Editor’s note: This is a lightly edited transcript of today’s video from Daily Signal senior contributor Victor Davis Hanson. Subscribe to our YouTube channel to see more of his videos.
Hello, this is Victor Davis Hanson for the Daily Signal.
I know we’ve talked a lot about the current Canadian-American trade dispute, but it involves larger issues of globalism versus nationalism versus North American relations versus the United States paradigm versus the EU paradigm, etc., etc.
And what’s happened is I would call it [Canadian Prime Minister] Mark Carney’s fantasy house, Mark Carney’s dream house, Mark Carney’s imaginarium. He has no … It doesn’t seem like he has any connection with reality. His economy has lost 41,000 jobs. It depends on exporting to the United States 72% to 76% of all of its products.
That is going to be very difficult. It is now difficult. It’s going to be almost impossible if he continues. He has to keep his oil wells going, and given the fact that other provinces have not been ready and willing to make pipelines to the rich tar sands of Alberta, he depends on a 4 million-barrel export a day to the United States.
Some of it is thick tar sands, some of it has been diluted and is marketable elsewhere, but it’s a very good deal for Canada. When you talk about cutting that off, you’re talking about cutting your nose to spite your face. This would be the most self-destructive thing. The fact that Canada even mentions it shows that they’re entering a period of delusional thinking.
This new relationship with China, they’re bringing in 48,000 low-tariff, I think it’s only 6%, EVs. They’re going to ruin what little they had left of the Canadian auto industry. But more importantly, that trade agreement is ushering in a whole set of new agreements, some of them military.
Does Canada know, does Mark Carney know, that if Canada negotiates a special military relationship with China and it’s on our borders and we have NATO relations, that will endanger the alliance and it will permanently wreck the relationship between Canada and the United States?
The other thing that’s very disturbing is right now, as we speak, the European Union model is under assault, not by America, but by Europeans.
They don’t believe the socialist model of open borders, illegal immigration, dismantling fossil fuels, not using fossil fuel resources, subsidized expensive green energy, de-arming, disarming, whatever term we use, low fertility, works. They used to have, about a quarter-century ago, the 470 million Europeans, they had about the same gross domestic product as the United States.
Now they’re $10 trillion at least smaller. So, why is Canada emulating the EU failed model? Forty-five percent of your population was not born in Canada or their parents weren’t born. Why are you subsidizing green energy and you’re not utilizing this rich resource in Alberta? Why are you disarmed?
Why won’t you meet your 2% commitments? You may or may not have done it just one year, but why do you repeatedly not do that when you have such a vast nation and it is so exposed in a very dangerous world, in the Arctic, in the Northwest Passage, and the airspace over North America?
And the answer is your economic model does not allow you much margin. Your immigration model does not allow you much margin of error to compensate for these decisions that you’ve made for a weaker, poorer, more disunited Canada. You feel you can’t arm yourself because the United States will protect you.
You feel that you need a $50 billion surplus because the United States is far wealthier and you’re in dire straits.
Next problem. You don’t express your disagreement or anger at the United States over trade policy by warming up to, and allying with China, which is the greatest trade violator in history with its patent theft, copyright theft, dumping product below the cost of production, currency manipulation, forced labor camps.
And you don’t win yourself national support when no other country except you and China have slapped counter-tariffs, not because they didn’t want to, not because they couldn’t do it, but because they realized they were running surpluses for years with the United States, and they could still make money with a more symmetrical trade agreement.
You apparently don’t think that. You think if you lose your special $50 billion surplus relationship, or you might have to rearm, the choices that you’ve made on energy and immigration and economic policy prevent you from being competitive, and you need to be thus indirectly subsidized.
But more importantly, you’re not going to win world sympathy, at least among the United States and other countries that are its allies.
Now you’re engaged in an anti-Israel boycott. So, any products that were produced in the West Bank, you’re not going to buy. I have a question for you, Mark Carney. Does that include products that come from China that were assembled by a forced million-person labor force, the Uyghurs? Does it come from Nigeria, where Christians are being slaughtered?
Does it come from parts of the Russian Federation before the boycott? You imported things from them. They treat their minorities very harshly. No, it’s completely asymmetrical.
And finally, do you think that that sets a good example when you alone of the Western world are assisting people to kill themselves and that results in over 5% of your deaths each year being government-aided at a time when people really don’t know all the causes of suicide or terminal disease or there’s medical breakthroughs?
You, in this weakened economic state, are still allowing assisted suicide, not allowing it, promoting it to such a degree that you are the capital of assisted suicide.
And finally, this was a disagreement between governments, between Mark Carney, the globalist, and Donald Trump, the nationalist. And Donald Trump wanted to seek parity with Canada.
It didn’t want to run up a surplus with Canada. It didn’t want to take over Canada. Those were trolling memes. What it wanted was basically no surplus on either side, Canada arming itself like every other member of NATO, North Americans getting along. But you, Mark Carney, turned this into a literal war.
Those are your words, not mine. You use the word battle and war, and then you whipped up Canadian national anger and venom to the petty level that you Canadians are now booing the Star-Spangled Banner. They’re talking about putting signs up at the border warning Americans. This idea of moral superiority.
Americans are oblivious to this until now. They didn’t … They were as critical of Donald Trump as anybody. You whipped up popular fervor against the United States. Donald Trump didn’t say to Americans: Get angry at what they’re doing to … because you only represent 10% to 15% of our trade. It doesn’t make much difference.
We’d like to treat people equitably. We like to have basically small surpluses and small deficits. You were the one that did this, and it’s very paradoxical and ironic that you take this high moral ground when in actuality you’re dealing with a murderous government in China and you’re adopting economic policies that make you poor and you blame that poverty on other people.
All you have to do is look in the mirror and say, “We can reform and open and deregulate the economy. We’re not going to be that naive to trust China. We know the Chinese agenda, and we’re going to take another look at various things culturally, like open borders, illegal immigration, mass euthanasia, that make us quite different.
“And we’re not going to blame our problems on the United States or suddenly decide very loudly and virtue signal that we’re not going to trade with any products that come from the West Bank under Israel’s occupation.”
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