As polar vortex descends, Trump’s suspicions about Canada becomes clearer

(Originally published Feb. 14 in “What in the World“) Trump’s wave of government layoffs has begun.

After the voluntary resignations of more than 70,000 federal employees who accepted his offer to pay them eight months’ pay to resign, pink slips have started to arrive for more. ABC and Reuters both reported, citing anonymous sources, that the layoffs, most among new employees still on probation, have hit the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the Department of Education, the Environmental Protective Agency, the Government Services Administration, the Office of Personnel Management, and the Small Business Administration.

As Trump prepares to unleash a new round of tariffs, analysts doing the math on those he’s already imposed keep coming up with the same answer: they hurt the U.S. more than the countries they target. Many economists say domestic producers are likely to respond to higher import prices by simply raising the prices they charge. And it would take them years to beef up their own production to replace imports. Canadian aluminum is a good example. The U.S. has become so reliant on Canadian aluminum—about 25% of its overall aluminum consumption—that domestic producers would struggle to replace it.

That means American consumers and companies will pay more for everything from cars to tinfoil. But one of the biggest losers might be the U.S. defense industry, which relies even more heavily on imported aluminum. Ironically, it’s on behalf of national security that Trump has based his 25% tariff on imported aluminum and steel. The White House used Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962 as the legal basis for Trump’s expanded metals tariffs—which removed exemptions to those he imposed in his first term and raised tariffs on aluminum to the same level as steel.

Section 232 empowers the president to use tariffs to protect national security against imports that threaten it. Originally intended to safeguard supplies of materials and products crucial to defense and critical infrastructure, the concept of national security was broadened after 9/11 to include any industry vital to the U.S. economy. Gradually, Section 232 has become used as justification for maintaining secure supplies of important products.

But even under former President George W. Bush, imports of aluminum and steel from trusted allies like Canada were considered sufficiently secure. It wasn’t until Trump’s first term, in 2018, that the Commerce Dept. began to worry that the U.S. needed not only secure foreign suppliers, but self-sufficiency in domestic production of vital materials.

Canada, Trump appears to believe, cannot be trusted to keep supplying U.S. arms factories with aluminum if push comes to shove. So, Trump really does mean to replace imported aluminum and steel with domestic production. No matter the cost to consumers and companies—not to mention arms manufacturers. That or his use of Section 232 is just a convenient fig leaf for his desire to revive America’s aluminum and steel mills.

Nature, meanwhile, appears to have it in for us. The U.S. is bracing for severe cold next week as an Arctic polar vortex stages a breakout for more southerly latitudes. Southern California, still recovering from last month’s devastating wildfires, is this week facing massive rainfall thanks to an atmospheric river. With the downpours threatening to flood areas denuded by the fires, some residents in Los Angeles County have been ordered to evacuate.