Jeff Burgar
The boss in our office noticed someone filling out a purchase order. The order was for some items not available locally in town without a long wait for a special order.
“Make sure you don’t buy anything made in America,” she commanded! “If you can’t get it from some other country, or especially someone making it in Canada, we will just do without.”
“Uh,” says our concerned order maker, “you do know this order is going through Amazon, don’t you?”
“Your point is?” she asked.
We don’t know if the packages being delivered, usually by the truckload, each day in our Canadian communities by Amazon helpers or our post offices, are dropping in volume. And we are sure Amazon itself would probably not notice if they were, unless it was by massive amounts.
But the whole situation around American President Donald Trump’s knee jerk orders that have everybody waiting for another shoe to drop can be summed up by a simple question: “What the heck is he doing?”
Just as much to the point, our local office manager seems to know as much about international trade as does the American president. Amazon is, after all, an American company.
Her thinking is understandable. Check this list of Canadian companies many people might think are owned by Americans.
Right at the top of course, is Tim Hortons. Canadian? American? Well, kind of neither. For a span of about 10 years fairly recently, Tim’s was indeed owned by American chain Wendy’s. But a Brazilian company bought them out. These days, the entire company is called Restaurant Brands International (RBI). A Brazilian company does indeed own about one-third of RBI. The rest is traded on stock markets. You and your neighbour might have shares. Tim’s head office is in Toronto.
RBI also owns Burger King, Firehouse Subs, and Popeye’s Louisiana Kitchen. Those head offices are in American cities, where they always have been. All of this just goes to show you just how intertwined business is these days.
Here are some more chain restaurant names that sound American or even foreign, but are in fact, Canadian: Baton Rouge Steakhouse and Bar, Boston Pizza, Dixie Lee Fried Chicken, East Side Mario’s, Edo Japan, Jimmy the Greek, Lone Star Texas Grill, Mandarin Restaurant, Montana’s Cookhouse.
This list shows, for those willing to forgive Trump somewhat, that all of us can make mistakes.
“Ready, Fire, Aim” happens to all of us. Including that self-proclaimed “stable genius.”
With that out of the way, let’s make no mistake. Besides trade, Canadians are very unhappy with Trump’s treatment of Ukraine. 300,000 refugees live in Canada. Canada is also home to the largest diaspora of Ukrainian immigrants and their descendants in the world.
We all may not be the sharpest knives in the drawer when it comes to international economics. But we sure as hell have good ideas who our friends and enemies are. No Orange Man is going to tell us different.