Are we seeing history repeated? From the Cluttered Desk with Keith Roulston

Perhaps it was my column last week on the end of World War II or perhaps it’s my reading currently of the novel The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah, about the hardships endured by two sisters in war-time France, but I’ve been thinking recently about modern problems and the hardships of Adolf Hitler’s era.

 

In my novel, the one sister’s neighbour is a Jew who is rounded up by the German army and sent off to a work camp. (I haven’t progressed far enough to know if she perished, as six million Jews did.) It reminded me of the situation facing many people in the U.S. today, as President Donald Trump has ordered the expulsion of many immigrants. 

 

If they were, as Trump claims, thieves and murderers, I suspect most Americans would shrug and get on with life. But people are being deported who were students with permits to study at a U.S. university. One man had a court order allowing him to stay, but was arrested by Trump officials anyway and deported to El Salvador, where he will be held in jail with no trial. So are others, even though many came from Venezuela. Trump shrugs and says there’s nothing that can be done.     

 

In other cases, women are being arrested and deported with their American-born children - though it’s against American law to deport American citizens. Trump apparently doesn’t care about the law. How could the courts be tied up with millions of cases, he asked in an interview, Sunday?

 

The Supreme Court had voted unanimously that Trump must obey the law, but Trump ignores them. In his first 100 days in office, there have been 250 court decisions against the actions of the Trump government. Trump wants to change the judges, complaining they are biased against him, though many were appointed by him or by previous Republican presidents.

 

Meanwhile he is attempting to fight universities like Harvard that won’t follow his orders. He’s attempting to not only cut off government funding, but even to revoke their ability to achieve independent funding that is tax-exempt. 

 

With his pal Elon Musk manning the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), he has cut jobs for hundreds of thousands of government workers. As a result, many people who survive on pensions will see them cut.

 

He is disrupting the economy of the world because he likes tariffs. He has imposed tariffs on many countries including islands so small that no one lives there. Sometimes he has imposed tariffs, then backed off for a few months, but said he plans to impose the tariffs in the future. The tariffs have been as low as 10 per cent but he has hit China with 145 per cent tariffs.

 

As a result, the cost of living for Americans, many of whom voted for him because they thought the cost of groceries or housing was too high under Democratic President Joe Biden, is going to jump. The U.S. consumer pays for tariffs. The executives of major companies like Target are warning that shelves will soon be empty because prices for Chinese-produced goods are too high.
Meanwhile, Trump is hitting Canada and Mexico with 25 per cent tariffs on cars and parts for cars built in the U.S. Trump’s aim is to have only American-built cars, which might be accomplished years from now, but in the meantime, estimates say the cost of a typical car will increased by $4,000, when the full effect of the tariffs seeps through the system.

 

World War II enveloped much of the world because Adolf Hitler got greedy and invaded neighbours. So far, Donald Trump doesn’t seem so aggressive, but he has said he wants to take over Greenland, take back the Panama Canal and make Canada the 51st state of the U.S. -  our whole, huge country. Who knows if, as his ambition and power accumulate, he may use America’s powerful armed forces to achieve his goals.

 

This column was written before our new Prime Minister Mark Carney met with Trump in Washington on Tuesday. Here’s hoping that as a veteran governor of the Bank of Canada and the Bank of England, he has gained the skills to deal with Trump.
It recalls memories of British leaders who met with Hitler in the 1930s and supposedly came away with agreements, only to have him change his mind and want more, finally leading to war when he demanded the right to invade Poland. Trump had already agreed to an updated North American Free Trade pact in his first term, but now claims it is unfair and must be renegotiated to give the U.S. what he wants it to have.

 

I have lived my long life mostly in peace, not counting smaller conflicts like Korea, Vietnam and Afghanistan. Here’s hoping that can continue, though the signs from the erratic U.S. President make one wonder if it will.