Canada has announced retalliation against the steel and aluminum tarrifs the U.S. has decided to enforce against Canada.  Laughably the U.S. rational for the tariffs is national security.

I refer to this as  laughable simply because the tight political and geographic alignment between Canada and the United States makes the consideration we pose a security threat simply ridiculous.

Nobody Wins

Free trade should be a prized practice and lack thereof disdained.  For me this is very much like the basic philosophical misalignment between communist economies and capitalist.

Human motivation is a very real factor in these two models.  At a very high level, conceptually, the reward incentive is reduced in a communist economy because everyone shares.

When effort is not tied to gain there is less incentive to work hard and therefore output suffers.  In the capitalist model effort is linked to results.  If you work harder, your gain is greater.

Free trade works like capitalism, what you put into it affects what you get out, without having to worry about artificial constraints.  If the government is influencing your ability to profit, through trade restrictions, this may have a short term positive effect but in the long term,  like most purely communist economies, all will crumble.

Why Fight

Ultimately everyone looses in a war, whether physical or a trade war of wits.  War is bad for the human condition and those who believe it is a way to achieve what is right are in fact very wrong.

Free trade or restricted trade, it is what it is (albeit free trade is obviously better).  However war is very bad no matter how you look at it.