From Over the Hill: It’s Not Our Fault by Peter Bloch-Hansen
America repealed laws that until 2008, kept their banks from nearly collapsing international finance and trade, costing their government billions in bank bailouts; America wastefully spent trillions in foreign wars, maintaining hundreds of military and ‘intelligence’ bases all over the world; The US federal government, on a population of about 340+ million, ran up, from all causes, a national debt of over 30 trillion dollars, running an annual federal deficit of over 1.7 trillion as of 2023, and paying about 3 billion dollars in interest every day , ‘printing’ vast sums which inflate their currency! Forced to raise the government’s ‘debt ceiling’ more than once, a sign a financial crisis was coming, they did nothing to avert it. Until Trump. And lill ol’ Canada is to blame? Yes, we impose tariffs on US goods (as do many other countries) to protect our smaller industries because we cannot match the economies of scale of larger American producers -- all the while selling the Americans light crude oil which they lack, plus lots of needed electricity, at bargain prices. Tariffs are an internationally accepted practice -- trade negotiations continually occur, seeking more or less fair balances; it’s not an international conspiracy to victimize the USA. But should we be punished? I believe President Trump truly wants what’s best for his country. But the severity of his actions reveals how desperate is the situation he is trying to resolve. And also, one must admire the directness with which he is acting to clear up waste and corruption in his government and civil services, however much we may disagree with particular aspects of it. As I complete my income tax filing, I could even wish for something similar here. So, we need to stay calm, buy Canadian and keep those letters to our own politicians flooding in. Senior Power! Yeah, baby! Peter can be reached at blochhansenpeter@gmail.com.
President Trump claims the world is unfair to the USA, in particular, Canada, as if our mostly chilly little land could seriously harm that vast and powerful country.
To give Mr. Trump his due, he is talking frankly about how serious his nation’s troubles are; the US government is on the verge of bankruptcy. But it’s not the world’s fault, and certainly not Canada’s. For example, it’s not our fault that: America off-shored so much manufacturing that it has to import almost everything, leading to huge trade imbalances while also un employing swathes of American workers, reducing the tax basis; Americans so over-subsidize dairy production that they’re desperate to find somewhere to dump their excess products – which is why, last time, Trump bullied us into letting in more American dairy. (But anyway, who wants cheese and butter from American cows pumped full of antibiotics and growth hormones and fed GMO corn? Not us, and certainly not Europeans, who make excellent dairy products.); Americans so over-subsidize corn production for inverse sugar syrup that Americans now face a hugely expensive obesity/health crisis;
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Page 12 Boomers and Beyond – Elgin • May 2025
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