Much as I hate to return to the subject of Donald Trump, which only serves to gratify his narcissistic tendencies, there is just so much wrong with his recent imposition of a 25% tariff on Canadian (and Mexican and Chinese) imports that it is hard to just let it go.
American business groups and companies, politicians, and even regular American folk (even Republicans!), are complaining about it because they understand, as Trump seems not to, that it is not grounded in economic reality. It is not a way of correcting the balance of payments deficit with Canada, not is it helping American businesses or the country as a whole.
In fact, it is not an economic measure at all, it is merely a kind of punishment for us not being American, a pressure tactic to get us to do what he wants. Purely and simply it is bullying; he does it because he can.
One of Trump's main beefs with Canada - other than just the fact that we are way too liberal about everything - is that he thinks that the American fentanyl problem is huge and Canadian-made. He has made it clear that, in his twisted mind, this is one of the main reasons for the tariff move.
Setting aside the fact that the demand for illegal drugs in the USA is very much an American thing - we don't create the demand! - Trump's claims that fentanyl is killing 250,000 - 300,000 American a year, as he said during his inaugural address, is clearly nonsense. (White House spokesperson Katherine Leavitt's claim that fentanyl is killing "tens of millions of Americans" is just laughable.)
It turns out that, at its worst (2022 - 2023), America's total drug overdose deaths were around 114,000, and that is from fentanyl, methamphetamine, heroin, cocaine and all other drugs. Not to be sneezed at, to be sure, but not anything like the figures Trump or his lackeys quote. Furthermore, since then, this figure has been plummeting, falling below 90,000 deaths for the first time in a decade.
As for Canada's role in all this, yes, there is some fentanyl finding its way from Canada to the USA, but less than 1% of America's fentanyl comes from Canada, as Justin Trudeau pointed out in a speech on the tariffs, a figure backed up by the US Drug Enforcement Administration. We supply fewer illegal drugs to the US than they supply to us! A handy DEA report on fentanyl flow to the USA shows that China and Mexico are the major culprits, with India becoming a player (Canada is not even mentioned).
Trump's blather about Canada's increasing contribution to narcotics distribution and the activities of Mexican drug cartels on Canadian soil is just that, blather. In 2024, for example, 43 pounds of fentanyl were seized at the US-Canadian border, compared to about 21,148 pounds at the US-Mexico border, putting Canada's contribition at about 0.2%. (UPDATE: Actually, it turns out that a third of even that small amount of 43 pounds was misreported: it was seized in Spokane, Washington, about 150 kilometres from the Canadian border, and traced to three Mexican nationals!) Also, both of those figures are already on the decline, as both Mexico and Canada clamp down on illegal activities.
Furthermore, of the drugs that are seized at the US-Canada border, fentanyl makes up about 0.05%, an almost vanishingly small percentage. The vast majority is marijuana, khat (a relatively mild stimulant, particularly popular with Somalis) and cocaine.
In fact, more drugs come into Canada from the USA than the other way round (to say nothing of the number of guns coming our way), and that flow is on the increase. So, in reality, it's the US that needs to get its act together not Canada.
It is a similar situation with illegal immigration from Canada to the USA, another irritant that Trump quotes as a major reason behind the tariffs. Trump insists that "millions and millions" of illegal aliens are crossing from Canada to the USA every year. US Customs and Border Protection data tells a different story: in 2024, US Border Patrol apprehended 23,721 illegal immigrants at their northern border (about 1.5% of the total), as compared to about 1.5 million apprehensions at the Mexican border. Also, more people crossed illegally from the US to Canada than the other way round. Natch.
Now, I don't expect Trump to listen to any of these figures. He does what he wants, and no amount of logic and statistics are going to get in the way of that. But it makes me feel better to get it off my chest. Trump, meanwhile, needs to look into why so many Americans are hooked on drugs and not leading better lives in the land of the free.
No comments:
Post a Comment