LILLEY: Like Trump's tariffs, poor Liberal policies are threatening our economy

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Donald Trump’s plan to put tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminum is bad for our industries and our workers. People could lose their jobs; plants that are on the cusp could be under threat depending on how long these tariffs last.

Trump signed the executive order Monday at 5:30 p.m., applying it to all steel and aluminum imports from other countries. He’s now considering further tariffs on automobiles, pharmaceuticals and computer chips.

The impact of these tariffs will be felt quickly. In 2018, Trump imposed 25% tariffs on Canadian steel, which saw Canada’s exports fall by 40% over the year they were in place, while a 10% tariff on aluminum saw Canada’s exports fall more than 50%.

Trump is erratic, he’s unpredictable and there is only so much we can do to counter his job-killing tariff policy. What we can do, though, is repeal our own job-killing policies or avoid bringing in new ones.

This is about more than eradicating the interprovincial trade barriers you’ve heard so much about. We also need to repeal existing policies that are killing jobs here at home and avoid adopting new policies that would be as detrimental as Trump’s tariffs.

The federal Liberals are in a leadership race and appear to be sleepwalking toward anointing Mark Carney as their next leader and our next prime minister. Carney recently announced his own policy, which will kill off the consumer carbon tax but increase the industrial carbon tax and impose a carbon tariff on imports.

First off, this policy would increase costs for industries such as those producing steel and aluminum within Canada. You can’t increase production costs without increasing prices. It’s the same as what the U.S.-imposed tariffs will do, even though Carney is denying it.

“What we’re going to do is make sure not that the government pays, not that we as taxpayers pay, but that the large polluters pay,” Carney said to CTV’s Todd Battis in an interview after his policy announcement.

“Does that not ultimately trickle down?” Battis asked.

Carney denied that costs would be passed on and then quipped, “How much steel are you using these days?”

How on earth can we claim that Trump’s tariffs will raise prices and put jobs at risk, but taxes imposed by our government will not have the same effect? It’s a ridiculous assertion and a dangerous policy for Canadian industries and yet is being proposed and accepted by the governing Liberal party as they move forward with selecting Carney as our next PM.

Carney has also proposed to bring in a “carbon border adjustment mechanism,” essentially a carbon tariff that would be put on imports of products such as “steel, chemicals, cement and aluminum.” So as we are trying to fight tariffs imposed by Trump, Carney’s plan is not retaliatory tariffs, but climate tariffs on the Americans, on Chinese goods, on Mexican goods – our three biggest trading partners.

This would risk a trade war and retaliation, which of course would put even more Canadian jobs at risk.

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That’s what Carney and the Liberal party are proposing and that would hurt our economy. We also have a long list of policies that they have been able to enact because of our heavy reliance on trade with the U.S.

The Liberals passed Bill C-69 to effectively block further pipeline development after killing off the Northern Gateway and Energy East pipelines. They rejected LNG projects such as Energie Saguenay and created a regulatory environment that scared away other projects. They imposed a tanker ban off the Pacific Coast to ensure there could be no more pipeline projects to tidewater in the West.

We need a plan to deal with the economic impact of Trump’s tariffs, but we also need a plan to deal with the economic damage caused by current and future policies of the Trudeau Liberal government.

The world is changing and we need to change or be left behind.