One of the peculiarities of current American politics is that President Donald Trump has managed to start a trade war with the entire planet on his own, with no specific authorization from Congress. Massive hikes in tariffs, reductions, delays, and threats have all been based on squint-hard-and-you’ll-see-it interpretations of legislation originally meant to limit presidential emergency powers. So far, judges haven’t been able to squint that hard; a federal appeals court recently agreed with an earlier ruling that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) doesn’t say what the administration claims, though the decision is stayed until the U.S. Supreme Court weighs in.
 

It’s a timely decision, with the U.S. adopting third world-style tariff rates.
 

Back in April, President Trump declared a “
national emergency
” based on his administration’s finding that “underlying conditions, including a lack of reciprocity in our bilateral trade relationships, disparate tariff rates and non-tariff barriers” and more “constitute an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and economy of the United States.” In inflicting huge changes on world trade, the president invoked powers he alleged had been granted by federal legislation, especially IEEPA. That, he claimed, was grounds for imposing,
suspending
,
modifying
, and
delaying
tariff rates that jacked the old average rate up from roughly 1.5 per cent to 19.4 per cent,
according
to the Tax Foundation. 
 

That is, that’s the rate for now if it sticks. In May, the U.S. Court of International Trade
ruled
that it “does not read IEEPA to confer such unbounded authority and sets aside the challenged tariffs imposed thereunder.” 
 

The administration immediately appealed, of course. After all, President Trump has touted tariffs for years as the key to prosperity. In February, at the Conservative Political Action Conference, he 
insisted
 the U.S. was wealthiest relative to the rest of the world “from 1870 to 1913. That was our richest because we collected tariffs from foreign countries that came in and took our jobs and took our money, took our everything, but they charged tariffs.” 
 

That’s quite a contrarian take given that over 2,000 economists signed a
statement
pointing out that “overwhelming economic evidence shows that freedom to trade is associated with higher per-capita incomes, faster rates of economic growth, and enhanced economic efficiency.” Trump’s claimed authority has provoked similar pushback and not just at the Court of International Trade. At the end of August, that ruling was upheld by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.
 

In a
7-4 decision
, the majority of judges wrote, “we agree that IEEPA’s grant of presidential authority to ‘regulate’ imports does not authorize the tariffs imposed by the Executive Orders.” The majority noted that past statutes regarding presidential authority in tariff matters have always been very specific as to what the chief executive can and can’t do with a
responsibility assigned to legislators
by the Constitution. “It seems unlikely that Congress intended, in enacting IEEPA, to depart from its past practice and grant the President unlimited authority to impose tariffs.” 
 

But, while the appeals court found the imposition of tariffs to exceed presidential authority, it vacated the Court of International Trade’s universal injunction against the tariffs and sent the case back to the lower court for reconsideration of the scope of the injunction. That effectively leaves the tariffs in place until the Supreme Court, almost certainly,
hears the administration’s appeal
.
 

Forecasting Supreme Court decisions is a suckers’ game, but the
smart money
suggests the justices will at least trim the president’s sails if not wholly rule against him. After all, as I’ve
written before
, IEEPA was passed by Congress in 1977 after the 
Congressional Research Service
 (CRS) found the United States had been in a declared state of emergency for over 40 years. IEEPA along with the National Emergencies Act were intended to curb presidential emergency powers, not expand them to include absolute authority over trade policy.
 

The Tax Foundation, which puts the current average applied tariff rate at 19.4 per cent,
estimates
that if the Supreme Court upholds the lower court rulings against unilateral presidential trade authority, American tariffs would top out at an average of 6.3 per cent. That’s still well above the prevailing rate before the current trade war, but it’s a lot more palatable than double-digit figures for those of us who believe that international trade, like domestic commerce, should be as unburdened as possible by government restrictions and impositions.
 

There’s a lot at stake here, and not just for the flow of raw materials and finished products around the world. Free trade builds prosperity, and barriers to it hamper the creation of wealth. A world with high trade barriers will be a poorer world.
 

