“Environmental activism is becoming a new form of protectionism.”

January 12, 2016 2 Comments

This is worth reading:

An article from summer 2014 that explores how U.S. interests fund anti-oil environmentalist radicals to selectively target Canadian oil production as a roundabout protectionist strategy.

The Tar Sands Campaign pointedly ignores the dozens of tankers bringing foreign oil into the United States and Eastern Canada on a daily basis. Evidently, the only tankers this campaign opposes are those that would break the U.S. market’s monopoly on Canadian oil exports.

…

But in North Dakota and Texas where oil production is booming, there is no multimillion-dollar campaign to stop or slow down the oil industry. As far as I can tell, the only country where there is a systematic, multimillion-dollar, foreign-funded campaign to choke the oil industry is Canada.

Whether intentional or not, environmental activism is becoming a new form of protectionism. By exaggerating risks and impacts, activists exert such political and social pressure that major infrastructure projects can be stalled or stopped altogether, land-locking Canadian oil and gas and keeping Canada over a barrel.

— Read more at Alberta Oil Magazine —

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Filed under Alberta, CMR, Energy, Environment, Oil, Oil Sands, Trade Tagged with , , , ,

Another Reason for Protectionists to Hate China

May 30, 2013 Leave a comment

Protectionists hate China because their wages are “too low,” and that’s “not fair.”

(Mostly it’s not fair for the Chinese, whose wages would rise if their government would not print so much of its currency to prop up the US dollar.)

Prime Minister Harper wants more tariffs on Chinese goods.

Wait until the protectionists see this video. “Child labor! Child abuse!” they will cry. They will plead for more tariffs.

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Apparently the boy makes a salary of 4000 RMB, which is about $675 in Canadian dollars. Not bad.

Filed under Asia, Trade Tagged with , , ,

Harper: Free Trade is a Tax Break for China

April 17, 2013 2 Comments

Harper was criticized the other day for wanting to increase taxes on various imported consumer goods.

There is no defense for raising taxes ever. This is even more important when Canada will be soon in recession. So what is Harper thinking? He rightly pointed out that the Liberals had voted against budgets in which there were some tiny tax cuts. Okay, sure, the Liberals lack any principled objection to higher taxes. What was his rebuttal to their criticism on the tariff issue?

“What the Liberal Party seems to stand for, Mr. Speaker, is that somehow we should give tax breaks to emerging economies like China.”

OMG, my brain just exploded from the unbelievable stupidity of that statement. I love a good cheap shot at a Canadian political party as much as the next guy, but Harper’s statement is just dumb.

So not taxing imports is a tax break to the countries from which we are buying those imports. So a free trade policy is a tax break for our trading partners.

That is incoherent, protectionist nonsense. First of all, the importer pays the tax, not the exporter. So China is not getting the tax break, per se. It is the one importing Chinese stuff.

But then this is kind of like saying it’s a “tax break” if the government taxes anything less than 100% of your income. The meaning of “tax break” is clearly being twisted. A “tax break” is meant to be a means of reducing a tax liability that already exists. The absence of a tax is not a tax break. Adding new taxes is not the same as taking away tax breaks. The underlying philosophy revealed in Harper’s words is that the government rightfully owns everyone else’s wealth, and letting people keep anything is a tax break. The whole notion is economically utterly perverse.

The case against protectionism is logically irrefutable. Harper, like virtually all politicians, is a mercantilist who thinks protectionism is good (for his friends), meaning he is no ally of capitalism and free trade. He is a classic Canadian crony prime minister.

— Read more at CBC News. —

Filed under Asia, Economics, Ottawa, Politics, Regulation, Taxation, Totalitarian Democracy, Trade Tagged with , , , , , ,

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