Oh, Canada

Writing in the National Post, one of Canada’s two national papers, Andrew Coyne writes things fellow Canadians won’t like reading. He argues turning Trump’s tariffs into a trade war is self-defeating. After all:

The U.S. economy is more than 10 times as large as ours. Its exports to Canada account for two per cent of its GDP; our exports to them are 25 per cent of ours.

Oops, that ratio doesn’t look good for our hockey-loving friends in the chilly north. It does explain why Canadians follow U.S. politics while most of us ignore Canadian politics.

Some years ago, I astounded a young Canadian by sharing with her that the population of CA alone was larger than that of all of Canada. Most of Canada’s population lives within 100 miles of the U.S. border and visits the U.S. on-average every 18 months.

Most Americans don’t live within 100 miles of the Canadian border and we average a visit there roughly every 20 years. Using the time-worn analogy, it isn’t hard to determine which is the dog and which is the tail.