This article originally appeared in the Financial Post. Below is an excerpt from the article.
By Jack Mintz, January 24, 2025
This week I was in Alberta speaking to many people, primarily in business and academia. Although my evidence is anecdotal, there is overwhelming support for Premier Danielle Smith’s approach to the Trump tariff. Our best course is diplomacy, rather than retaliation that will ultimately prove fruitless.
We all share a strong and understandable beating-heart desire to stick it to the bully. We have heard from: our lame-duck prime minister, the Liberal contenders, Pierre Poilievre, Ontario Premier Doug Ford and many others that we should hit back with our own tariffs to change American minds. A (literally) nuclear option designed to maximize pain for everyone would be to hold back energy and critical minerals exports. Whether we do that or not, a tariff war, though not as harmful to the United States as to Canada and other countries, would nevertheless cause layoffs and inflation in the U.S.
The rationale for retaliation involves two assumptions: Because the Trumpians don’t know what they are doing, we need to get their attention and prove Canada is important to them. And we have no real or honourable choice but to retaliate and defend ourselves: trade war is thus our only option.
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Jack Mintz is the President’s Fellow at the University of Calgary’s school of public policy and a distinguished fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute.
