Got Milk?

Somewhere in the White House kitchen lurks what Stephen Miller would refer to as an illegal immigrant. The culprit, as it turns out, is cheese. But here’s the thing. It's not just any cheese, oh no, it's Canadian cheese, and it's not even Brie.  

 This 'weaponised' Canadian cheese, bearing a mystical four-hundred-per-cent tariff, was apparently smuggled across the 49th parallel by dairy farmers so aggressive that even the Mounties won't go near them.

 Well, that's the way Donald Trump put it! He has spent the better part of a year warning America about a tariff that, and I want to be very precise here, has never actually been charged to anyone. To put this all into perspective, one has to lay out the facts, because facts, unlike the occupant in the White House, do show up for work.

Under the USMCA free trade agreement, the deal Trump himself negotiated and signed with great fanfare in 2018, which he, in his ever-so-humble way, referred to as "the best, most beautiful trade deal ever made".

 At this point, it’s probably best to pick apart the details to understand how the tariffs actually work, and the best place to start is at the beginning.

 It's a little complicated, so bear with me.

 Canada imports a set volume of American dairy products tariff-free, in other words, at zero per cent. That's right. Zero. Since Trump’s deal was signed, milk has been flowing freely across the border, with less friction than he creates governing his own country.

 The problem only arises if and when American dairy exports exceed Canada's quota, at which point punitive tariffs take effect. And, even if they do exceed the quotas (which don't look likely to happen anytime soon), it certainly won’t warrant a crippling 400% tariff that Trump likes to lie about. Honestly, it's as if he’s reading out last week's lottery numbers.

 400%? Nah! Sorry, Mr President, not true. Those tariffs were calculated and agreed years earlier and never even came close to that. Still, Trump being Trump, he no doubt forgot the figures as he was too engrossed in supergluing gold cherubs to the walls of the Oval.

 Here’s how the agreement works.

If the dairy quotas are exceeded, the agreement clearly states that each product is tiered. Try to sneak in too much milk? Well, milk goes up by 243%, the same with butter, up 298%, and cheese up to 245%. If those punitive tariffs had ever been implemented, the costs of hosting a small cheese-and-wine soirée at the White House would have exceeded the GDP of a few African countries.

 Still with me?

 Now here’s the part that turns this from a trade dispute into a slapstick comedy: American dairy exporters have NEVER come close to exceeding the Canadian quota! and vice versa. Not once, not ever! Not during Trump's first term, not during Biden's, and certainly not this week, when he was on a tirade screaming that the Canadians were 'ripping' off America.

 The tariff he talks about is less a policy and more like a fairy tale. The way Trump tells it, it's like when your fishing buddy is talking about the one that got away, even though the fish was imaginary and he claimed it weighed six hundred pounds.

 Trump continually insists the tariffs "kept rising" under Biden. They didn't. They stayed exactly where Trump's own deal had put them in 2018, unbothered and untriggered, while Canada waited patiently for a flood of American dairy surplus that never arrived at the party.

 The delicious irony in all this bluster is that the United States runs the same system. The American tariff-rate quotas on its dairy imports invoke punishing rates the moment anyone exceeds them, yet no imports have ever come close to that line.

 It was America that built the tariff fortress, then looked across the border and was furious to find that Canada had an even bigger one! This fiasco isn't a trade grievance; it's a man yelling at a mirror for daring to reflect him.

 Trump, clearly unsatisfied, lashed out after staying up all night tapping away on his 'Truth Social' platform, where, with a flourish, he issued a proclamation imposing an additional 50% duty on Canadian dairy, alcohol, and cars.

These are real tariffs on real goods, regardless of what USMCA says, and they compound a problem that, again, never existed in the first place. It’s as if he invested in a big fire extinguisher for a fire that never started, then set the house on fire himself merely to justify the purchase.

 These absurd tariffs aren't a protective wall; they are a smoke detector that nobody has ever set off, mounted on a house that nobody has ever tried to burn down, in a country whose most aggressive export was a well-meaning apology. The tragic upshot of all this is that Canadians are now paying extra for butter because a trade dispute was settled out of spite rather than on a spreadsheet.

 So, "Got Milk?" Sure. Canada's got milk, buckets of it sitting quietly at the border, exactly where Trump's own deal put it, waiting for a flood of American dairy products that America has never managed to produce in sufficient quantity to be taxed.

 The smoke detector nobody has ever set off is still screwed to the wall. The house nobody has ever tried to burn down is still standing, but somewhere in Washington, a deluded man is pointing at both, insisting he smells smoke.

 You can’t make this stuff up!

 Paul v Walters is the author of several novels and is a prolific travel writer. His latest offering, RITUAL, was recently launched at the International Ubud Writers and Readers Festival.