Monday, January 20, 2025

The Trump Supremacy, Redux

 

 

As of this afternoon, the United States had a real leader affecting real change.

Canada is still stuck with craven robber-barons dragging around Canada's carcass:

On Monday morning, before Trump was sworn-in at noon, U.S. media reported that the much-feared 25 per cent tariffs on Canadian and Mexican goods that Trump had threatened in November were not expected on day one of his presidency.

Tariffs weren’t mentioned in a list of first priorities issued by the White House hours after Trump was sworn in.

Instead, the Wall Street Journal reported that Trump directed U.S. agencies to investigate American trade deficits with other countries and the currency policies of foreign nations.

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Liberal MP Chrystia Freeland (University-Rosedale, Ont.) yesterday praised cabinet as being “careful with Canada’s money” under her four-year tenure as finance minister. Freeland five weeks ago tabled budget records confirming her last deficit went 55 percent over target: “These bread and butter issues are more important today than ever.” 

 

Yes, now, about that:

“Canada’s plan to bring down inflation is working,” she wrote on Twitter alongside a graphic showing the country’s inflation rate leading the G7 and being its lowest since March 2021.

But citizens were not buying it, with some calling for Freeland to resign.

“Food prices have increased by over 9%, translating to a nearly 20% increase in two years, the fastest growth in more than 40 years,” one person commented.

“Mortgage interest costs have also significantly increased, rising over 30% in the past year due to the Bank of Canada’s attempts to control inflation,” they added.

Add in rent jumping 5.8% in the past year, and that adds up to a gaping hole in many people’s pocket.

Others pointed to the increased costs of energy and labour adding fuel to the inflation fire.

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A massive spike in reported lost federal revenue, combined with reported losses—accidental and otherwise—of public property and money, made 2023-24 a record year for such losses at close to $649.5-million overall, the highest such total in the last 10 years of federal public accounts. 

In 2022-23, losses across these three categories had totalled $534.2-million.

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Then there is Mark Carney:

In his book Value(s): Building a Better World for All, Mark Carney, former governor both of the Bank of Canada and the Bank of England, claims that western society is morally rotten, and that it has been corrupted by capitalism, which has brought about a “climate emergency” that threatens life on earth. This, he claims, requires rigid controls on personal freedom, industry and corporate funding.

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What did Carney actually do? He rapidly lowered the interest rate starting in late 2008. This led to increased borrowing due to attractive low monthly repayment amounts. Low interest rates caused savings to plummet, and Canada seems to have been in a state of dependency on low rates ever since. Low rates encourage borrowing and spending, and Canadians now have the highest household debt to disposable income ratio in the G7. In hindsight, Canadians need strong debates about the wisdom of this move by Carney.

Carney’s time as Bank of England governor was only briefly mentioned and then dropped before his record was discussed. Too bad, as Matthew Lynn of The Spectator has suggested, his results in the United Kingdom were “not actually very good.” He claims Carney “made a whole series of mistakes under his management,” that “growth was consistently weak,” that “the Bank printed way too much money, stoking an asset bubble, and ultimately triggering the highest inflation rate in the G7.”

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But dual citizenship has been a point of controversy for Canadian politicians before, most notably with former Conservative leader Andrew Scheer, who held citizenship in both the United States and Canada. Although Scheer publicly announced his intentions to renounce his U.S. citizenship, he abandoned the effort after losing the 2019 election. “Knowing that I won’t be prime minister, I discontinued that process,” Scheer told CTV at the time.

Carney is a citizen of three countries. Born a Canadian, he obtained Irish citizenship in the 1980s, and then British citizenship in 2018 when he was Governor of the Bank of England.

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The Trump Effect ... well, in effect:

It’s just past 7 p.m. in Washington, and Donald Trump is continuing with his ambitious plans for Day One of his presidency as we head into the evening. Here’s what’s happened since the official inaugural ceremonies have ended and Trump has moved to the Oval Office:
-- Trump signed a repeal of 78 executive orders repealing Biden-era initiatives in front of a raucous crowd at the Capital One Arena. Among the orders were a withdrawal from the Paris Climate agreement, a directive to every department to address inflation, an action to call federal workers back to the office and an order restoring “freedom of speech and preventing government censorship of free speech going forward.”
-- Trump said he would pardon some of the people convicted of offenses during the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol during the certification of the presidential election. He did not give any details about the pardons but said that he would end the weaponization of the justice system.
-- Trump’s first cabinet member, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, was confirmed by the Senate with overwhelming bipartisan support. Members of the chamber also advanced the nominations of John Ratcliffe for CIA Director, Pete Hegseth for Secretary of Defense and Kristi Noem for Homeland Security, teeing up final votes for the coming days. The early nominations had a clear national security focus, underscoring the difficult work ahead with conflicts still ongoing in the Middle East and Europe.
-- We got little clarity on Trump’s economic plans, with a passing mention of tariffs and inflation but no discussion of extending the 2017 tax cuts or taking other actions to address voters’ concerns. Trump repeated his “drill, baby, drill” line, highlighting the role energy policy and deregulation will likely play in his early moves.

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McTeague said that Canada’s mandate now stands alone on the continent, with President Donald Trump planning day one measures to scrap Biden-era energy policies and an American EV mandate, which would require two-thirds of passenger vehicles sold in the U.S. to be zero-emission by 2032.

Canada’s policy calls on 20% EV for next year, increasing to a ban on internal combustion engines by 2035.

“That means the 80% or 90% of vehicles we would be producing — with substantial subsidies from federal and provincial governments — won’t have a market,” McTeague said.

“That should be a wake-up call to the Doug Ford government and obviously to the federal Liberals who know that they’ve made significant commitment to something that won’t be realized.”

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Guilbeault is livid that Trump withdrew from the Paris Accord:

U.S. President Donald Trump's decision to pull the United States out of the Paris climate agreement for a second time is "deplorable" but will not kill off that critical pact, Canada's environment minister said Monday.

 

The slush fund ends here! 

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