In a
recent report
, Canada’s Fraser Institute points out that high-income countries generally have low tariffs, and low-income countries have high tariffs. 
 

“In the high-tariff countries, average GDP per capita is just $9,703 per year,” write authors Robert A. Lawson of Southern Methodist University and Fraser’s own Matthew D. Mitchell, referencing U.S. dollars. “In low-tariff countries, it is $43,502 per year.”
 

At its pre-trade war, low-tariff rate, the U.S. was in the company of countries like Singapore, Hong Kong, Australia, and New Zealand, according to the report. An average tariff rate of 19.4 per cent ranks the U.S. amongst the likes of Zimbabwe, the Republic of the Congo, Egypt, and Tunisia.
 

Higher tariffs would also bump the U.S. from 56th place to 76th place for trade freedom in Fraser’s
Economic Freedom of the World (EFW) index
and cause the country to fall in overall economic freedom from fifth
 place to 10
th
. It’s worth emphasizing that economic freedom correlates even more closely than tariff rates with prosperity. Capitalist countries with free economies let their citizens get wealthier and healthier, while the lack of such freedom keeps people poor and miserable.
 

In 2016, economist Deirdre McCloskey 
observed
 that the human flourishing of the last few centuries can be attributed to “liberalism, in the free-market European sense.” That includes social and political freedom too, of course, which tends to
go hand in hand
with the economic liberty to engage in trade.
 

President Donald Trump’s obsession with tariffs has disrupted world trade, upset partners, and threatened impoverishment. Fortunately, the whims of one man aren’t the final word.
 

National Post

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Hopeful news emerged on Friday with a draft list of

32 potential major infrastructure

projects slated to be fast-tracked by federal authorities under the Building Canada Act. Though by no means approved, the projects are the first indication of how the Mark Carney Liberals intend to fulfil campaign pledges made in May.

Only a week earlier, Prime Minister Mark Carney

announced

the opening of the Major Projects Office, whose job it will be to “serve as a single point of contact to get nation-building projects built faster” by streamlining regulatory approvals and co-ordinating financing. This is not to be confused with the previously existing federal

Major Projects Management Office

“whose role is to provide overarching project management and accountability for major resource projects.”

Canadians of all political stripes should hope the endeavour is successful. Large infrastructure projects, notably in the economically critical resource sector, have for too long been weighed down by red tape and mired in

regulatory purgatory

which functionally cancelled or critically delayed

many projects

and harmed Canadian prosperity. The process got so bad that in 2018 the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion (TMX) had to be

purchased mid-construction by the federal government

because regulatory and legal uncertainty made continued private investment impossible.

Dawn Farrell, former CEO of Trans Mountain Corporation, has been tapped by Carney to lead the new Major Projects Office. While Trans Mountain has not become a byword for budgetary restraint and management, it should be acknowledged that TMX was the first major infrastructure project to find its way to completion under new political, environmental and legal frameworks. While some may criticize Farrell’s appointment on the grounds that TMX was significantly over budget, there is little reason to think she brings anything but a desire to finally execute on the large projects governments have long only talked about and everyone should wish her well.

However, Canadians should also view this Carney plan with the clear eyes of over a decade of disappointment. They should also consider the context of a prime minister who has promised much but not actually built or delivered anything yet. Can this change? Yes. Will it? Hold your breath at your own risk.

While the Major Projects Office sounds good, it is impossible to ignore what the government is trying to paper over. Namely, that Canada’s regulatory process has gotten so bad that fixing it isn’t even really an option, and thus another layer of bureaucracy with special powers to bypass existing rules had to be

created

to get anything done. That this opens the process up to political abuse and cronyism

should be obvious

. This is anything but the true free market at work and treading uncomfortably close to a centrally planned economy where governments pick and choose winners and losers: something they are generally terrible at.

And therein lies the critical issue. It should not be up to governments to determine what projects are viable or not. It must be up to the businesses themselves within a clear regulatory framework. Government should not be — in the parlance of the day — making the

“business case”

for anything. Businesses should.

