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As U.S. President Donald Trump continues to troll Canada, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has found a new bluntness in his final days in office.

 AP PHOTOS

BY IAN PATTISON

TODAY’S column was going to be about the Liberal leadership race but then . . . well, along came Trump again with more back and forth on tariffs and such a load of rotting carp, or something like that, in his address to the U.S. Congress that it cried out for comment.

I decided to try and keep track of the president’s habit of deception Tuesday night and drew up two columns on a page – outright lies and distortions. I may have dozed off as the carnival barker droned on toward the 90-minute mark, but I did manage to count 25 doozies that I know to be false, and 14 that contained a kernel of truth.

Some prime examples of fibbery include the fact that the worst American inflation was in 1980, not during the term of Trump’s predecessor, Joe Biden. The economy that Biden left Trump was not a “catastrophe” but instead was the world’s best as measured by The Economist. Social Security is not being doled out to people who’ve been dead for 200 years.

Of interest to Canada was Trump’s claim that the big automakers are “psyched” at the prospect of his planned tariffs against their products entering the U.S. from Canada and Mexico in one of the world’s most successfully integrated markets. In fact, Ford CEO Jim Farley said Trump’s tariffs would “blow a hole” in the U.S. auto industry.

Trump must’ve gotten an earful from the auto bosses because on Wednesday he paused the tariffs on cars and trucks for 30 days. As if that’s enough time to dismantle their manufacturing plants in Canada and Mexico, move and rebuild them in Michigan or Ohio, which is what he actually wants.

Just listen to press secretary Karoline Leavitt on Wednesday: “Get on it. Start investing, start moving, shift production.” It may sound like a “Golden Age” fantasy but it’s what Trump wants and what Trump wants, he usually gets, one way or another.

What’s the end game here? Former Conservative cabinet minister Lisa Raitt wonders if Trump isn’t setting up a fight between Canada and Mexico on the auto front. Mexico produces a slightly higher percentage of parts than Canadian suppliers so will Trump pit one against the other, and choose to end auto tariffs against only Mexico, whose president he likes, while excoriating Trudeau? With Trump you never know what’s coming next. You do know that it will be shocking.

Of further interest to Canada in Trump’s address was his fibbing about the effects of his tariffs. Claiming the U.S. economy is suddenly the envy of the world while the stock markets nosedived on confirmation of the tariffs was just one example of perjury.

Trump smirked while his docile Republicans clapped and roared approval, even as a growing number of them call the White House to complain about the tariff costs they know darn well are coming to their states.

They let Trump get away with saying that the tariffs will merely cause “a little disturbance” when, actually, they will quickly drive the price of groceries, automobiles and myriad other products made in Canada way, way up.

Even as they chanted “U.S.A” repeatedly on Trump’s claim to “love our farmers,” they chose to ignore the fact that without Canadian potash fertilizer, the U.S. agricultural sector would collapse. As it is, the tariffs will boost the cost of everything that is grown in the U.S., something that consumers will start noticing with alarm any day now.

ALL OF THIS FICTION comes as Canada tries desperately to get it through to the Americans that Trump’s claim the tariffs will rescue the U.S. economy and wipe out its debt is the biggest lie of them all.

It is instructive to view a post that Trump made Oct. 2, 2018, the morning that he signed a new continental trade deal with Canada and Mexico. It goes like this:

“Great reviews on the USMCA. Thank you! Mexico and Canada will be wonderful partners in Trade (and more) long into the future.”

That was a pretty short future. During his four years off he had time to dream up a radically different scenario and so now we in Canada are facing economic disaster that no amount of factual pushback can seem to make right.

No wonder Doug Ford, Premier of the Ontario heart of the Canadian auto sector is spitting mad, implementing electricity export tariffs despite Trump’s latest delay on general tariffs.

No wonder Foreign Affairs Minister Melanie Joly called the situation unfolding down south a “psychodrama.” Joly acquitted herself well on CNN the other day with a frank outline of the situation that astounded the network’s ever-sharp foreign expert Christiane Amanpour who called it “jaw-dropping.”

No wonder Prime Minister Trudeau, who’s been unusually blunt lately, told Canadians that he genuinely sees Trump working to weaken our economy to take us over while cozying ever further toward the monster Putin. “Make that make sense,” Trudeau said, staring angrily into the camera.

His anger is not misplaced. According to first-hand accounts in the New York Times of what was said, Trump told Trudeau in a call that “he did not believe that the treaty that demarcates the border between the two countries was valid and that he wants to revise the boundary.

“Mr. Trump also revisited the sharing of lakes and rivers.” He has long talked of wanting Canadian water. To get it he may very well want to re-draw the border along the north shores of Lakes Superior, over all of our greatest natural resource.

It’s like a political horror show but it’s not fiction. It’s incredibly dangerous and Canadians have to continue to stand strong and united, telegraphing that determination to our political leaders so they can feel it and use it to push and push and push until something gives.

WE’VE DONE EVERYTHING Trump has asked and more and yet he keeps on lying to our faces that it’s not enough. Equally frustrating is that no one in his orbit apparently has the courage to say, ‘Look, you're going to wreck the Canadian economy and put thousands of people out of work at businesses that will fail because you want to punish Canada for a fictitious tale of fentanyl and illegal immigrants.’

Every single Republican politician with skin in the tariff game has been repeatedly approached by a parade of Canadians bearing books of facts on the reality of the situation. Yet there they were Tuesday night, hollering approval when Trump acknowledged that “little disturbance” to the lives of their millions of constituents who will be hurt as much as Canadians will.

Democrats meekly sat in stony silence Tuesday as an openly corrupt president embarrassed them because they wouldn’t applaud a record that in only a few weeks is already astonishing in its cruelty and devil-may-care attitude towards longtime allies.

Did the slight majority of Americans who voted for Trump vote to go to economic war with their closest ally, Canada? Of course not. If they care enough about this disrespect, and the quick price hikes they encounter to raise a large enough ruckus, things may change. Citizens in other countries have taken to the streets in their thousands for far lesser offences by their governments.

If Americans don’t care enough to protest loud enough and long enough, there’s no telling what Trump will do. If Canadians don’t continue to encourage their governments to tell Trump ‘that’s enough!,’ we – and that means all of us of all political persuasions – will have let ourselves and our country down. We are showing citizen strength rarely seen before. Let’s keep it up.

Ian Pattison is retired as editorial page editor of The Chronicle-Journal, but still shares his thoughts on current affairs. You can email him at iPatPoint29@gmail.com.