MAKICHUK: Carney must consider all options in 'The War On Canada'
We're not Argentina, but maybe we can take a page from President Milei
There is a good old joke.
I saw it on one of those great celebrity roasts from the past on YouTube.
Comedian Paul Lynde took the podium, and began roasting none other than Dean Martin.
No holds barred, one shot after another. Hilarious.
Dean, he said, once went to the ballet with him.
Paul asked him what he thought of it.
Well, Dean saw all these women, standing on their toes.
Said, “Why don’t they just hire taller girls?”
A good joke. One for the ages.
And all in good fun.
But there is some logic to that answer.
It’s called, finding a way, to get things done. To do things different.
If it doesn’t work one way, then try another — no matter how ridiculous it sounds.
Six months ago, Argentine President Javier Milei swore he would never cut deals with communists.
After his upset win in an August 2023 primary, Milei minced no words on China: “Would you trade with an assassin?”
Well guess what, the firebrand libertarian met Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the G20 summit last November, and were photographed shaking hands.
How things can change, and change fast.
According to Bloomberg, the Asian giant is a major buyer of Argentine commodities and a key source of financing for the crisis-prone South American nation.
Milei changed his his tune, despite attempts to court President Donald Trump — even visiting Mara Lago to congratulate the 45th president on his election victory.
Can he balance Argentina’s economic needs with Trump-era loyalty in an increasingly tense geopolitical landscape? We shall see.
In just 1.5 years, Milei has radically cut inflation, but Argentina is still one of the most expensive countries in Latin America.
In December 2023, it had reached a record monthly rate of 25 percent. Now, it sits at 1.6 percent, the lowest since April 2020.
Argentina has also reached an agreement with the International Monetary Fund on the first review of the country’s US$20 billion program.
As part of the agreement, IMF staff praised how “smoothly” Argentina’s transition to lifting many capital and currency controls has gone.
Under the agreement, Argentina has significantly relaxed currency and capital controls, which have been in place to varying degrees since 2019.
Milei claims achieving the lower inflation rate is evidence of the success of his economic program, which made radical cuts to public spending, including in healthcare, education, social services and public infrastructure works, to achieve a fiscal surplus.
The bad news?
His program also saw the Argentian peso appreciate, making the country more expensive in dollars.
This, combined with a sharp fall in real wages, has delivered a significant blow to the purchasing power of large sections of the population.
Anything and everything costs more now.
Marianela Abasto, 24, and her family, had never been to a soup kitchen before.
She told Al Jazeera that she lost everything. And she blames the Argentinian government.
“This is very hard. Before, we had a home. We had access to subsidies. But [the government] suddenly took everything away,” Abasto told Al Jazeera. “I don’t know what we are going to do.”
According to a recent report by the Social and Economic Statistics and Tendencies Institute (Instituto de Estadísticas y Tendencias Sociales y Economicas – IETSE), 91 percent of homes in Argentina have some form of debt, and 58 percent of those loans were taken to buy food in 2024.
Courting President Xi and President Trump will not be an easy task, as Argentina seeks long-term economic recovery.
All part of the New World Order being led by President Trump. A World Order that is showing signs of serious deterioration.
According to Richard Haass, the former president of the Council on Foreign Relations, At the end of the Napoleonic Wars, in 1814 and 1815, European leaders created the Concert of Europe, “the most important and successful effort to build and sustain world order until our own time.”
At first, it worked “because each state had its own reasons for supporting the overall system,” Haass noted. But as the decades passed, “great-power comity” fell apart, and wars broke out.
By the eve of World War I, when it had become obvious that the order had all but collapsed, “it was far too late to save it — or even to manage its dissolution.”
Harken back to the age, of “the ugly American.”
The Trump administration has failed to prevent a breakdown in U.S.-Chinese relations, failed to stop the Russia-Ukraine war, allowed a brutal genocide in Gaza to happen and abandoned efforts to battle climate change.
Four things, that are not helping.
Says Haass: “The good news is that it is far from inevitable that the world will eventually arrive at a catastrophe; the bad news is that it is far from certain that it will not.”
Enter Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, Canada’s ballyhooed crisis manager.
Hey, we all like what he is doing, he hit the ground running, but he has big challenges ahead. Challenges that may eventually affect us all.
Should Canada, like Argentina, seek closer economic ties with China?
And if so, where will this lead?
Carney is already getting pushback from First Nations, for his efforts to make Canada great again, if I can borrow that phrase.
But some experts say that is bullshit. They say many FN bands support energy projects, and that mainstream media only concentrates on the sour apples in TV coverage.
I believe there is some truth to that.
I really don’t think Mr. Carney has a choice — he must consider all roads, when it comes to President Trump’s War On Canada.
I have a professor friend who even believes that President Trump will eventually invade us to get water for California.
Tump’s rabid unpredictability, is the new sum of all fears.
I still hold hope, now that the US has made a trade deal with the EU, Canada can still reach some agreement with the Trump cabal.
Many experts say we’re done like dinner, it’s over, and now Trump will fuck us over. But I don’t subscribe to that. It’s never over.
And there is positive news.
First off, don’t underestimate our diplomatic corps. If we could find common ground with Fidel Castro, we can do this too.
Columnist John Ivison, an old tennis partner of Carney’s, and whom I follow religiously on SubStack, recently spoke to former finance minister John Manley.
Manley said Carney has the right idea. The tricky bit, will be the execution of the plan.
Manley told Ivison that Ottawa taking the lead in reducing internal trade barriers is long overdue but will encounter resistance.
“Every one of those barriers has a constituency. Everyone is in favour of going to heaven, but no one wants to die to get there,” he said.
However, in the last six months, he has seen a “sea change” in attitudes in Ottawa.
“Canada is investable again, he said. “Over the years, they were hostile to business. I’m not exaggerating when I say that in the past, the best a CEO could hope for was a meeting with (a minister’s) staff, who didn’t take notes.
“Now, they are seeing ministers who are taking notes. That’s a total change.”
Imagine that!
Now, some might still say, we don’t stand a chance, and that we are destined for tariff hell. We all endure friends who espouse this.
A northern Argentina, where everything will become expensive, overnight.
The wine glass, half empty.
No, my friends. We will not screw this up. We can’t screw this up.
And I don’t give a damn, if Carney has Trudeau’s old cronies in cabinet. For the basic reason, Carney will make them dance to his tune.
Trudeau is not calling the shots anymore, and we can all breathe a sigh of relief.
So just shut the fuck up about that.
To steal a line from Apollo 13, when NASA’s Gen Kranz (played by Ed Harris) said:
"Gentlemen, I believe this will be our finest hour."
Call it what you will. He was demanding. He drew a line in the sand. He was hard.
Time for us, to do the same.
Somebody, cue the bagpiper!