President Donald Trump last weekend renewed a trade war against Canada. And according to one leading scholar, there is no rationale driving Trump’s decision. Rather, the whole debacle is “based upon a misunderstanding of economics and a misunderstanding of politics” fueled by Trump’s “pathological preoccupation” with “fraud and grift.” This is according to renowned historian and authoritarian expert Timothy Snyder, who took to social media on Wednesday to explain the mindset pushing Trump to blow up U.S.-Canada relations.
“Trump has made his entire career on the basis of fraud and grift,” says Snyder. “As a result, he doesn’t really believe in the normal play of markets. He doesn’t understand that there might be legal exchanges or honest exchanges or exchanges where both parties actually profit, and not just one. And this is at the root of his misunderstanding of what a trade war is all about.”
Simply put, explains Snyder, “He doesn’t understand what a trade deficit is. A trade deficit means that you buy something from another country, and they give you things that you want. It’s a little bit like going to the grocery store. You have a trade deficit with your grocery store: you go there, you give them money, they give you things that you want or maybe even that you need. Now, you could decide in a moment of madness that you’re angry with the grocery store — that you think they’re just stealing your money. And you could say, I am so angry with you, grocery store, that I’ve decided that I’m now going to pay even more[.] That’s the trade war with Canada in a nutshell: they sell us things that we want, things we use to build other things, things that we need, and now we’re putting tariffs on them, which means all these things we want and need will be more expensive for us.”
While many have laid out the potential harms done by Trump’s trade war, according to Snyder, “The reason Mr. Trump thinks this makes sense is he doesn’t understand markets. He doesn’t understand economics. He never has. It simply has never occurred to him that there could be an exchange where both parties actually do well. As a result of this, he thinks that we’re being ripped off. And this is his constant pathological preoccupation. Because he spent his entire life ripping people off, his main concern all the time is that somehow he is being ripped off.”
What’s more, Snyder suggests that there is a “basic political misunderstanding” contributing to the problem: “Mr. Trump and the people around him have no understanding of patriotism. They have no understanding of sovereignty. They have no understanding of politics, which has to do with the rule of law or democracy or rights or any kind of responsibility. For them, politics is just one more grift. It's just one more way of getting to the top, fooling other people, and making money. As a result, they don't understand the notion of patriotism.”
And because they lack this understanding, says Snyder, “It doesn't occur to them that anybody else would. Now, this may seem like an advantage, but it's actually, in certain critical moments, a disadvantage, because as they make trade war on Canada, their assumption is Canada is not real, it's all fake, it will just fall apart, all we have to do is nudge it. And this is a big miscalculation.”
In reality, Snyder explains, “Canada is full of people who understand that they're Canadian. Canada is led by people who understand the basic existential interests of Canada. The trade war that the U.S. is prosecuting threatens the basic sovereignty of Canada and therefore will get a solid and reasonable response. So the US trade war against Canada is based on a political misunderstanding. It's based on ignorance of the basic fact that some people do care about their country and that some people have a plan for their country, which is why the Americans will lose this trade war.”
Trump assumes that Canada will fold, says Snyder, “because there's no such thing as patriotism, no such thing as the rule of law – it's all just a scam. But it isn't for them. It's also based on the assumption that everything will happen quickly, but it won't. The Americans have an attention span of about 5 seconds. The Canadians have a plan. The Canadians will be patient. And the result of this is that not only will everybody lose, but the Americans will lose harder.”
