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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.”
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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.Bolton goes on to say that while Canadian officials have warned that the tariffs would hurt Canada’s economy, the focus should instead be on impressing upon Trump that such an economic move would hurt the president-elect himself. “Higher consumer prices in the United States will look like increased inflation and he will be damaging himself with his own base,” he said. “If that political argument can be made to him that his own self-interest will be harmed, that would be a winner from the leaders of Canada and other countries that are subject to tariffs.The former national security adviser also brushed off Trump’s previous comments of suggesting Canada become the 51st state, saying the rhetoric was typical for the president-elect and that he often says “completely outrageous things,” adding that he believes it’s ongoing “trolling” of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
Trump also proposed last week that members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) should spend five per cent of gross domestic product (GDP) on defence — a large increase from the current two per cent goal. Canada, as of November 2024, was one of just eight NATO members not meeting the alliance’s benchmark.Bolton said Canada made the commitment to the two-per cent defence spending when the agreement was first made, but there are questions why Canada has yet to do so.Trudeau said in November that the country was on a clear path to that goal over the coming years, with a pledge to get there by 2032 — though the parliamentary budget officer has raised doubts.Bolton said it should work to get there sooner given Trump’s proposal.“The sooner you get to two per cent, the better,” he said. “If we’re living in a threatening world, we remember the Cold War, we spent what we needed to, then we need to do it again. Let’s get serious.” —with files from The Associated Press and Reuters
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