Editorial—#BuyUnAmerican

It remains an open question if the 25% tariffs that have been announced so loudly today will actually happen tomorrow as has been promised.  Trump’s track record on following through with things make it anything but certain. Personally,  I’m thinking the odds are in favor of it happening, but then not lasting the full week.

Regardless, the damage will be done. My partner and I have already made a commitment to #BuyUnAmerican.  In truth, we’ve been doing this on a low-key level for quite a while, more simply because we like to seek out local producers and support them.  Never mind that we have a horrible track record of finding products we really like just shortly before the company involved goes belly-up or stops producing that item. Regardless, that low-key effort will ramp up now, and personally I’m hoping it will catch on, not just to spite Trump and his goals of somehow countering a trade-deficit that’s less than the population difference of the two countries, but because it’s well beyond time that Canadians made a concerted effort to really support Canadian manufacturers and products.

And here’s the thing, that attitude won’t go away when the tariffs do.  If Canadians get into new habits of checking where things are made and purchasing accordingly during the tariff period, those habits won’t just disappear.  It’s always been the case that Canada has done most of it’s trade based on selling raw resources and purchasing back the manufactured and refined products, but we certainly have the technology, education, and man-power to stop doing that, if we really wanted to.  There just hasn’t been a huge economic case to do so, because economies of scale mean that production in the US (or China) can happen much more cheaply than it does here.  But here’s where those tariffs can change things, especially if our governments start imposing retaliatory tariffs on American products.  The economic shelter that will provide may be all the incentive, coupled with a growing concern about the leanings that have been, shall we say, manifested by the leaders down south, that Canadians need to spur a bit of risk-taking on our own to develop our own manufacturers  (And if someone wants an idea of a product to manufacture, consider cheap frozen burritos, please).

Of course, whether these tariffs go anywhere over the long run is anybody’s guess. An agent of chaos, attempting to predict Mr. Trump’s next moves beyond “whatever he thinks will benefit him most” is a fool’s game at best.

Meanwhile, in this week’s Voice Magazine, we’ve got some really interesting stuff, including a look at misinformation and the actions being used to combat it, a Fly on the Wall that examines the controversy around Elon Musks’ recent actions, and for which you’ll need to read the whole thing if you really want to get the point, a challenge from Blythe Appleby that may just help you not only with your studies, but might also help to calm down your life in a larger sense, and a feature comic that helps define the difference between the boys and the men, though perhaps without success.  Plus there’s scholarships, events, inspirational and entertaining articles, articles that may give you pause to question, reviews, and more!

Enjoy the read!