Mayors and Council members down south
Yankee’s All 🙂
The effects of Tariffs Upon Your allies
The platitudes and proclamations of Canada’s Politicians and Financial Leaders aside, Canada is in a bad state today. As a manufacturer, what I have experienced in the last 6-7 months has not been seen before by us. Most of the business community simply will not admit to the mess we are presently living.Â
Sales have fallen @75%. No sales at all in America. The sales we acquire in Canada are dismally small, with far less profit than needed. At 40 million, our population is simply too small to maintain our manufacturing base domestically. There are far too many manufacturers out there selling at very low prices. Many have gone the way of the dodo bird, bankrupt or on their way. Some simply bring in sales to give their personnel something to do, little profit made, yet their costs continue to increase like everyone else. Keeping their professional staff is imperative, yet at what cost? American manufacturing is said to be booming, but it is hard to separate the truth from political-business propaganda.Â
Lots of part-time work is available, but it seems businesses and corporations will not invest in their people anymore, offering them full-time jobs with benefits. Only the high end of corporate elitism is benefiting these days. A corporation that lost money lays off workers, yet its board of directors and executive staff receive every form of benefit, both financial and personal.Â
I was trained by my father to represent the workers in the back, those whose labour creates profits for all, or so he believed. As an estimator and sales professional, I have seen inadequate managers benefit in many ways while the labourer suffers humiliation, dismissal or even worse, stays at their miserable jobs forever. Nationalism has always been something I considered both negative and positive, enforcing. Protecting one’s manufacturers, growers, and producers makes sense.Â
Yet when a nation of America’s stature bullies its allies and small nations as it has been doing, it simply pisses me off. America, rebuild your manufacturing base, but remember it was Americans who took the jobs away from you in the 1950s-1990s. Blame yourselves and the Billionaires that benefited. These same people built the China of today, a nation that is both militaristic and an enemy to our version of democracy. Slap your hands, shake your heads and realize your system of eco-politics is an enemy to democracy and your allies. Many American businesses still import from Asia. What about them? Are they not still sending American jobs offshore?
Wake up! See what Washington, DC does not want you to see. The world came to rely upon you, but now we are all transforming our national economies to step aside and ignore you as you wish to ignore us all. Friends perhaps, but allies no more. Canada will join another economic-political block, perhaps the EU or even partner with the Chinese if we have to. American arrogance is driving Canadians away. We don’t need to travel to the USA when our friends in the Caribbean, Central and Latin America welcome us. Travel to Europe has increased drastically. Vacation perhaps, but finding new partners a better guess.Â
Wondering where investment is going? Why is the American Dollar under siege internationally? American arrogance and mismanagement of a message that could have been delivered better. Change your ways, but explain yourselves. Your allies deserve the truth. Accept the accountability we will all demand of America someday.Â
Steven Kaszab
