Offensive, Is It?

Recall that President Donald Trump has decided to impose tariffs on steel and aluminum on national security grounds, and that these tariffs impact Canadian (among other nations’) imports to the US.  Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau finds it offensive that Trump considers Canada a security threat to the US.

Really, he said that.

No, what’s offensive is Trudeau’s cynical distortion of the purpose of those tariffs.  The national security threat for us is our inability to produce our own steel and aluminum, not the steel and aluminum we might import.  Whether tariffs are the best way to encourage recovery of that ability can be debated, but it’s clearly self-sufficiency that’s our concern, not imports per se.

Trudeau is young, and he has much to learn.  But he knows this much full well.

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