Donald Trump has sounded the alarm on the threat to national security posed by the Canadian diary industry. He has cried fowl and vowed to eggxact revenge. In attempting to understand his behaviour (never an easy task) I can only assume that he may have given up on his dream of a Nobel Prize (even after forming a mutual admiration society with the North Korean Leader) and may instead by focused on winning a Pulletser Prize.
There are only about 42,000 dairy farms in the United States, most of them family owned, representing a tiny fraction of the votes cast for a President, but these farms are concentrated in states such as Wisconsin and Pennsylvania which Donald Trump won narrowly in the 2016 election, because of strong support from rural areas. The 11,000 dairy farms in Canada are largely found in Quebec and have long exerted political influence far out of proportion to their numbers and economic significance. Justin Trudeau promised to defend Canada’s supply management system during his 2015 election campaign and now finds himself in a position where yielding on that issue would suggest weakness in the face of American bullying tactics. The Conservative Party, as Official Opposition, is even more adamant on this subject and recently turfed from the Shadow Cabinet the runner-up for the leadership of the party, Maxime Bernier, for his continued public criticism of the supply management system.
American tariffs on steel and aluminum, threatened tariffs on the automotive industry, the possible collapse of NAFTA – all because of the outsized influence of the dairy industry. This situation can only be described as udderly ridiculous.