Canada Recedes While America Booms

Hinting at renewed prosperity through the American System of political economy

Trump and Carney. Image via Politico

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By James Pew

Canada’s new prime minister wasted no time plunging the country into recession. Canadians, however, seem not at all bothered. It’s just a “technical recession” they say. Even though many Canadians, most notably the younger generations, are struggling to afford basic things like housing and food, the general sentiment is that Carney is doing a great job. However, it’s not possible to prove it quantitatively (or qualitatively for that matter), but trust them, they know, they intuit success and prosperity, even though they are not actually experiencing it. Unsurprisingly, this is rationalized by invoking the bad orange man south of the border. Ignored, of course are economic indicators that predicted and warned, long before Carney took office, about imminent economic downturns in Canada.

Kelly McParland penned a piece in the National Post on June 3rd in which he provided readers with an illustrative example of the slightly less frantic and hysterical version of Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS) found in many Canadian conservatives, or those deemed acceptably conservative enough to be National Post contributors. In his piece McParland both criticizes “elbows up,” and Trump and his MAGA Movement in the same breath. In his words:

“Are Canadians worried? Apparently not. So what’s wrong with us? Has ‘elbows up’ gone to our heads? Are we turning into Americans, living in a world of alternate facts, happily oblivious to anything we choose not to believe?”

This is typical anti-American sentiment found in too many Canadians. One I would characterize as “elbows up,” but apparently McParland sees some nuance, some subtle but significant distinction between Carney’s clown camp, and his own TDS riddled outlook. I don’t see it. All I detect is a small thinker unable to see the forest through the trees.

McParland should read Conrad Black’s latest column where, after summarizing the recent numbers which depict a booming American economy under Trump, Black explains that “as half of Canada‘s GDP is trade with the United States, the greatest single boost to our economic prospects is rising American prosperity.”

Someone really should tell McParland that economic prosperity in the U.S. is not in fact determined or distorted by “oblivious alternate facts,” but by hard economic data and calculations that go into figuring such things as productivity, consumption, growth, inflation, gross domestic product and other means of measuring the American financial and market systems. According to Black:

“Those who imagine that the United States has become economically laborious should realize that real GDP per person in that country has just reached the highest ever point of US$70,502, adjusted for inflation, a 2.2 per cent annual gain. At the same time, real consumption per person is $48,816, a two per cent gain on the previous year: there is no shortage of consumer confidence and acquisitiveness. The incomparably productive American non-agricultural workforce, the wonder of the economic world, has reached an all-time high of 159 million people despite AI. Household debt service is barely 2/3 of the comparable figure 20 years ago and all of the major stock market indices are continually reaching all time highs.”

McParland’s assessment of the undeserved, perhaps even delusional popularity of Carney is more sound. He writes, “Depending on the pollster, the prime minister’s party is somewhere between eight and 13 points up on the Tories, having gained up to 15 points since early May,” then quoting David Coletto, CEO of Abacus Data, includes the following:

“Government approval has reached a new high, Carney’s personal ratings are at their strongest levels yet and the Liberals now hold a 12-point lead over the Conservatives nationally. At the same time, Canadians are more optimistic about the direction of the country than at any point in more than eight years.”

I have never witnessed a man fail upwards so consistently. His popularity makes no sense. I feel like a broken record constantly blaming TDS on this madness. But broken record or not, TDS is like a mind altering potion that Canadians are unable to resist. Like superman and kryptonite, when a typical Canadian gets a waft of those alchemical TDS fumes, its game over. McParland accurately observed that, “a year and a bit into the job, the bulk of Carney’s accomplishments remain the Trudeau policies and posturing he’s jettisoned, rather than the results he’s produced.” If this is true, and I believe it is, do Canadians not realize that Pierre Poilievre would have been the far better man to “jettison” the shallow and destructive Trudeauisms from the policies and direction of the Canadian government?

McParland points out the seemingly universally embraced double standard in which Carney has thus far enjoyed. He writes, “he’s treated measurably more respectfully on international stages and has yet to embarrass himself or the country in China, India or Washington, as Trudeau did. No blackface, silly socks or Bollywood foolery.” Ugh, for a left-leaning leader in Canada to be supported by the majority the bar is so ridiculously low the only requirement is that he should, if at all avoidable, not make a complete ass of himself with outlandish and idiotic, attention-seeking grandstanding. We will not find prosperity with such an undemanding standard defining the search.

Canadians need better tools of discernment when it comes to economic and geo-political issues. There is way too much flawed analysis, which leads to conspiratorial thinking. When the world is complicated (and it always is), we want it explained in simple terms. We want scapegoats. Trump and Israel play that role. Canadians must depart from this senselessness. We must become better sense-makers. We must stop listening to talking media heads who offer rhetoric which inflames tensions and divisiveness, but almost no sound reasoning.

I have been doing some reading on the economic history of the United States in an attempt to understand, not so much what Trump says, but what he does — most importantly, concerning his economic plan. I am going to try to put together an essay (or short series of essays) explaining what appears to be happening. According to Carney, Trump has destroyed the so-called international rules based order, the post WWII global consensus. While this may true, there is a big analytical problem when the formulation only looks at the dismantling of things and not the building or re-tooling of things. Almost no one, perhaps no Canadian commenter, is offering any sort of an explanation of Trump’s actual economic agenda. What is he actually doing? Why is he using what so many view as outmoded financial tools like tariffs?

The essay(s) I have just threatened in a non-committal sort of way will explore those questions. In a nutshell, what Trump is doing has been described best by Carney when he characterized the U.S. President’s mandate as “transformative.” Trump is absolutely transforming the economy, but in a way that transforms geo-politics and the entire world. The Trump administration is (re-)installing a far more Hamiltonian system of political economy (far more than an mere economic plan). In recent years some analysts have begun referring to this system as the “American System.” I will save the meat of my expatiation for the essays mentioned, which I will most likely write soon, however, the American System seems to me to be a halfway point between mercantilism and the “invisible hand” open and free market system of Adam Smith. A transformation indeed, one which destroys the global financial system favoured by Western elites like Mark Carney.

I hope I am able to do a good enough job with said threatened essays on the American System so that good Canadians who oppose the globalists (those anti-sovereignty WEF wankers) can reconcile their TDS, and, hopefully, if prayers are answered, come to realize that the MAGA movement is the singular force in the entire universe that not only opposes the globalist agenda, but actually seems able and determined to thwart it roundly.

Stay tuned. If the American System leads to the global peace, stability and prosperity I think it will, then Canada needs to cancel the TDS and hitch its wagons to our best friends south of the border.

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Thanks for reading. For more from this author, read Remembering the D-Day Invasion

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