EDITORIAL: Liberal failures end in a brutal tariff war

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All Canadians should hope Prime Minister Mark Carney’s phone call with President Donald Trump in the next day or so goes well, given the reckless tariff war the U.S. president has launched against us, including a 25% tariff on imported vehicles coming April 2.

While Ontario Premier Doug Ford said U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick told him Canada’s tariff for autos won’t be as harsh as other countries — for example, if 50% of the parts of a Canadian-made vehicle are from the U.S. the tariff would be 12.5% — that’s cold comfort, even if true.

Trump’s tariff on automobiles — devastating to the American and Canadian economies given our inevitable counter-tariff response — is just one in a series of looming reciprocal tariffs and tariffs the White House insists are necessary to ensure U.S. national security.

As Carney said Thursday, one phone call with Trump isn’t going to solve this.

We’re facing a long, tough fight against our former ally and trading partner.

But Carney’s specific responses to Trump’s tariffs  — which he says will be announced once we know the details —  won’t be much different from what Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre and NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh are saying.

All the national party leaders are denouncing Trump, promising to protect Canadian workers and to retaliate against the U.S. in kind.

But the difference is that the Liberal government Carney leads has been in power for 10 years and did nothing to advance the steps he says will now be needed to win the tariff war.

For example, Carney cited increasing trade with Europe to lessen our reliance on the U.S., knocking down federal barriers to inter-provincial trade and building new pipelines to get our energy resources to tidewater and from there to global markets.

But all these things were known weaknesses in our economy when the Liberals came to power in 2015.

Failing to act on them effectively is one reason the Liberals compiled the worst record of economic growth since the government of R.B. Bennett during the Great Depression.

Carney’s appeal to voters on Thursday to give the Liberals a strong majority government to take on Trump begs the question of why, since the Liberals failed to get the job done for a decade.