The C.H.I.E.F.S. Story – the other shoe

Choose your idiom, “calm before the storm” or “waiting for the other shoe to drop” tomorrow is March 4, 2025, the stated official start date for the tariff war.

The world order is changing and one man has amassed immense ?power, as we saw on Friday’s shocking confrontation with Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Politics is definitely part of this upheaval, although the rationale is primarily couched in economic terms.

Since Donald J. Trump was elected I have been advocating “to prepare for the changes.” No matter how our various levels of government will try to retaliate, sadly most of their efforts will only hurt us while having little impact on the Americans.

Trump holds all the Trump cards!

I provided a short American Civics lesson as part of the January 21st OBIO webinar. The irony, since as a Canadian working in DC during the 2000’s, I was often asked to explain to people in some of the most senior roles in the US government how their government worked. Naturally, being knowledgeable about this definitely helped me gain access to many of the strategically placed elected officials and the cabinet, throughout my five-plus years.

However, for brevity there were some things I had to leave out of the webinar.

For instance, the President has absolute Constitutional power as leader. The Presidency is the only elected position that the whole country votes for and although the Electoral College was designed to provide a modicum of balancing for population disparities, compared to our Canadian system where the Prime Minister is NOT elected by the people, but is the leader of the party with the most seats, the EC may actually be more equitable.

So, if somebody disagrees with one of Trump’s edicts, their only option is to litigate through the ever-escalating legal strata. However, unlike the past four years, where Trump has had to personally pay for defending every charge brought against him, now he can rely on the taxpayers to cover the costs.

The American electorate wanted a change and they got one. Some may feel it is more than they bargained for, but now they are stuck with it for at least two years and most likely four.

What does all this have to do with the impending tariffs on a country most thought to be America’s strongest ally and largest trading partner?

Lots!

With this amount of power, if Trump doesn’t like you he can steamroll over you. And, Trump has made it quite clear he doesn’t like many of our leaders.

That doesn’t mean we should just roll over for Donald Trump. Instead the various “Buy Canadian” campaigns, eliminating internal trade barriers, and cross-matching US tariffs are a good start. But somehow it seems like we may have decided to come to the proverbial gunfight with a knife.

In the? meantime we wait.

To the health innovator segment, I’d like to offer something tangible based on my in-depth Capitol Hill experience. Mammoth will augment all initial C.H.I.E.F.S. Tool? evaluations in 2025 with a single targeted statement providing basic guidance with respect to any imposed or threatened tariff.