What’s a Trade War and How Did We End Up In One?

 By Tim Challies - Posted at @challies:

A couple of months ago, I wrote an article titled “Trump, Trudeau, and the 51st State.” It began with the words, “These are strange days in Canada.” Little did I know—though I suppose I should have predicted—that they would only get stranger.

Two months ago, Justin Trudeau, Canada’s Prime Minister, had become so unpopular that he suspended parliament and announced he would resign as soon as his party—the Liberal Party of Canada—had chosen his successor. Under the parliamentary system, this successor would immediately become prime minister.

At the same time, President Trump had just announced that he would soon put a 25% tariff on all cross-border trade in response to Canada’s lax concern about fentanyl production and exports. Meanwhile, he was also openly stating his intention to deploy economic force to annex the country while also calling Canada the 51st state and gleefully mocking Trudeau by referring to him as the Governor of Canada.1

A New Prime Minister

A lot has happened since then. Trudeau spent two months as a lame-duck prime minister while the Liberal Party went through the process of choosing a new leader. On March 9 the party chose Mark Carney.

In a strange quirk of the parliamentary system, Carney will become Prime Minister even though he is not a Member of Parliament and, in fact, has never been elected to any office or even pursued a political career until a few months ago. He did, however, head up both the Bank of Canada and the Bank of England, so he has been involved in governance on those levels. While Canada must have an election no later than October, he is widely expected to call one sooner. The Canadian electorate tends to quickly turn on prime ministers who come to power this way, so most people think he will try to gain a four-year mandate while he is still relatively unknown and, therefore, relatively well-liked.

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