and it pushed the election over the edge for Trump. It was the most egregious harm ever done to a major political candidate in a democratic nation.

It is the realization that Donald Trump does not care what he says that is the most awful revelation. This man is sitting in the most powerful office in the world and he keeps testing its limits. With a majority in both houses of the Congress, he is getting the strongest blowback from his own party.

He is a child-man who sets his own agenda. He ignores what he cannot influence. He ignores the needs of hurricane damaged American cities until forced to go “look” at the problems. The racist pointedly ignores 3.5 million Americans in Puerto Rico who were in the path of disaster.

This is a man who needs constant reassurance. He uses election rallies even after his election to bolster his ego. He can tell these people anything and they cheer him on. He hires people to tell him what to do and he regularly ignores them. He goes to the United Nations and spews hatred. He is a racist who builds walls against people.

Trump fails to understand that fair trade with other countries means a give and take. He thinks it is the tough guy who wins.

The good news in all of this is that Americans are tiring of Trump. They are tired of his antics, his bigotry, his childishness, his ignorance, his misogyny his narcissism, his racism and his tantrums. And the best news is that many people who supported him in 2016 are now hedging their bets. Mr. Trump is going to be a one term phenomenon—if we can just be patient.

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Use child psychology on Mr. Trump.

September 29, 2017 by Peter Lowry

This is a bit of advice for our world leaders. It is very simple. It is not even difficult. It is the realization that we have been mishandling the president of the United States. We have been erroneously treating him as an adult. He does not seem to want to be treated as an adult.

We will leave the pinning down of the exact age to the people with the advanced degrees but we expect that Mr. Trump has an emotional age of somewhere between 6 and 12. Mind you, in his relationships with women, it is doubtful that he has even been weaned yet.

But it came to us the other day when the gentleman in question was flaming tweets at the National Football League. It was beyond the president’s comprehension that an athlete might have a better way to respect the American national anthem. Kneeling seems to be a very devout way to recognize the importance of the anthem. And yet, our so very patriotic Mr. Trump gets into a tantrum about it. He wants those athletes fired.

Team owners—whom those same athletes make filthy rich—are not about to fire them. Some of those guys are going out and showing solidarity with their athletes. There are also those joining in on the juvenile practice of tweeting back at the president.

The athletes caught in the middle are the Pittsburgh Penguins. Since they are a hockey team made up mainly of Canadians, they cannot be seen to disrespect the American anthem. And kneeling on ice is not a good idea anyway. Besides, the team captain, Sid Crosby, a Canadian, has been hit on the head too often this past season and had to promise to stay out of fights.

That is why Sid and the boys are being invited to go to the White House to have a play date with Donnie Trump.

The mistake that Mr. Trump has been making is that he has failed to have his little friend, Kim Jong Un in North Korea, over for a play date. The two of them could spend some happy time together comparing the size and power of of their rockets.

It could give an entirely new meaning and scope to foreign relations.

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Is NAFTA circling the drain?

September 26, 2017 by Peter Lowry

You always assume there is hope as long as negotiations continue—as they are for the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) this week in Ottawa. The only problem is that the negotiators are not the decision makers. The final solution rests with an incompetent occupant in the White House. And you should not try to confront that gentleman with facts.

Mr. Trump promised his voting claque that he would dump NAFTA. While economists might reason that pulling out of NAFTA could destroy the American economy, his claque does not understand that. And many, if they did comprehend, would not care. To them, a pyrrhic victory is still a victory.

It is the same attitude as led to the self-destructive BREXIT in the United Kingdom. People who vote in anger often live to regret it.

But those NAFTA negotiators continue to pontificate as they enjoy the fine cuisine in Ottawa. The least involved are the Mexican participants who have serious concerns about the conditions they left behind in and around Mexico City. As the world comes to their aid after the devastating earthquake, one wonders when the American and Canadian aid is coming?

And we can really be puzzled at Canadian cabinet members who naively think this negotiation can be about environmental issues. Do they really think that Mr. Trump gives a damn? This is the climate-change denier who reopened the Appalachian coal mines to make his billionaire friends richer.

You have to hand it to the American negotiators. These people are going through the motions as though they mean it. There will be no complaints from Congress and the Washington clique over their efforts. One of the surprises is they might really drive a wedge between the Canadians and the Mexicans. If they can keep the Canadians on-side in forcing the Mexicans to equalize wages (with the southern U.S. at least), it could go a long way to stopping the steady drain of labour-intensive production south to Mexico.

The problem though dear friends is that the entire exercise is nothing but an interesting review of the concerns. We can hardly deny that some changes are needed but Mr. Trump does not care what we think. None of the changes proposed by Canada or Mexico will happen. The American negotiators are more interested in what they can possibly bully the other two countries into.

And the future of NAFTA will only be decided around the Resolute desk in the Oval Office.

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