{"id":165821,"date":"2018-06-01T05:07:38","date_gmt":"2018-06-01T09:07:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=165821"},"modified":"2018-06-01T05:07:38","modified_gmt":"2018-06-01T09:07:38","slug":"trumps-absurd-tariffs-central-to-morneaus-event-for-already-embattled","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2018\/06\/01\/trumps-absurd-tariffs-central-to-morneaus-event-for-already-embattled\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump’s ‘absurd’ tariffs central to Morneau’s event for already embattled"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Morneau<\/a>
Morneau said he expects the G7 to keep pressure on the U.S., hoping to force it to reconsider. (Photo<\/a>: Bill Morneau\/Facebook<\/a>)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

WHISTLER, B.C. \u2014 The Trump administration’s \u201cabsurd\u201d tariffs on steel and aluminum sent protectionism rocketing to the top of Bill\u00a0Morneau’s G7 agenda Thursday as he and his fellow finance ministers from the exclusive club of rich countries braced for the inevitable economic impact.<\/p>\n

With his pre-selected program shoved aside,\u00a0Morneau\u00a0made it clear the discussions in British Columbia’s Coast Mountains will have little choice but to focus on U.S. President Donald Trump’s widely denounced trade offensive against Canada and other G7 allies.<\/p>\n

The American move \u2014 which prompted retaliatory measures from Canada and others \u2014 threatens to drive a powerful wedge into the G7, and could fracture the long-standing multilateral relationship into something observers describe as a \u201cG6 plus one,\u201d with the U.S. as the outlier.<\/p>\n

This week’s three-day pre-G7 gathering, which got underway Thursday, will \u201cabsolutely\u201d now be focused on trade, thanks to a U.S. tactic that’s widely seen as the death knell for jobs on both sides of the Canada-U.S. border.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe think it’s absurd that Canada is considered in any way a security risk, so that will be very clearly stated by me,\u201d\u00a0Morneau\u00a0said of the U.S. decision to justify the tariffs on the basis of national security.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have every expectation that our other allies around the table will express the same sentiment.\u201d<\/p>\n

Morneau\u00a0said he expects the G7 to keep pressure on the U.S., hoping to force it to reconsider \u2014 and he fully expects the effort to continue at next week’s leaders’ summit in Quebec’s Charlevoix region. The summit will be Trump’s first visit to Canada as president.<\/p>\n

In addition to Canada and the U.S., the other G7 countries are Japan, the United Kingdom, France, Italy and Germany.<\/p>\n

The Whistler meetings will also give\u00a0Morneau\u00a0and other G7 ministers an opportunity to hold face-to-face discussions with U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, with whom\u00a0Morneau\u00a0met for a bilateral meeting Thursday.<\/p>\n

On his way to the meeting room, Mnuchin was asked by a reporter what he’s telling his G7 allies about the tariffs. He responded by saying: \u201cNice to see you, how are you?\u201d<\/p>\n

Later Thursday, Mnuchin didn’t join\u00a0Morneau\u00a0and most of their G7 counterparts for a photo-op before the opening dinner. Ministers and central bankers walked together down a street from their hotel behind a procession of Indigenous drummers to a nearby lodge, but Mnuchin was nowhere to be seen during their brief stroll.<\/p>\n

Earlier in the day,\u00a0Morneau\u00a0spoke of his \u201cstrong\u201d relationship with Mnuchin, but even friends have disagreements, he noted.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we face challenges, we can’t get through them without talking,\u201d said\u00a0Morneau, who attended Mnuchin’s wedding last year.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe’re not saying there won’t be frictions, we’re not saying that we won’t have strong words.\u201d<\/p>\n

In Whistler, the bombshell news was hard to miss, even if a panel of prominent economic and political leaders did their level best to avoid it. During one particular Q and A, the panellists largely steered clear of direct questions about the U.S. tactic and its likely consequences.<\/p>\n

Instead, they strenuously defended he G7, stressing its role as an important leader that, for example, helped the world economy avoid a second Great Depression about a decade ago.<\/p>\n

\u201cThank you, Amanda, for lobbing that grenade my way \u2014 I’ll try and jump on it,\u201d joked Bank of England governor Mark Carney, a former Bank of Canada governor, as moderator Amanda Lang tried to broach the subject.<\/p>\n

The panel also featured International Monetary Fund managing director Christine Lagarde, former prime minister Paul Martin and Tiff Macklem, a former senior deputy governor of the Bank of Canada.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt the end of the day, if trade is massively disrupted, if the level of trust of the economic actors amongst themselves is severely damaged \u2014 first of all, those who will suffer most are the poorest, the less privileged people,\u201d Lagarde said.<\/p>\n

In the past, Trump had extended tariff exemptions for Canada and others beyond existing deadlines. That didn’t happen this time, perhaps catching by surprise some G7 officials who had expected Trump to avoid imposing them this time around.<\/p>\n

On Thursday, Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland said Canada would levy tariff \u201ccountermeasures\u201d of its own on up to $16.6 billion worth of imports of steel, aluminum and other products from the U.S.<\/p>\n

The tariffs pulled focus away from the pre-selected, overarching themes for the Whistler meeting \u2014 topics that closely line up with key domestic policy areas promoted by the federal Liberal government.<\/p>\n

Those include finding ways to ensure economic growth benefits more people, as well as a push towards gender equality and the empowerment of women.<\/p>\n

Whistler, which continues through Saturday, will also feature joint sessions between G7 development and finance ministers with a goal of finding ways to increase support for poor nations \u2014 with help from the private sector \u2014 under a focus of girls’ education.<\/p>\n

The tariff file also lands on\u00a0Morneau’s desk at a time when he’s already been consumed in recent weeks \u2014 and particularly in recent days \u2014 by a major domestic issue: the controversial Trans Mountain pipeline expansion.<\/p>\n

Earlier this week,\u00a0Morneau\u00a0announced the federal government made a $4.5-billion offer to buy Trans Mountain from Kinder Morgan and would build the expansion itself in order to overcome political opposition in B.C.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

WHISTLER, B.C. \u2014 The Trump administration’s \u201cabsurd\u201d tariffs on steel and aluminum sent protectionism rocketing to the top of Bill\u00a0Morneau’s …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":149620,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-165821","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news-ca","category-news","mauthors-andy-blatchford","mauthors-the-canadian-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165821","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=165821"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165821\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/149620"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=165821"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=165821"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=165821"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}