“Strange days we live in, are they not?” District of Muskoka Chair Jeff Lehman questioned at the February 18 council meeting. Lehman was referring to the threat of U.S. tariffs.
He told councillors that a local effort is underway between lower-tier municipal economic development officers, Muskoka’s chambers of commerce directors, and the district’s economic development officer.
“They’ve been meeting for the past couple of weeks on a single source of local information in support of tariff relief or response should that occur,” said Lehman. “There was a 30-day reprieve, but, of course, the steel and aluminum piece has gone ahead.”
Lehman said, notwithstanding the pause, the issue has not gone away. He said preparations are underway in the event that further tariffs are imposed. “You know, these are trade decisions by the U.S. president. Our ability to influence them is minimal, but our support and the efforts that we can make to support our local business community, should this occur, there is an effort being made to plan for that eventuality and offer what support we can at the municipal level in that kind of a business environment.”
Lehman said it is obviously hoped that the tariffs will not move forward, “but if they do, there is work to prepare and at least get information out to support our business community. Some more to come on that. Hopefully, we will not need too much of it.”
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I would hope that all government levels in Canada would have a “Canadian Preferred” purchasing policy. I know I do, both personally and for my business.
Wherever possible I try to “buy Canadian” to support my friends and local businesses.
If this is not possible, I next try to find suppliers who have a reasonably democratic and environmentally responsible goverment where people are free to live and work like we do in Canada. My policy is to pay a premium for goods and services that meet these criteria.
Only as a last resort do I conduct business with countries that do not respect the rule of law and human rights and currently the pale orange comb over hero in charge of the USA seems to respect nothing.
With this in mind, I would hope and support District government following the same type of policy and if they have been doing this there should be less impact of US tariffs.
Also note that tariffs are a poor, two sided sword when used to punish countries you don’t agree with. In the long run of history, tariffs have never really been very effective at improving the living conditions in either of the countries applying them. Thus, it may not actually be that effective for Canada to try to defeat US tariffs with our own countering tariffs and every other possible trade option should be examined first.
Remember that there are about 8 billion people in the world and only about half a billion are American so there should be lots of other trading partners out there. We just need to find them and make our deals with them.- instead of America for a while, until, hopefully, America comes to it;s senses and gets rid of Trump and his band of illogical followers before they do too much irreparable harm to the world.