Yes.

It is a very complex system that few Americans can understand and but most Canadians do. Here is how it works.

Canada, a nation of 40 million people, sells mostly primary goods to Amerika, an Oblast of 350 million people. Now I know math is hard so stay with me. Those raw materials are manufactured, processed or used to make other goods. Companies in the USA sell those goods to Canadians. Only 40 million Canadians can only use so much stuff!

Sell to 350 million but only buy back for 40 million. So there is what is called a “trade deficit” meaning that Canada sells more than it buys. To Donald and many MAGAts, that just don’t make no sense! ‘Murica, the greatest country in the world, shouldn’t have to pay Canada more than Canada pays the US of A. Taint right.

Think of it like this: you spend $600 month at the grocery store. The guy that owns the grocery store only spends $100 a month at your gas bar. Are you being ripped off? Is there something wrong with this imbalance? No! It makes “sense”. Sense is like logic and rational thought however, not much of it going around these days.

Yeah, it’s just like in daily life. See, imagine you do most of your shopping at Bob’s General Store. You buy pretty much everything you need at Bob’s. Meanwhile, you run your own business, “Fred’s Yummy Candy”.

Every week you spend up to 500 dollars at Bob’s but Bob only comes in to “Fred’s Yummy Candy” once a week to but sweets for his grandkids. That cheap sonofabitch rarely spends more than 50 bucks a week at your store!

That cheap bastard is ripping you off! It’s only fair that he spend 500 bucks a week on candy, otherwise your relationship is clearly abusive and Bob is exploiting you by selling you more stuff than he buys!

Obviously, the conclusion I have drawn from this quaint little story is ridiculous, right? The unequal balabce of payments between these two fictional characters and their fictional businesses is simply the result of the decisions made by each character concerning their business and consumption choices and priorities. Nobody is getting ripped off, it’s just that Bob is offering more goods that Fred finds necessary to buy than Fred is offering Bob.

So, simplistic little analogies aside, the trade imbalance between Canada and the USA comes down to the fact that Canada sells more to the USA than it buys and the USA buys more from Canada than it sells. This is pretty normal and it is rarely, if ever, the case that two countries are completely balanced in terms of their volume of trade- it just never happens. For one thing the USA is a much larger market with a vastly larger population than Canada, thus making the demand on the American side greater almost by default.

It is immensely dangerous for a superpower like the USA to be led by an impulsive cretin who has a primary school understanding of how the world works. He doesn’t understand what is happening but has the power to act. This is at least as irresponsible as giving a monkey a machine gun and expecting things to turn out fine.

Trump is underqualified to be a doorman at a hotel, the fact that he has been given the most powerful job in America, and probably the world, is an unmitigated, unconscionable disgrace.

Trade deficit as succinctly as I can put it:

US buys $100B in oil (etc.) from Canada
Canada buys $100B in dishwashers, tvs, smart phones, services (netflix etc) from US

US buys $100B. Canada buys $100B. No difference. No deficit.

Next year the US wants to buy $150B in oil from Canada
Canada doesn’t need more than $100B in dishwashers, tvs, smart phones, etc. from US

That $50 trade difference is the deficit. In no rational mind could someone call that paradigm “ripping anyone off”.
What? We’re just supposed to match your every dollar, every year, in what you buy from us? Especially oil, steel, aluminum etc? No. It doesn’t work that way. Even if your name is Trump.

Solution? Go back to buying $100B instead of $150B in oil, (that you use to refine and make a profit with by selling the finished petroleum product).
Simple.

There is no ‘ripping off”. Trump just says shit.