TARIFFS WON'T BUY TRUST: CANADA AND INDIA MUST WAIT OUT THE STORM

We are told President Trump's moves will somehow restore economic order. Worse, we are told that allies, Canada, Mexico, even India, must absorb the cost of America's economic identity crisis. That's not diplomacy. That's desperation.

- DEAN BAXENDALE

There are moments in history where leaders mistake force for strategy. Last week was one of those moments.We are at that moment in time and both the statistics, and the market reactions told us all that President Trump's bravado, along with his trade protectionist and Trump sycophant Peter Navaro, is pushing us all to a place where our collective patience is running thin.

Somehow, Americans have decided it's better to teach a lesson rather than to work in partnership. We all take offence to the cheap shots President Trump has made; and the sheer bombast at times has everyone shaking their head.These include that Canada has treated and taken advantage of America for a "long, long time", while throwing in the little American farmer into his diatribe.

As a publisher, businessman, and Canadian, who has worked to build relationships across borders from Ottawa to New Delhi to Washington, I watched with great concern as President Trump reimposed a 35% tariff on all imports outside the CUSMA(Canada, US, and Mexico) trade zone. A move that may, in his mind, signal strength, but in reality, signals something else entirely: economic anxiety wrapped in political bravado.

With the August first deadline the Mexican President was able to placate the President enough that they were willing to give Mexico a 90-day reprieve. Canada? No such luck. Instead, we've once again found ourselves in the crosshairs of a political narrative that paints allies as freeloaders and tariffs as silver bullets.Once again citing our lack of a response to illicit drugs and fentanyl production and distribution as a key reason why we can't get to an agreement.

Let me be clear: tariffs are not strategy. They are tactics—blunt ones at that. And while they may bring short-term relief to struggling industries, they do so at a high cost—paid not by adversaries, but by everyday Americans and their closest partners.

A LEGAL SLEIGHT OF HAND, NOT A MANDATE