One of the better podcasts out there is Patrick Bet David’s Valuetainment show, which I pick up on YouTube a good bit. And, in a segment on Tuesday, Bet David and his guests spent some time talking about the “trade war” with Canada and Mexico that Donald Trump touched off with his demands for cooperation in fighting the scourge of Chinese fentanyl which has poisoned some quarter of a million Americans to death. I’ll embed that video down the page. But Bet David had a clip of a 1987 radio address by Ronald Reagan that he included in the discussion which is worthwhile, because in that clip Reagan more or less set down the argument for free trade as a key principle of modern conservatism. It was one of Reagan’s better moments as a conservative philosopher, not just a leader, and it’s held sway for a long time as the proper way to make trade policy. What people forget about that speech, as eloquent a defense of free trade as it was, is that Reagan was explaining a presidential action he was taking to impose tariffs on Japan for what he called unfair trade practices with respect to semiconductors. Even the piece of this speech that Valuetainment clipped out didn’t pick that part up. Reagan was a free trader. He might have been the greatest free trader in American history. But as much as he advocated free trade, Reagan knew that there were times when that ideal would have to be sacrificed to the ugly reality of international relations — as political ideals often must be. I grew up believing in free trade. I’ve been for it all my life. I still am. And I’m not conflicted in the least about my support for Trump’s actions on tariffs. For a couple of key reasons. The first is that, with respect to Canada and Mexico, Trump acted almost exactly as Reagan did with respect to Japan and semiconductors back in 1987. Namely, the tariff was a tactic by a leader seeking leverage to get a better deal for his people. Maybe some of the people who spent Monday wetting their beds about tariffs of 25 percent on Canadian and Mexican goods, and 10 percent on Chinese goods, could stop for a minute and consider the reason those tariffs were being threatened or imposed. Which is that Canada and Mexico have done absolutely nothing about their criminal gangs getting the ingredients for fentanyl from China, manufacturing it, and shipping it over the border to kill Americans. More than a quarter million dead. There are ports in Mexico where fentanyl components are brought in on ships, taken to manufacturing facilities run and staffed by Chinese nationals where those components are turned into fentanyl, and then the product is turned over to drug cartels acting as transport and sales agents who move it across the border to the United States using illegal migrants as mules as well as by other means. It’s then moved through a domestic distribution network into the hands of Americans who far more often than could ever be acceptable take the drug thinking it’s something else, overdose, and die. Again, more than a quarter million dead. And the same crime is happening at our border with Canada. So the new president has asked them to commit to cooperating with us in putting an end to the slaughter and, before Monday, the answer was no. They would rather kill our kids than lift a finger to stop it, even when we’ve told them what the consequences would be. Until finally, the rubber met the road and they capitulated. Mexico is a failed state so you could sort of understand it. But Fidelito Trudeau in Canada has actually spent his time in office decriminalizing not just weed but hard drugs and that includes fentanyl. He’s actually legitimizing the criminal gangs in Canada. (RELATED: Hasta la Vista, Fidelito!) He was called out for this by Pierre Poilievre, who will be his successor whenever the Canadians finally get around to holding its next election. (RELATED: Meet Canada’s ‘MAGA’ Prime Minister Candidate: Pierre Poilievre) And we’re not supposed to do something about this? “Oh, but the tariffs would raise prices.” This is the utterly atrocious Chuck The Schmuck Schumer with a bit of performative caterwauling on behalf of Canadian and Mexican (and Chinese) fentanyl producers… Schumer thought it was important enough to beclown himself with a beer can and an avocado just to take shots at Trump in the middle of a negotiation. And maybe a couple of hours after that, the Mexicans and Canadians announced preliminary steps toward policing their borders with the United States and stemming the flow of Chinese poison into our country. Bet David and his guests raised some really good points about that, though. It turns out that while the U.S. is spending just under a trillion dollars a year on defense, which is about 3.4 percent of GDP, Mexico spends a little less than $12 billion — a paltry 0.7 percent. Canada, at 1.3 percent and a similar amount