From The Other Side : Canada calls out Trump's 'almost funny' gaslighting
President Donald Trump's ongoing trade war
against Canada has not gone well for him, with Americans
suffering from higher prices and Trump himself seeming
taken aback by Canada's
defiant response. Now a recent report reveals that at one point, Trump's
antics with Canada "almost got funny," at least according to key
players involved in the negotiations on the Canadian side.
In their profile of Canada's chief U.S.
trade negotiator Janice Charette, "a source familiar with bilateral
negotiations, granted anonymity to discuss the sensitive talks, said the two
sides had resolved '90 percent of the problems' when [Prime Minister Mark]
Carney decided to pull Canadian negotiators out of Washington, claiming the
fine print in the deal included too many new red flags," reported
Politico's Zi-Ann Lum on Wednesday.
Lum added "U.S. officials insisted
Canada tried to pull a fast one, requesting at the last minute that medium and
heavy trucks be eligible for lower Section 232 — something Charette said she’d
been asking for since July." Charette then added that "they were
saying no, and we were saying it has to be included. So if they thought we had
a deal with them: No, we didn’t. We never had that deal. Nothing’s done until
everything’s done in a trade deal."
In the report, Politico continued that
"autos emerged as one of the issues that contributed to Carney’s decision
to walk from talks with Greer, who led negotiations with Canadian officials.
Charette said 'every note and every document' sent to the U.S. made clear the
demand was for tariff relief for 'all of the autos that Canada produces, as
well as auto parts.' She said that during negotiations, every time the U.S.
side tried to limit tariff relief on autos to passenger and light vehicles, she
had to say the words 'and medium and heavy' aloud."
The official added to Politico, “It almost
got funny." Canadian business experts affirmed her account, with one auto
industry official telling Politico of America's claim that "I find it hard
to believe. Janice knows her brief extremely well, and she would know that
medium and heavy duty — there’s production and planned production in Canada for
it. Any deal on autos would have to take into consideration the trucks produced
in Ford’s Oakville plant and GM’s Oshawa plant.”
Speaking
to AlterNet earlier in September, Dr. Richard D. Wolff — professor emeritus
of economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst explained why Canada
has resisted Trump instead of bending the knee to him. In addition to his
tariff wars, Trump has insulted Canada by referring to the nation as
"America's 51st state" and renaming Lake Ontario as "Lake
America."
"I am not surprised that our
government is surprised," Wolff told AlterNet. "Our government is
busy strong-arming people around the world in every way that it can,
militarily, economically, politically, and discovering time after time to their
amazement, if you take them seriously, that the folks are going to resist. And
that's what's going to happen."
He added that Carney is merely acting on
the widespread sentiment within Canada itself.
"It's not just Mr. Carney, he is the
expression of something that he knows as a politician is now a very popular
view in Canada," Wolff explained. "He's not going to be held to blame
because this or that difficulty happens. If he can show, as he often can, that
the United States' hostility, tariff policy number one, is the root cause, then
he gets a pass. The kind of anger that might often be addressed to a politician
won't be, because they correctly perceive that the problem is something else.
And so they appeal to the politician when he comes up with solutions or
attempted solution to keep workers' needs in mind."
https://www.alternet.org/canada-calls/
What was the reason for the issue with Heavy Duty trucks ?
It was this :
Ford and General Motors selected their Canadian facilities for heavy-duty truck production primarily to meet sustained customer demand and navigate U.S. trade tariffs.
Demand and Capacity: Both automakers faced production constraints at their U.S. plants (Ford in Kentucky and Ohio; GM in Michigan), which were already operating at full capacity.
Expanding to Ford’s Oakville Assembly Complex and GM’s Oshawa plant added approximately 100,000 units of annual capacity to satisfy durable demand from commercial Ford Pro customers and infrastructure spending.
- Tariff Avoidance: U.S. tariffs of 25% on imported vehicles made it cost-prohibitive to export heavy-duty trucks from Canada to the U.S. market. By increasing domestic production in Ontario, both companies avoided these tariffs, ensuring their Canadian-built trucks remained competitive in their largest export market.
- Labor and Investment: The decision helped address union concerns regarding job security.
- Ford committed roughly $3 billion to retool the Oakville plant.
- GM announced an $1.1 billion investment, both preserving thousands of jobs and securing union ratification for new labor agreements.
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