In B.C. we have seen the muddying of these waters already. Premier David Eby, who has belatedly realized a functioning economy might be something he should consider attending to, passed Bill 15, the

Infrastructure Projects Act

, 

in May.

According to a statement by the premier’s office,
the bill was aimed at
“speeding up approvals for priority provincial infrastructure projects, such as schools and hospitals.” Further, that act could also “help speed up approvals for other projects designated as provincially significant.”

The word “designated” does a lot of heavy lifting in that sentence and the “other projects” will likely be the

major resource projects

the government decides it likes for reasons unspecified. Once again, the free market turfed for political whim.

Carney is set on showing Canadians that things are changing and projects mothballed in the past will now move forward. In the announcement of the Major Projects Office, his news release states, “For too long, the construction of major infrastructure has been stalled by arduous, inefficient approval processes, leaving enormous investments on the table.” One can’t help but notice they failed to add who has been in government during that “too long” period of time.

Canadians should want to see their country succeed and the Major Projects Office together with the 32 potential projects revealed Friday are potentially hugely significant steps towards prosperity. This remains, however, a “show me” story and Mark Carney and the Liberals will excuse us for not raising the Mission Accomplished banner just yet.

National Post

Adam Pankratz is a lecturer at the University of British Columbia’s Sauder School of Business.

Is Mark Carney the new Jean Chrétien? Last Wednesday, Carney used the “a word” —

austerity

— to describe the future of Canada’s finances in the era of Trump’s tariffs. Carney had already ordered a 15 per cent cut to Ottawa’s operational spending in July, implying a downsizing of the civil service and possibly program cuts. Then on Friday, he paused Canada’s

costly EV mandate

while creating a

$5 billion “strategic response fund”

to help Canadian businesses find new markets.

Sound familiar? Back in the 1990’s, with Canada drowning in debt and the IMF threatening to impose its

own austerity plans

, Prime Minister Chrétien seized the gauntlet and slashed spending. He shrunk the federal bureaucracy by

45,000 positions over three years

with his 1995 austerity budget, and eliminated the

$45 billion deficit

over the next few years by cutting transfer payments to the provinces. He scrapped Canada’s $5.8 billion deal for EH-101 military helicopters and led annual splashy

Team Canada missions

to get Canadian goods to open new markets and around the world.

Unlike Chrétien, who had spent nearly two decades in the Liberal trenches as an MP and minister, however, Carney lacks a deep grounding inside the party base, making him more vulnerable to internal backlash. His volte face on EVs and the carbon tax have also given Opposition Leader Pierre Poilievre an opening to

call out his “flipflop”

just as he returns to the House of Commons next week. Unlike Chrétien, who faced off against much smaller Reform and Progressive Conservative parties, Carney doesn’t have the luxury of a divided right and will face more muscular criticism from the one Conservative party.

There’s also the issue of who will play the role of Paul Martin. Without his able finance minister, Chrétien wouldn’t have been nearly as successful in cutting spending. Carney’s given the task to Finance Minister Jean-Philippe Champagne, who is so far doing a decent job, but it remains to be seen if he has Martin’s ruthlessness when it comes to cutting.

And when it comes to opening markets, Carney faces a limitation that Chrétien didn’t have: he can’t cuddle up to China. Chrétien led four missions to the Middle Kingdom, and remained a friend of Beijing long after he left office, even suggesting that Carney’s predecessor, Justin Trudeau, intervene to

drop Canada’s extradition proceedings

against Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou in 2019, who stood accused of using a Huawei subsidiary to do business in Iran in violation of U.S. sanctions.

China wasn’t our friend then and isn’t now. The difference is that today more people get that, and we are also dealing with an American administration that has no love for Xi Jin Ping.

But while some of the challenges are different, Carney has so far displayed the same type of Teflon as Chrétien. While his numbers have dipped, he maintains a net positive favourability rating, with 48 per cent of Canadians holding a favourable view while 35 per cent view him unfavourably, according to

the latest Abacus survey,

and the Liberals continue to lead the Conservatives by 43 to 41 per cent.

