Canada and US Exchange Actions Over Lake Ontario Naming Amid Trade Dispute

The takes

• 

  Adam Smith

  1723–1790, Scotland (the Scottish Enlightenment: Kirkcaldy, Glasgow, Edinburgh)

  Lake Ontario, Lake America, and the Price of Cheap Glory

  While rulers quarrel over a name on a shoreline, a 50% steel tariff quietly taxes the living standards of those far from the cameras.

  The scene is almost farcical. On one shore of a great lake, a government erects a giant sign proclaiming “Lake Ontario. Now and Always.” On the other, the chief magistrate shares a spectacle of himself kicking down that emblem, raising a “Lake America” sign, and dancing to a popular air. Yet this operatic contest over a name conceals a more serious quarrel. Behind the rhetoric lies an escalating trade dispute, in which a 50% duty is imposed on steel from the northern neighbour, and retaliatory tariffs are levied in return. The eye is drawn to the giant letters on the bank; the real writing, less visible, is in the ledgers of merchants and the household budgets of workmen.

  Read the essay →
• 

  John Locke

  1632–1704, England (writing amid the Exclusion Crisis and the Glorious Revolution)

  A Lake Cannot Be Renamed Into Legitimacy

  When rulers treat shared waters and shared trade as toys for unilateral gestures, they step from government by consent toward arbitrary power, however loudly the music plays in the background.

  I find it a curious spectacle to see a great lake turned into a stage-prop in a quarrel over steel. We are told that one government has, by administrative act, renamed Lake Ontario as “Lake America,” while its neighbour erects a great sign—“Lake Ontario. Now and Always”—in reply. Around this theatre of boards and video, there runs a far weightier matter: a fifty percent tariff laid on Canadian steel and retaliatory tariffs from Ottawa. Names on signs and numbers on customs papers may seem unlike shackles and chains; yet all are instruments whereby some men assert a right to dispose of others’ property without their consent.

  Read the essay →
• 

  Niccolò Machiavelli

  1469–1527, Florence (republican secretary and diplomat, then exile, amid the Italian Wars)

  Lake America, Lake Ontario, and the Arms Behind the Joke

  When leaders fight over the name of a lake while levying 50% tariffs, the wise observer watches not the swagger but the steel, the coalitions, and the hatred these spectacles may sow.

  A president dances to a song and kicks over a sign; a government answers with a bigger sign and a slogan, “Lake Ontario. Now and Always.” On its surface, it is ridiculous: a quarrel over the administrative renaming of a lake. But the effectual truth, which I always prefer to the imagined one, is more serious. Behind this theatre stands a 50% tariff on Canadian steel and retaliatory tariffs from Ottawa. The lake is only the stage curtain. The real drama is a trade war, where each side tests how far it can wound the other’s interests without provoking a blow that endangers its own survival.

  Read the essay →