It's The Springtime Of The Oligarchs
U.S. president Donald Trump officially declared his tariff war on Canada today and ordered the suspension of all military aid to Ukraine. Elbows up. Slava Ukraini.
In Canada, we’re entering what may soon begin to feel a bit like a time of war.
President Donald Trump’s says Canada is not a “valid” country. Vladimir Putin says Ukraine is “not a real nation.” In the Kremlin they’re elated with what Trump has done. Putin’s lifelong ally Dmitry Medvedev: “The Trump administration no longer wants to feed the Nazi mutt in Kiev.” This is only slightly more florid language than President Trump has used to describe Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky.
In the National Post today: Oligarchs celebrate, Ukraine suffers as Trump tramples world order:
Trump has up-ended 76 years of NATO solidarity, closing the book on the Trans-Atlantic alliance. He has explicitly declared his intention to realign Washington with Moscow and to throw America’s doors wide open to the world’s kleptocrats. He’s even offering to sell “gold card” American citizenship to Russian oligarchs — “Hey, I know some Russian oligarchs that are very nice people” — at $5 million a pop — and he says he hopes to visit Putin in Moscow in the coming months to discuss business opportunities.
Trump has further abdicated from the rules of the World Trade Organization and binned the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, the free-trade deal he himself demanded during his first term, calling it “the best and most important trade deal ever” when he signed it, yet only a couple of weeks ago he was asking, out loud: “Who would ever sign a thing like this?”
Across Canada, hundreds of thousands of workers are waiting to be told their jobs are gone, and it’s just the beginning. Ottawa has retaliated against Trump’s 25 percent tariff on all southbound trade with the first wave of counter-tariffs on $155 billion worth of northbound American trade. Ontario premier Doug Ford says he's ready to cut the power supply to 1.5 million customers in Michigan, New York and Minnesota. For now, they’ll just have to pay 25 percent more to keep the lights on.
Across America, a kind of dementia has enfeebled the political class. Most Republicans appear to genuinely believe Trump’s insistence that he’s a peacemaker, a mediator, that he cares only about Ukraine’s children. Quite a few Democrats seem wholly incapable of grasping the enormity of what is happening here, as though Trump was simply going about the business of diplomacy in a bad way.
For the time being, Ukraine can struggle on, barely, without America’s help, which has been wildly overstated by Americans. The Russians have been badly bloodied, their economy is on the verge of collapse and a lot of their military hardware is broken or it’s been blown up. Ukraine has been perfecting the art of drone warfare while Russian soldiers are being dispatched to the front lines on the backs of donkeys.
It’s going to be horrible, but Ukraine is still a free country, and the Europeans seem to be finally closing in on a decision to seize the $350 billion in Russian assets they’ve frozen and put the money towards Ukraine’s defence and European re-armament instead of just skimming the interest and shuffling it piecemeal to Kyiv.
Ukraine stands a very good chance of surviving all this as a free and democratic country. I have no idea whether America will.
All investigations and enforcement operations under the U.S. Corrupt Foreign Practices Act have been shelved. Trump’s Justice Department has gutted the enforcement capabilities under the Foreign Agents Registration Act. The Foreign Influence Task Force has been dismantled. The Counterintelligence and Export Control Section has been hobbled.
The Department of Justice has eliminated its National Security Division’s corporate enforcement unit, and the Kleptocracy Initiative has been disbanded after having located billions of dollars over the past 15 years in laundered and hidden money, mostly in Russian mansions, yachts and airplanes. This is just not the sort of thing Elon Musk thinks the United States has any business doing, bothering corrupt billionaires.
That’s what I mean by the springtime of the oligarchs.
A quick style note to my colleagues in the journalism trade: There was no "shouting match" between Trump and Zelenskyy last Friday, Trump's normalization talks with Russia are not "peace negotiations," and raising a Canadian shield against a Trumpist sword is not "escalating".
In Canada - across the board, conservative to social democrat - the American president is seen as a threat to our national security, a foreign adversary and a menace to our very survival as a sovereign country. As the former Conservative defence minister and Alberta premier Jason Kenney noticed today: “Fantastic to see a clear political consensus across Canada in favour of a strong response to Trump’s bizarre, completely unprovoked attack on our economy.”
Canadians regard the American government, generally, in an only slightly more favorable light. For the vast gulf between how Americans and Canadians say their governments should regard each other, here’s an illustration from Angus Reid International’s polling results:
I don’t know whether it’s the sudden drop in the stock markets or cold feet or the fury of American manufacturers that’s doing it, but the Trump administration is reaching out to Canada and Mexico, or may reach out, to talk about some “middle ground.”
The answer should and must be “no.” It’s too late. No negotiation, no forgiveness, no middle ground, no surrender. Back the hell off. All the way back.
Watch this space.
Faithful subscribers. I've fixed the inaccurate $125 billion figure for the total anticipated Canadian countertariff package by March 21; it's $155 billion. Caught it at the last minute, corrected in the web and app version but not before the emailed newsletter went out. Do forgive.
Even if concessions are made between canada and the us, the orange (pick a vile term out of a hat, he fills most of them) one has forever altered how I will act. I vigilantly look for Canadian made or at minimum not US made products when grocery shopping. I will avoid going to the US for anything other than required for work. The family has dropped our subscription services, changed spotify (invested in the inauguration, very bad judgement) to qobuz. Every dollar I spend will be spent with the intent to avoid sending money to the US, I don't shop at Walmart any more, no amazon purchases ever again, I will find local or Canadian store or won't buy the thing. And on top of this I know I am not the only person doing these things. Where we spend our dollars will make a difference. I never intend on relaxing these choices.