Good morning. Hurricane Milton slammed into Florida’s Gulf Coast – more on that below, along with the risks of a second Trump term for Canada’s economy and the Syrian refugees heading home from Lebanon. But first:
Today’s headlines
- Bill Blair’s former aide can’t explain the warrant delay in the Michael Chan surveillance request from CSIS
- Former Afghan policewomen live in fear of the Taliban as Canada is urged to resettle them
- Waterloo’s international graduates outearn Canadian-born students, experts say, paving the way for immigration policies
Surge waters flood Fort Myers, Florida.Joe Raedle/Getty Images
Weather
Milton hits hard
A weakened but still hugely powerful Hurricane Milton slammed into Florida’s west coast last night as a category 3 storm, pounding cities with winds of more than 160 kilometres per hour. Just before it made landfall, Milton shifted south, hitting Siesta Key near Sarasota and bringing 41 centimetres of rain to St. Petersburg, where residents lost their tap water after a water main break. Milton’s wind field was so large that several tornadoes spun off and touched down in south Florida, hundreds of kilometres away.
At least three million people are without power this morning, and cities along the east coast now face flash flooding, battering winds and storm surges as Milton moves into the Atlantic Ocean. You can find more photos of the hurricane’s damage here.
Donald Trump at a Pennsylvania rally last weekend.Evan Vucci/The Associated Press
Economy
The cost of a second Trump term
In Donald Trump’s estimation, there’s hardly a problem that tariffs can’t solve. Fighting inflation? Curbing immigration? Funding child care? Promoting world peace? “Tariffs are the greatest thing ever invented,” Trump said at a town hall in Flint, Mich., last month. He’s even called himself “Tariff Man.”
Unsurprisingly, then, Trump has big plans for tariffs if he returns to the White House: Every single good imported to the U.S. would be slapped with a 10 to 20 per cent levy. He’d also likely demand tougher trade barriers when the USMCA – Trump’s NAFTA successor – comes up for review in two years. That doesn’t bode well for this side of the border. In fact, as The Globe’s U.S. correspondent, Adrian Morrow, writes in his new report: “All of this would deal a serious blow to Canada’s economy, causing a drop in exports, job losses and a global trade war.”
How serious a blow, exactly? Let’s take a deep breath and dig into some of the numbers.
$45-billion: the total economic hit of a 10-per-cent tariff on imports and subsequent global trade war, estimated by the Canadian Chamber of Commerce. That nets out to more than $1,100 of lost annual income per Canadian.
40 per cent: the drop in Canada’s oil, gas and mining exports to the U.S, according to the chamber, which also expects a 20-per-cent decline in exports from our auto sector.
50 per cent: the amount of tariffs a U.S. president can unilaterally impose, at least according to an obscure provision of a nearly 100-year-old Tariff Act dug up by Robert Lighthizer, the trade chief in Trump’s first term. The president just needs to declare that another country has discriminated against U.S. companies, which sounds like the sort of thing Trump would say.
1.7 per cent: the potential dip in Canada’s real GDP by the end of 2028 if Trump wins and the GOP controls both houses of Congress, calculated by Desjardins Securities. “While a recession may be narrowly avoided, it can’t be ruled out,” the report said this week.
US$100-billion: the government money that Kamala Harris proposes giving to manufacturing companies so they can build and maintain factories in the U.S. That could also end up costing Canadian taxpayers. To match Joe Biden’s subsidies for electric vehicle plants, for example, the federal and Ontario governments have already doled out tens of billions of dollars’ worth of funds to build plants in Canada.
Still, Morrow writes, “none of this has caused the trade psychodrama that Mr. Trump is promising to revive if he sits in the Oval Office in January.” Tariffs may be music to Trump’s ears, as he told a crowd in Savannah, Ga., but they could start off Canada’s year on a sour note.
The Shot
‘Always war, war, war’
Crossing the crater left by an Israeli strike on the border between Syria and Lebanon.Goran Tomasevic/The Globe and Mail
Between 2011 and 2016, one and a half million Syrians fled civil war for the safety of Lebanon. Now, as Israel’s fight with Hezbollah escalates, hundreds of thousands of them are going back home. Read more here.
The Wrap
What else we’re following
At home: Is a 39-year-old Canadian named Peter Todd the elusive creator of bitcoin? A new HBO documentary says maybe. Todd says no.
Abroad: Fireworks launched off the Tropicana’s hotel towers, then 2,000 pounds of explosives brought the buildings down. (Classic Vegas.) A $1.5-billion baseball stadium for the Athletics will go up in its place.
Yes, please: You can skip the hefty roaming charges by using an eSIM when you head overseas.
No, thanks: 300 million years ago, a 9-foot, 100-pound, 64-legged bug roamed the Earth. Now scientists know what its head looked like.