to Mexico in total spending (Canadians are richer than Mexicans but there are a lot less of them), isn’t much better. So exactly how much help either country will be, or even can be, is a valid question, and one which speaks to the one-sided nature of our relationship with both. Canada, after all, sends 77 percent of its exports to the United States. Mexico sends 84 percent of its exports here. We run trade deficits with both countries. And the tariffs both of them impose on U.S. goods are extensive. Despite the fact all three of us were signatories to something called the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which Trump blew up in his first term, there has never been “free” trade between us and the Canadians and Mexicans. We’ve let them slide, while implicitly guaranteeing their national safety and making it possible for them to skate on their national defense (and in Mexico’s case that’s resulted in a level of lawlessness well past the line of a failed state). What’s free about that? And of course, there’s China. On the podcast, Bet David brought up the fact that when Reagan gave that excellent tutorial on the benefits of free trade there was no Chinese export economy to speak of. In 1987, China’s economy was somewhere between 1.6 and 1.9 percent of global GDP. And 38 years later, largely due to “free” trade policies which have never been reciprocated by Beijing, China has become the world’s manufacturing center and its economy is just under 20 percent of global GDP. While we’ve dropped from around 29 percent in 1987 to between 25 and 26 percent today. This doesn’t count the fact that the Chinese haven’t just taken us to the cleaners on the value and volume of the trade surplus they’ve generated with us but they’ve done a whole lot worse than that. The Chinese have systematically used American higher education and the research capacity of our universities as the greatest engine of industrial espionage in world history, and we’ve done nothing about it. They’ve expropriated more intellectual property as the price of American companies attempting to do business there than any country, ever. I have a friend in the oil and gas business who briefly sought a business relationship with the Chinese and pulled out when they demanded that he give them a proprietary product formula as a condition for that relationship. And when Trump began talking about China ripping us off, the “free” trade crowd had a collective conniption fit. This after hundreds of thousands of Americans had been poisoned by Chinese drywall, and after defective and shoddy Chinese products had taken corporate indifference to product liability to a level never seen in our history. Not to mention China’s environmental record, which is a real atrocity regardless of your position on “climate change.” China is the most polluted nation on earth and they’re doing more to pollute the world’s environment, not with carbon dioxide but with real toxins, than anyone has ever done. And the slave labor. It’s a moral disgrace to look at what China has done and been in our trade relationship with them and conclude that if Trump were to trade with them on the same level as they do with us, it would be a terrible thing because the price of flip-flops or Bey0nce t-shirts or solar panels might go up. You aren’t defending free trade. You’re defending the exploitation of our country into a functional economic colony of a tyrannical communist regime. And every American president between Reagan and Trump is utterly complicit. “Free” trade, and Reagan’s explanation of it, has been thrown out there as the justification for this betrayal of the American people by a class of political leaders that is being exposed day by day as a cabal of liars, thieves, and traitors. And those people panicked at the mere threat of incremental tariffs on Canada and Mexico designed with the specific purpose of demanding their assistance in saving the next quarter-million Americans who could be poisoned by Chinese fentanyl. It turns out that caring about the people of this country, acting forcefully on their behalf, and willing to face down the plaintive, effeminate whining of snakes like Schumer, isn’t really as difficult as we’ve been told. Decisive action, performed by an American president on behalf of his people and with a sound strategy in mind, produces success. We’re so conditioned to failure and betrayal that we’re amazed by this. Hopefully, it won’t be long before we begin to expect it again. As promised, here’s the Valuetainment clip. It’s worth a watch… READ MORE from Scott McKay: The Democrats Are Hogging the Wilderness Five Quick Things: Scenes From a Commonsense Revolution Pharmahontas on the Warpath at the RFK Jr. Hearings The post Trump’s Tariffs: This Stuff Isn’t All That Hard, You Know appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.