But Trump seemed ready to tear everything up with comments this week:
“We have a tremendous [trade] deficit with Canada,” the president said. “We don’t need them to make our cars, and they make a lot of them. We don’t need their lumber, because we have our own forests, etc, etc. We don’t need their oil and gas. We have more than anybody.”
As most Canadian industry leaders have pointed out, the US depends on Canada for a host of minerals and supplies. It gets germanium, aluminum and nickel far easier than from China, whose stranglehold on critical minerals Washington is trying to loosen.
“We produce a certain refined product of nickel that is suited for the US industries,” Pierre Gratton, president and CEO of the Mining Association of Canada, said in a phone interview. “When China imposed a ban on the export of germanium to the United States, we could supply them with germanium, and this…
