re: Ontario Premier Just Said They Would Remove All Tariffs

The reality is that Roger and SDV are very close to agreement on this issue. Both are in favor of free trade.

Trump sold his tariffs, during the election season, as a great way to bring in revenue and other things that implied that permanent across the board tariffs are groovy. This is mainly what Roger and SFP argue against, and they are right.

SDV and company have the position that Trump was always playing 4D chess, and the tariffs are mainly a temporary weapon to get other nations to remove their unfair tariffs and bear their fair military burden. That does indeed seem to be the way this is working out.

SFP and Roger also point out that Trump bears some responsibility for the status quo ante that he is railing against. That might be true but is really irrelevant to the current situation.

I might be wrong, but if you’re going to put this question to both sides of this argument on this board, they would both answer in the affirmative:

Would it behoove the US to threaten, and temporarily use, tariffs to bully other nations into relieving the US of some of the burden of defending the free world and to force other nations to lower their tariffs against the US?

If I’m right that they would both answer ”Yes”, then why are they arguing? Because they started arguing a different proposition, which was the advisability of using more permanent tariffs to make ourselves more prosperous. And now that the question is changing they just can’t stop arguing.

Throughout this discussion I ignore the fact that some permanent tariffs are probably necessary to keep some critical industries in America.