There is one parallel, however, that Carney better hope does not come to pass: another Quebec referendum. Under Chrétien’s watch in 1995, Quebecers came within a whisker of leaving, with only 50.1 per cent voting to stay. Today, the separatist Parti Québécois

is riding high

in Quebec and has promised another vote on independence if it wins next year’s provincial elections. Carney will need to find a way to assuage Quebecers’ environmental concerns, especially in light of the passage of Bill C-5, his major projects bill, which the Bloc Québécois will make

an issue of this fall

and which the Parti Quebecois is also hammering. It’s been said that national unity is job one of all prime ministers, but Carney doesn’t need an internal threat when he already faces so many from outside.

Postmedia News

Tasha Kheiriddin is Postmedia’s national politics columnist.

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When Prime Minister Mark Carney steps up to the podium for a likely appearance at the United Nations General Assembly this month, the world will be listening — and so will Canadians. Any words offered by Carney on whether to recognize a Palestinian state will shape not only Canada’s foreign policy, but also his credibility as a leader at home.

This issue cuts to the core of Canadian values — compassion, justice and peace — but also moral clarity in the face of terror. On October 7, Hamas terrorists slaughtered, mutilated and abducted innocents in Israel, including Canadian citizens who had devoted their lives to peace. To recognize a Palestinian state in the shadow of those atrocities, without firm preconditions, would blur the line between victims and perpetrators and undermine Canada’s moral standing.

Polling shows that many people support Palestinian self-determination. But Canadians also understand nuance. Helping to broker peace is a Canadian value. Handing a political victory to extremists is not. That is why past governments, Liberal and Conservative alike, have made recognition conditional: direct negotiations with Israel, guarantees for Israeli security and a demonstrated rejection of violence. Recognition was always meant to be the culmination of peace efforts, not the starting point.

For Carney, the domestic stakes of the 80th UN General Assembly are real. Typically, Canadian prime ministers take part in the high-level debate, set to begin this year on Sept. 23, after the session officially opens on Sept. 9. Unconditional recognition risks alienating mainstream Canadians who value Canada’s reputation as a principled democracy. It would sharpen divides in communities already under strain and give critics ammunition to paint him as naive on foreign policy. It would also complicate Canada’s counter-terrorism laws, creating contradictions between our designation of Hamas as a terrorist group and our recognition of a state that’s still at least partially ruled by Hamas.

International law reinforces this caution. To qualify as a state under the accepted criteria — reflected in both the Montevideo Convention and customary international law practice — Palestinians must demonstrate: a defined territory, a permanent population, effective government and the ability to engage in foreign relations. The Palestinian Authority currently does not meet those standards. It lacks control over Gaza, where Hamas exercises effective rule, and its leadership under President Mahmoud Abbas is widely discredited and incapable of exercising authority. Pretending otherwise would not advance peace or justice; it would amount to lowering the bar for political convenience.

The safer and smarter path is also the more principled one. Recognition should follow — not precede — concrete and verifiable steps: the release of Israeli hostages; Hamas’s disarmament; reform of Palestinian institutions; and active support from Arab states moving toward normalization with Israel. Canadians will respect a prime minister who says: yes to Palestinian dignity, yes to peace, but no to rewarding mass murder.

This approach also gives Carney political room to manoeuvre. He can appeal to Canadians who are concerned about the suffering of civilians in Gaza, while balancing this empathy with the ongoing agony of hostages held underground and the constant threat of rocket fire and terror attacks faced daily by Israeli civilians. Canadians expect their leaders to hold both realities at once: compassion for Gazan civilians trapped in a brutal conflict, and unwavering solidarity with Israelis enduring Hamas’s relentless campaign of violence.

