Canada, U.S. in ‘serious danger’ of trade war over Trump tariffs: Bolton
Global News
John Bolton says Donald Trump's ongoing comments about making Canada the 51st state is the president-elect's way of continuing to 'troll' Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
U.S. president-elect Donald Trump will take office on Monday and while it’s not yet confirmed if he will impose tariffs on Canada on day one, his former national security adviser says there is “serious danger” the two countries will fall into a trade war.
John Bolton, who served as Trump’s adviser from April 2018 until September 2019, said in an interview with The West Block’s Mercedes Stephenson that the president-elect’s threat poses a “serious danger that we are going to fall inadvertently into a trade war.”
“I think everyone should understand a trade war is not in anyone’s interest,” he said.
“The way tariffs work is, it’s the American importer that pays the tariff and then tries to pass it along to the consumer,” Bolton said. “High tariffs are an indirect tax on American taxpayers. Trump simply does not understand that. So it sounds easy to tax Canada, tax Mexico when he’s actually taxing Americans.”
Shortly after he was elected, Trump threatened to impose a sweeping 25 per cent tariff on all Canadian goods coming into the U.S. unless Canada tightened border security. The same threat was also made towards Mexico.
Ottawa has worked to address those demands with a plan officials first outlined in the fall economic statement and again detailed on Wednesday, but Trump has yet to back down from the threat.
Foreign Affairs Minister Melanie Joly has said that if Trump goes ahead with the plan, it would start the “biggest trade war between Canada and U.S. in decades.”
That idea of such a trade war is concerning, Bolton said, saying that it would be in nobody’s interest and that retaliation, while tempting, should be avoided.
