Donald Trump’s former ambassador to the European Union says nothing should be off the table when it comes to Canada-U.S. trade discussions and that the U.S. president wants immediate change on his irritants like dairy and auto manufacturing.
“You cannot have fair and multilateral trade by someone saying that something is not up for grabs,” Gordon Sondland said in an interview on Rosemary Barton Live on Sunday. “Everything is up for grabs. Everything.”
Sondland referred to Canada’s supply management system — a national policy framework meant to ensure predictable and stable prices by guaranteeing supply-managed dairy farmers a minimum price for their products. Trump has railed against the system for years.
I don’t think it’s entirely crazy talk, I can also see how this could end up makibg other countries work better together, but the path there is narrow and trump, his adherents, and puppetmasters will be doing everything in their power to stop it happening. At least, everything short of not destroying their allegences and friendships.
I obviously can’t speak for everywhere, but here every Canadian is effectively boycotting us goods. What purpose will it serve to import the incredibly steroid laden, antibiotic stuffed milk that they would try to sell up here?
I grew up on a dairy farm. I’ve railed against our milk mafia for years, but the end result is dairy farmers make enough money to feed their families. If we open up to US milk that effectively nobody will buy, what’s the point?
And while I’m obviously not speaking for everyone, fuck the US. You want to turn your back on your allies, we should stop even pretending like you are one. Tariff everything. Stop exports to them. They want isolation, let the isolate.
That’s how it’s going to have to be until the US administration starts to act reasonably, sorts out it’s agricutural system and generally shows that it’s a beneficial member of the global community for a good long time. I think the rest of us will have moved on by then, realigning alliances and generally making things better without them. The US and Russia will fight that with every dirty trick they have, and as a global community, we’ll have to be ready for that.