There is another dimension that cannot be ignored: the impact at home. Already, Canada’s streets have seen rising tensions, open glorification of Hamas and sharp increases in antisemitic incidents. If recognition of a Palestinian state is granted without conditions, it will be read by Hamas supporters and sympathizers in Canada as validation that terrorism works. That message would embolden the most extreme voices, threaten community cohesion and risk further unrest in our cities and on campuses. Canadians expect their prime minister to take this domestic reality into account when speaking on the world stage.

Canada has always prided itself on its principled foreign policy. Whether opposing apartheid in South Africa, promoting the “responsibility to protect” in the early 2000s, or standing with Ukraine today, Canadian governments have built their credibility on moral clarity paired with constructive engagement. Premature recognition of a Palestinian state would run against that tradition. It would not strengthen moderates or bring peace closer. It would instead embolden radicals and diminish Canada’s standing as a country that balances compassion with principle.

At next week’s General Assembly, Carney has the chance to show leadership that speaks not only to diplomats in New York but to families in Ottawa, Toronto, Montreal, Calgary and Vancouver who want Canada to live up to its values. Canadians do not expect their government to solve the Middle East conflict. But they do expect moral clarity: recognition should be the reward for peace, not the consolation prize for terror.

Canada believes in a future where Israelis and Palestinians can live side-by-side in peace and dignity. But that future must be built on accountability, justice and the rejection of violence. If Carney frames his General Assembly message this way, he will not only strengthen Canada’s voice abroad, he will reassure Canadians at home that their prime minister is principled, compassionate and clear-eyed in the face of extremism. That is the Canada the world needs to hear from, and the kind of country Canadians expect their prime minister to represent.

National Post

Alan Kessel is a former assistant deputy minister in the Government of Canada, former deputy high commissioner of Canada to the United Kingdom and a senior fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute.

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Fascism is in the air,

on television

and print. We read about American

progressive celebrities

and

academics

fleeing to other countries like the United Kingdom, Ireland and Canada to exercise their notion of a free society. In her campaign, after all,

Kamala Harris

called Donald Trump a “president of the United States who admires dictators and is a fascist.”

To be sure, Trump’s hysterical antics remind one of Benito Mussolini, but the long-term undermining of such things as free speech comes not primarily from MAGA land but in the favoured precincts of the progressives. The defenders of democracy, like

Anne Applebaum

, a brilliant analyst of Communist repression, and noted fascism scholar

Timothy Snyder

, now at the University of Toronto, focus their current angst almost exclusively on Trump, the nationalist and religious right.

What they ignore is the more fashionable fascism of the respectable establishments in both Europe and North America. This left-of-center authoritarianism is particularly evident in Europe, where established “moderate” and left parties in places like

Germany

,

Romania

and

France

have worked to keep populist candidates off the battlefield. In the U.S.,

progressives

even tried to prevent Trump from running, although unsuccessfully.

In Keir Starmer’s Britain, you can

go to jail

for violating speech codes and also experience “two-tier” law enforcement, one for native Brits and another for newcomers, including the undocumented. And just wait till they pass

their definition

of “Islamophobia” which no doubt concerns them far more than antisemitism, which has been

growing

at a much faster pace.

Then there’s Ireland, where

anti-Israel sentiments

are strong, and where officials have pushed for

censorship of online speech

, most of it taking place on U.S. platforms. This drew opposition from U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

But perhaps nowhere is the hypocrisy greater than in Canada. Under Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Canada attempted to pass

an online harms bill

widely seen as

draconian.

Mercifully, it has not yet been passed. Trudeau, particularly during COVID, repressed basic rights, and during the truckers’ protests froze the

fundraising efforts

of dissidents. In a country that seems unwilling to arrest antisemites and rampaging Islamists, opposing government policy by middle-class Canadians risks

jail time

.

As in much of the western world,

censorship

and what one Wilfrid Laurier University president once called “

better speech

” finds its spiritual home in academia, once a bastion of unfettered discussion.

California

, perhaps rehearsing for

a future role

as China’s 23rd province, is also now considering draconian legislation which would monitor and control speech on the platforms.

