It’s not necessarily insane to keep trying the same thing and expecting a different result, but without doubt it’s exceedingly foolish. Just when you thought Donald Trump was thoroughly engaged with other misadventures like the Iran war, he decided to pick another tariff fight with a neighbour that has faced him down before. With inflation posing a risk to his already slumping popularity, Trump’s tariff follies are politically ever more ill-advised.
As I wrote earlier this week, the demands the US apparently made of Canada in return for holding off tariffs were so politically toxic that it would have been impossible for Prime Minister Mark Carney to accept them. Unless, improbably, that was the US plan, it was a terrible misjudgement.
Familiar problems beset Trump’s tariff campaign. Canada is principally a supplier of energy and intermediate goods like lumber, aluminium, car parts and potash for fertilisers to the US. Blocking them principally hurts US industries.