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This editorial appeared Saturday in the Winnipeg Free Press (winnipegfreepress.com), in advance of the executive order on tariffs that President Donald Trump signed later that day.
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Canada’s premiers and the federal government can be forgiven for trying — and at the moment, most likely failing — to stop U.S. President Donald Trump’s 25% tariffs on exports from Canada to the U.S.
It was never about border security. Nor, really, about trade deficits.
It might well be about the windfall Trump expects to get from levying what could effectively be called a tariff sales tax on American consumers so that he can deliver promised income-tax cuts to his supporters.
Trump’s love for a fractured economic theory that manufacturers, not consumers, end up paying for the cost of import tariffs, and his belief that tariff is “the most beautiful word in the dictionary” was always going to rule the day.