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Using fentanyl as an excuse to declare a national security issue, the Trump administration side-stepped congressional due process to unilaterally declare a tariff war against Canada, our friend to the North and Mexico to the south of this continental U.S. The 20 percent tariff against China will exacerbate and significantly damage the global trade between our two countries
It matters not how this will victimize the average American citizen, but it will certainly impact harshly the average family’s ability to feed, clothe and electrically power their homes, especially in Maine.
Something the Trump administration may have overlooked or deliberately ignored is that the world now operates on a global trade basis. Nationalism has no place in international trade unless our nation insists upon a xenophobic denial of this plain fact. No man is an island and no nation can survive as an isolated land awash in the sea of global forces, unless we intend to conquer the planet Earth and make it over in our own idiosyncratic image.
To think this way went out when the British Empire went the way of the dodo. We are no longer the monolithic nation we were after World War II.
No matter how much this administration lies and misinforms, the people who are hurt are the average citizen’s family; the wealthy and powerful who run this regime will never feel that pinch as they are heavily insulated from harm by their wealth and power.
As my civics teacher instructed me in the 1950s, “you get the government you deserve” and “the government only mirrors your own virtues or vices.”
The Congress should challenge Trump vigorously and fiercely — not cave in like rotten timbers.
Frederick Mendel
Sherman
