Our neighbour has spoken. The tariffs du jour have arrived.
When thinking about the reality that is the United States, former Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau (aka Justin’s Dad) said it best: “Living next to you is in some ways like living with an elephant. No matter how friendly or even tempered the beast, if I may call it that, one is affected by every twitch and grunt.”
Mr. Trudeau made this observation in a speech in 1969.
The U. S. put tariffs on their closest neighbours some days ago, right after midnight struck. For some reason I kept thinking about Cinderella. In the fairy tale, didn’t her glamorous coach turn into a pumpkin—a big orange pumpkin— exactly at midnight?
At first many of us were dismayed that these tariffs and other threats were even happening. But it was not long for Canadians to become outraged and defiant. More Canadian flags started sprouting up everywhere. Canada’s leaders went to the U.S., talking to their counterparts and appearing on U.S. and Canadian TV channels. We vowed to buy Canadian, or from other countries, but avoid anything from the U.S. Lists started appearing on social media pointing us to made-in-Canada products.
In some cases, it will be a challenge since our economies—U.S. and Canada—are so intertwined that many products are made up of components manufactured in both countries.
But we made a commitment to try. We started close to home at our local supermarket. We did our big family shopping the other day. The bill was big; the two bags weren’t that big.
After wandering up and down a few aisles, I looked down at my shopping cart. There was our world in microcosm! So what was in my shopping cart?
Among the groceries, I had grapes from Peru and blueberries from Chile and Canadian cabbage, cheese, milk and yogourt. Some garlic at the front of the store had a nice Canada flag on it and “Canadian” printed in big letters. We are seeing more Canadian signage on what we are buying and in commercials every day that goes by.
That day in the grocery store, I succumbed to the Americans only sparingly. I have to reluctantly confess, the Brussels sprouts were from the U.S. Then I looked again at all the stuff I bought to marvel that we had such a variety of countries that we can buy from. I’m certain that our pioneer forebears weren’t enjoying strawberries in the depths of winter.
Even though I was in the store for quite a long time, in my imagination I took it as a good omen that the American Brussels sprouts did not attempt to take over any of the other produce—at least not while I was watching.
Too bad it has to be this way!
We and the United States and, indeed, the rest of the world are more interconnected than many of us realize. Intertwined, if you will. We are like one of those braided money trees. If you cut off a couple of those supporting braids, it will look pretty ugly and something will end up falling down—when it didn’t have to.
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