U.S. President Donald Trump says he wants to be a peace negotiator and a peace president. Yet starting in December, he has been saying Canada, our friendly neighbor to the north, should become the 51st state of the U.S. When he first said it to Canada’s then President Justin Trudeau, the Prime Minister thought Mr. Trump meant it as a joke. But he soon realized he didn’t. And he has been saying it regularly and publicly ever since, as if as a threat in which the U.S. would militarily take over Canada. In Trump’s address to Congress last Wednesday, he said it again to laughter from some of its Republican members, but Trump wasn’t laughing.
Mark Carney: Canada’s New Prime Minister
When it comes to ruling a country, yesterday, Canada got the cream of the crop when fifty-nine year old Mark Carney of the Liberal Party became Canada’s Prime Minister. He enjoyed a huge, landslide victory, with 85.9% of the vote. In contrast, the U.S. just weeks ago was scraping the bottom of the barrel when it got seventy-eight year old Donald Trump of the Republican Party for a second time as its president. The House had impeached him twice, which had never happened, but the Senate did not since it was barely controlled by Republicans. Afterwards, the American Political Science Association canvassed 154 scholars who have written books about U.S. presidents, and the result was that they deemed Donald Trump the worst president in the entire 248 year history of the U.S. Trump, the 45 president in his first term, finished 45th on the list, thus at the bottom of the barrel.
Interestingly, both men had never been a politician. Trump, of course, was a New York real estate tycoon developer who then got famous starring on “The Apprentice” live-action TV show. Carney, of Canadian birth, had graduated from Harvard and Oxford to become an executive for the next ten years in the elite Goldman Sachs financial firm on Wall Street, where he made a fortune. He then became the governor of Canada’s central bank, the Bank of Canada, from 2008 to 2013. Then he became the governor of England’s central bank, the Bank of England, from 2013 to 2020. It was the first time a noncitizen of England had become head of its central bank since its founding, in 1694. Thus, Mark Carney has been very popular in the finance and banking world.
Many Experts Predict Trump’s Tariffs Will Not Succeed
President Trump, in only seven weeks since returning the White House, has thrown the world economy, but especially the U.S. stock market, into chaos. It is mostly because he has slapped tariffs on our biggest trading partner, Canada, but also on Mexico and China. Then after doing so, he has backtracked only two days later by withdrawing some of them. Such flip-flopping has created much uncertainty in the markets. Yesterday, when asked if the U.S. could soon suffer an economic recession because of it, Trump said, as if nonchalantly, “Who knows.” That in itself seemed to have been the major cause of the U.S. market nosediving today, with the tech-heavy NASDAQ suffering a huge, 4% decline.
“CANADA WILL NEVER, EVER BE A PART OF AMERICA”
Trump’s tariffs on incoming Canadian goods, and his seeming threat to take Canada, has furiously ignited unification between Canada’s provinces and thus stirred up its nationalism. That’s partly why Carney won so big yesterday in the election. He and Doug Ford, the premiere of Ottawa, are standing up to Trump like nothing we’ve seen for a while. Right now, Canada feels like, “With friends like the U.S., who needs enemies?”
Ford spoke at a podium last week that had the inscription, “Canada Is Not for Sale.” And in Carney’s victory speech yesterday, he accused President Trump of an underlying motive for slapping tariffs on Canada’s exports to the U.S., alleging that Trump’s aim is to weaken Canada economically enough that Canadians will be fearful and succumb to being annexed by the U.S. Carney also asserted it was because Trump had his eye on Canada’s rich natural resources. Carney concluded most affirmatively, “Canada will never, ever be a part of America in any way, shape, or form.” Sounds to me like Canada has the cream of the crop in that man.
My Conclusion
As I see it, Trump and maybe the United States of America are in free fall. If it’s true about Trump, it may be more evidence that my Trump book title is correct—Bible Predicts Trump Fall. What is the main basis for me saying that. The wisdom literature of the Bible, which includes many sayings of Jesus, is full of information like this: “Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall,” and “when pride comes, then comes disgrace;” and “a liar will not escape” (Proverbs 11:2; 16:18; 19:5 NRSV). Who will argue that Trump is not full of pride? And he’s the biggest liar I’ve seen in my lifetime. As for Jesus, his most quoted saying in the four New Testament gospels is, The “first will be last, and the last will be first” (Matthew 19:30; 20:16). I think Trump’s heavy tariffs imposed on other nations and his motto, “America First,” appear to bode ill for America’s future.
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