Already Finding a Solution

Spectator

President Donald Trump’s economy of petulance rolls on unabated by Congress or court decisions, as he simply ignores both. His latest target is Canada, which had the temerity to refuse to allow America to have a say-so in how they run their own economy.

There was a trade deal with Canada already supposedly in effect and a new deal on the table. But when the U.S. decided to add some last minute changes that would literally require Canada to sacrifice at least some economic sovereignty, not surprisingly, they decided to go a different way and invoke an element of a different agreement that will now allow them to make trade friends elsewhere.

Rather than renegotiate, Trump pouted and raged because he didn’t get his way, and he slapped a 50 percent tariff on a variety of Canadian goods. This will be especially nice for American truck buyers who will discover the American and Canadian auto manufacturing industries are so well integrated that parts are made and go back and forth across the border regularly. Punishing Canadian manufacturers, and American consumers in the process, isn’t likely to accomplish much.

Trump has already been told by our Supreme Court he cannot impose tariffs based on the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) because he has no legal authority to do so. More than $100 billion in illegally imposed tariffs had to be refunded. (A reminder here: Tariffs are paid by the importing company, not the exporting company. Typically, those costs are passed on to American consumers. The U.S. Congress Joint Economic Committee says the average American household will pay about $2,500 in tariff costs this year, a cumulative $330 billion hit to our consumers.)

Now, Trump just randomly slaps tariffs on countries that say or do anything he doesn’t like, junior high cafeteria policy-making that has resulted in nothing but higher prices for us on almost everything.

Trump, who often claims he is a “stable genius,” has now taken to insulting Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, publicly calling him a “weak and ineffective leader,” “widely unpopular,” claiming Carney was “dumb,” and in a particularly telling bit of transactional insulting, “I want nothing from Canada.”

Okay, let’s do some background checking.

According to Brittanica, Trump attended the very private Kew-Forest School early on but sketchy behavior had him shipped to New York Military Academy. There is no public record of his accomplishments as a student there, though his claim he was the best baseball player has been widely debunked—baseball keeps stats.

He spent two years at Fordham University, where his grades were good enough to allow him to transfer to the University of Pennsylvania (Penn), though there is ample anecdotal evidence that path was greased by his father’s pals. At Penn, he was in the Wharton School of Finance and Commerce, a fact he has repeated ad nauseam for years. He likes to claim it was very hard to get into, and he’s even claimed “I have been told I graduated at the top of my class.”

According to their own records, the Wharton School was not so hard to get into in the mid-60s, as their acceptance rate was about 40 percent. By contrast, it is now 7 percent. Penn does not reveal transcripts, but they do have a Dean’s List, and Trump is not on it or at the top of anything. He did graduate with a degree in real estate.

A Wharton professor, William T. Kelly, was reported by friends to have claimed, “Trump was the dumbest goddamn student I ever had.” There is no recording of him saying it and it was reported secondhand on Facebook but, given multiple chances, Kelly never denied he said it.

Trump’s current approval rating, according to multiple surveys, is in the mid-30s to high 30s, one of the lowest ever.

Mark Carney graduated magna cum laude from Harvard University with a degree in economics. He went on to receive a Masters Degree in Philosophy from Oxford in England and then his PhD in the philosophy of economic competition from Nuffield College at Oxford. His advisor was a Nobel laureate. He became the first non-Brit to lead the Bank of England, and he led the Bank of Canada before becoming prime minister.

Carney’s approval rating, according to daily news website CultMTL, has hovered around 66 percent for months. The Canadian stock market is surging, foreign investment has increased by hundreds of billions, and Carney has made new trade deals with the European Union, United Arab Emirates, Australia, Japan, South Korea, and France.

Instead of capitulating to the American bully, Carney has simply moved along, as has much of Europe. No doubt the tariffs hurt the Canadian economy, but there is also little doubt their leader, a real economist, is already finding a solution.

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