The roots of this new “woke” fascism have their origins not in the supposedly repressive Trump years but during the Obama-Biden era. Jacob Siegel, author of the upcoming book

The Information State

, pointed out the cozy collaboration between tech companies and the federal bureaucracy, including the Department of Defense, that sought to regulate and surveil internet communications.

Over the past two decades, the Obama-Biden team has seized on the platforms, many run by their political allies, as a means to control debate and limit discussion. “They want a censorship regime characteristic of a corporate state,” Siegel told me last week. “Everything has to be approved by the state, and that is now the progressive handbook.”

In the runup to the 2020 election, for example,

the Democrats

brazenly colluded with the intelligence community to shield then-candidate Joe Biden from association with the

Hunter Biden laptop

scandal, labelling reports of the computer’s contents falsely as “Russian disinformation.” The platforms even

repressed

a story by the New York Post, America’s oldest newspaper, while working 

to demonetize

fairly obscure, and hardly neo-Nazi, right-wing sites like The Daily Skeptic.

This alliance between government, the giant platforms and a host of non-profit players represents, as Siegel suggests, a greater long-term threat to personal freedom and democracy than Trump’s chaotic and sometimes disturbing assaults on constitutional norms. To be sure, Trump certainly appeals to common fascist themes — nationalism, xenophobia, cultural conservativism — but on the crucial issue of speech, he represents something of a small step against it.

Similarly, all the rising right-wing parties — in Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, France and the U.K. — are now less fascist, at least on speech issues, than the seemingly respectable “democratic” forces that oppose them. “We live in a crazy world,” former U.S. Ambassador to Italy Ron Spogli joked a few months back, “where only the fascists believe in free speech.”

To be sure, right-wingers can be repressive, as we see in Viktor Orbán’s illiberal Hungary. But there’s a critical difference. Traditional conservatives, having lost out for much of the last half-century, seek to salvage the tattered remainders of family, religion and the nation-state, all in some form of decline. When in power, they sometimes overreach on such things as book bans in schools and calls to bring religion back into public education.

For their part, the progressives adopt a more radical, transformative agenda, seeking to upend society and impose radical racial, gender and environmental agendas. Conservatives once favoured loyalty oaths but today it’s progressives who demand conformity on a host of issues, including climate and racial preferences. The right’s antics are disturbing, but those of the progressives more closely emulate fascist practices, reaching into everyday life to shape the mentality of the masses.

The progressive way of repression benefits from control over the universities, the mainstream media, and the art and cultural worlds: those institutions that historically shape perceptions of reality. Once Trump is gone, he will leave a convenient blueprint for repressing opponents; once the right self-destructs, the progressives will feel empowered to wage an all-out war on their hated opponents.

In contrast to the progressives, MAGA lacks ideological rigour or political organization, reflecting the incoherence of its leader. The

Art of the Deal

 is far from being

Mein Kampf

. The Trumpistas remain a fundamentally unstable klatch of reactionaries, political opportunists, populists and, of course, shameless grifters. Unlike the Italian fascists and Nazis, they have minimal support in the judiciary and among

the professional elites

, who now overwhelmingly favour the progressives.

Trump’s ill-considered statements, over-the-top prosecutions and constant purges of his own people may prove useful to progressives when they return to power. His missteps and exaggerations could well provide the

rationale

for a future progressive consolidation of power.

If they regain power, expect, among other things, a greater emphasis on

race consciousness

, an odd recasting of Nazi ideology, and an ever more passionate defence of gender politics. They would likely impose a strict climate regime allowing the state to

monitor and control

what happens inside your house, how much energy and water you consume and even what kind of neighbourhood or housing you can live in. The climate catastrophists’ agenda, as establishmentarian mouthpiece

Foreign Policy

has noted, is clearly incompatible with any traditional sense of democratic and property rights.

Once the Trumpian stain is removed, maybe then the academics and celebrities hiding in other countries can bring back with them the wonderful repressive tools being deployed in Ottawa, London and Brussels — instruments for a fashionable fascism to be employed when the current populist revolt runs out of steam.

National Post