The latest trade dispute facing Canadians is a truly east-west scrap.
The federal government has slapped a 100-percent tariff on electric cars coming from China along with the imposition of a 25-percent duty on steel and aluminum coming from the far eastern country.
In response, China has begun to take steps to penalize Canadian canola imports to its country.
For those of us in western Canada, this is a double whammy. Canola prices are down in the face of the prospect of a new duty while steel prices are going up because of Canada’s tariffs. It makes it pretty tough for those in the farm machinery business now facing higher prices for their inputs while their customers are seeing declining incomes.
And all of this to protect the heavily subsidized eastern Canadian electric auto industry.
Clearly, the fed’s natural or instinctive reaction is to support industries centred in the east with no hesitation to throw western Canadian enterprise under the combine as this trade dispute between eastern and western countries plays out the same way between the east and west in Canada.
