Trump’s tariffs unjustified, damaging says Maguire

Ryan Kiedrowski,
Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

Saskatchewan MP Larry Maguire says he’s hearing a lot of uncertainly from people in his riding leading up to the March 4 tariff deadline that Trump says he’s imposing on Canada.

“Everybody’s concerned about it. Nobody knows just exactly what all it’s going to be on,” he said. “We’ve got a large agricultural area here, so of course, we’re very concerned about that. But there’s manufacturing here as well. A lot of agriculture equipment has been exempt in tariffs in the past for food production, so we’ll just have to see. We don’t know what all is going to be hit with these tariffs here yet.”

U.S. President Donal Trump announced he would place a 25 per cent tariff on goods from Canada and Mexico effective March 4.

“These are very unjustified tariffs,” Maguire said. “They will definitely increase the cost of living in the United States, as well as do damage here. I think we’ve got a good plan to put Canada first here with Mr. Poilievre, he’s a strong leader and able to negotiate, because obviously the president we have in the United States despises the leadership that we have in Canada now.”

According to Maguire, politicians should be in Ottawa right now, trying to come up with a solution.

“We should have been back in Parliament dealing with this, and we hear that instead, the Liberals are trying to sneakily coronate Mark Carney as their new leader, and that’s the only reason that they prorogued the House, was just for their own self-preservation,” he said.

One of those ideas is to impose retaliatory tariffs, but the end recipient of those dollars would be different.

“We will put on a dollar-for-dollar tariff, but with 100 per cent of the proceeds of those tariffs going to reimbursing businesses and workers that are directly impacted by these tariffs,” Maguire explained. “Anything left over will go to tax cuts for all Canadians, and it’s not going to go into government spending. There’s just a lot of things that we can do here to rebuild Canada and get it going, but we should have been in the Parliament dealing with these tariff situations that the U.S. has got, and instead we’ve got a government that’s negligent in its operations.”

Maguire is also hearing skepticism from around the Brandon-Souris riding, with people launching their own protest actions such as canceling travel plans to the U.S. and buying more Canadian products.

“I hear it all the time in the grocery stores and as we go around the constituency, there’s a lot of skepticism as to what will happen and will the 25 per cent tariff be on everything, or will it be 10 per cent on some like he did with oil or energy sources,” he said. “What about the critical minerals that we have? Our automobile industries down east? It affects every province that way, so people are very skeptical about what it’s going to do to the bottom line here, it’s certainly not going to help the cost of living or help young people be able to afford a home.”

Aside from the 2018 tariffs that Trump put into effect during his first term as president, these trade wars are nothing new. Maguire recalls another case of history repeating itself.

“This did happen back in the ‘90s before—not on as broad a spectrum, but Canada reacted by targeting specific products in different parts of the U.S. that were exports to Canada, the wine and liquor industry in California being one of them,” he said. “Automobile parts seem to be able to continue to go back and forth across the border. There’s a great co-operation required there in our industries, and we’re hoping that can continue in a number of those because Canada has an awful lot of resources that the U.S. can use.”

Ryan Kiedrowski,
Local Journalism Initiative Reporter
The World-Spectator