To Counter Trump’s ‘Beggar-Thy-Neighbour’ Trade Policy, Canada Should Embrace Mutually Beneficial Cooperation With Other Nations

'Beggar-Thy-Neighbour'.

That's the new trade policy and foreign policy of the United States of America. The U.S. will make you lose, so they can win. You will be punished for the 'sin' of successfully producing products and services Americans freely consume. If you've signed trade deals with the U.S., answered the call when they asked for military assistance, or spent years integrating your economy with theirs, you will still be slammed with tariffs.

America has declared a tariff war on most of the world. And while fragments of the America that championed global trade and mutually beneficial cooperation may still exist, those fragments are currently powerless. Instead, exploitative isolationism rules the roost.

This exploitative isolationism is being 'built' on a foundation of ignorance. An open contempt for expertise has led to a shocking level of incompetence, with the White House using an absurd calculation (dividing the U.S. trade deficit with a country by that country's total exports to the U.S., and then dividing that number by 50%).