They slapped tariffs on Canadian exports. Canada responded with countervailing tariffs on American exports. What? The nerve! So now the Americans are planning to haul Canada before the World Trade Organization, the same WTO that Trump despises.
The Trump administration ...called countermeasures aimed at the U.S. by Canada and other trading partners "completely without justification under international rules."
The federal Liberal government introduced reciprocal duties earlier this month on some U.S. imports after the White House slapped Canada and others with tariffs on steel and aluminum.
...Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland has called Washington's metal tariffs absurd and illegal because they've been applied on the premise that Canada represents a national security threat to the U.S. Ottawa's response has been $16.6-billion worth of countermeasures on imports of American steel, aluminum and consumer products.
The U.S. took a fresh step Monday in the trade fight by filing separate disputes at the WTO against Canada -- as well as the European Union, China, Mexico and Turkey -- over each jurisdiction's set of counter-tariffs on imports of American goods.As the old line goes, there's no end to those pricks.
8 comments:
Moron's gotta moron.
They gotta keep grifting the Deplorables. This makes them look "tough", but only to total idiots.
Losing at the WTO is perfectly fine for Trump. It would give him and his congressional friends an excuse to up the ante and try to force change at the WTO, and also cry and whine about foreigners ganging up against the US.
Trump is behaving similar to populists like Fidel Castro, Hugo Chavez, Nicholas Maduro or Recep Erdogan. He needs enemies, the more the better.
As one of the protest signs in London said, "All in all you're just another prick with no wall."
Cap
It's not moronic of Trump, it's entirely possible a corrupt organization like the WTO will side with him over Canada. Plus the optics will appeal to his base either way, win or lose Trump benefits.
kogda rossiyskiye trolli poyavyatsya na vstreche
I may be well off base, but if the US has not made their required appointments to the WTO judicial bodies, why should the WTO give a flying fig about their complaints? The natural conclusion? the US would use this as 'proof' that the WTO is dysfunctional.
The idea that the US would use the WTO fight to take down the WTO is perverse but then again it's hardly beyond today's America.
The US is not not making appointments to the Appellate Body,
( like Hair Twitler knows what a double negative is),
It's blocking appointments to the Appellate Body, so there are only 4 judges, not 7, and if it drops to 3, there is defacto no Body.
The WTO has responded by having the 3 retired judges "work out their case load", which The Russian Usurper and his minions hate.
So far, the WTO is holding firm against US Obstructionism. Their Plan B is to go to majority voting if the US doesn't back down. In the '80's and '90's, US "greenmailing" of the WTO probably would have worked, but as an example of how things have changed, the EU/Japan FTA announced today created the largest "trading bloc" in the world, much bigger than NAFTA.
Putin's Pudenda can't blow up the WTO, because globally, US Trade isn't as large as it used to be.
All Uncle Vlad's Meatpuppet can do is blow up US trade with the ROW.
That's fine with the Deplorables, Gullibillies, Evangelicals, Dominionists and KKKonservatives, because:
“The salient fact of American politics is that there are fifty to seventy million voters each of whom will volunteer to live, with his family, in a cardboard box under an overpass, and cook sparrows on an old curtain rod, if someone would only guarantee that the black, gay, Hispanic, liberal, whatever, in the next box over doesn’t even have a curtain rod, or a sparrow to put on it.”
Davis X. Machina,
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