by the Journal-Opinion
Alcoholic beverages, dairy products, and motorcycles were among the Canadian products banned from import into the United States, under a Trump administration measure that took effect yesterday.
Many of the goods were already subject to tariffs.
“The economic impact is likely to be minimal,” reports the Associated Press. A trade attorney told the wire service, “For a lot of these goods, the 50% was already acting as a de facto ban by making importation from Canada into the United States uneconomical.”
Detailed trade talks are not happening at the moment, reports Canada’s The Globe and Mail.
“Tuesday’s import bans, which kicked in at 12:01 a.m. Tuesday, bar Canadian exports of about three dozen different alcohol products, including beer, wine and spirits such as whiskies, vodka and gin. They also apply to different whey products, some types of molasses, non-alcoholic beer and some motorcycles.”
The ban is the latest volley in an escalating and senseless trade war between the two neighbors.
“I deal with many countries, and Canada is easily the most difficult and unreasonable,” President Trump said in a social media post last month. “They feel entitled, but they are not a State, and will be entitled no longer!”
Meanwhile, reports the National Post: “Canada’s Industry Minister, Melanie Joly, has previously been open about the fact that Canadian counter-tariffs were in part designed to ‘target states’ and ‘put political pressure’ on the Trump administration.”
Lens on the Twin States
In a new book, Vermont Law & Graduate emeritus law professor Brian Porto compares the sometimes contrasting political ethos of New Hampshire and Vermont.
He finds the state’s mottos instructive, reported the Valley News:
New Hampshire’s license plates are “ubiquitous mobile billboards for a libertarian ethic.”
Billboard-less Vermont’s motto, meanwhile, gives you freedom to be yourself, while being part of a community.
But Porto’s comparison in “Twin States, Different Paths” doesn’t stop with mottos and license plates, The Boston Globe noted in its Sept. 29 Morning Report newsletter:
“Porto argues the present-day contrast between New Hampshire and Vermont — in terms of regulation, taxation, and publicly funded services — is attributable to a confluence of factors, some of which are rooted in the soil itself. His book traces how geological and geographic differences contributed to economic dissimilarities between the states, which helped shape the modern political identities that still influence where newcomers decide to settle.”