Investment prospects grim under U.S. tariffs: MLA Hunter

Posted on February 27, 2025 by Sunny South News

By Trevor Busch
Sunny South News
editor@tabertimes.com

Canada’s premiers, including Danielle Smith, were recently in Washington, D.C. working the levers of power in an attempt to stave off another looming U.S. tariff deadline in early March.

How successful this most recent effort has been depends on who one talks to, with wildly varying opinions in different corners of this nation about what strategies Canada and individual provinces should be employing in grappling with a reactionary administration south of the 49th parallel. 

A call for unity on this front might seem natural considering President Donald Trump’s divide and conquer ethos and recent threats to our sovereignty, but Alberta is not backing down on defence of the oil and gas sector and is opposed to any plan that might see this key industry used as leverage in a raging trade war with the U.S. 

Taber-Warner MLA Grant Hunter still believes Trump views Alberta as a vital energy partner, but was surprised the president would not meet directly with the contingent of premiers.

“The premier went down with the other premiers to meet with some of the senior Trump administration. What’s interesting is you had 13 premiers going down, and they didn’t get a meeting with the president, whereas before you had our premier going down and she got two meetings with the president – I find that interesting. I think that President Trump recognizes the great value that Alberta has for the United States, (but) I think that he’s got different ideas about the rest of Canada. I think he recognizes, solely after listening to Premier Smith, about the heavy crude oil that we send down and how that translates into diesel for them to be able to keep their economic engine going. But it’s interesting, because he was unwilling to meet with 13 of the premiers – I was surprised. I thought for sure that at least Doug Ford would have been able to get that meeting, but it did not happen. So that was very telling to me.”

If Canada, and by default Alberta, drift into a cycle of U.S. tariff impositions and subsequent withdrawals, Hunter sees storm clouds on the horizon for future investment prospects in Western Canada.

“I think that it certainly creates instability and uncertainty in the investment world, and that is not good. We’ve been working for over five years now on building up this economic corridor between Lethbridge and Medicine Hat. And we’re firing on all cylinders. We’ve got great infrastructure coming in with Highway 3, we’ve got the Chin Reservoir and the other off-stream reservoirs happening, and we don’t want that uncertainty or instability, so that is concerning.”

Hunter says Canadian leadership would do well to take a page from Premier Danielle Smith in negotiating with Washington.

“But I think that what happens here – if you read the book ‘The Art of the Deal’ by Donald Trump you’ll recognize that this is kind of a demo. This is what he does. So we have to recognize that for the next four years, this is what’s going to happen, read the book so that we can recognize what’s going on, and then be able to counter some of these things, or how to be able to work through them. And I think the premier has done a fantastic job of being able to do that. She has used terms, not just used terms in our media, but she’s used terms in U.S. media that she knows the president is watching, like Fox News, and so she’ll use these terms there. She’ll say, ‘Listen, I think we should take President Trump seriously when he says this. And so let’s address the issue. Let’s get a border czar.’ So she’ll use these terms that President Trump will be watching, and then President Trump will see, ‘Okay, well, she gets it. This is where I want to go, and she gets it.’ So then you start to build relationships with Trump.” 

While reiterating that any economic confrontation with the United States would be ill-advised, Hunter employed a banking analogy regarding building trust. 

“When it comes to Donald Trump, they see him as bombastic, or they see him as this or that, and then they say we’re going to fight. Well, you don’t want to fight with Donald Trump. First of all, you don’t want to fight with the States right now, because they’re a behemoth. They could take us down. That is the reality. And so, for Premier Smith to actually take the effort to understand him and to try to be able to build that relationship of trust, I think that is key. That’s what diplomacy is all about. So she’s putting money in the bank. So when she needs to make a withdrawal, she can do that, but you cannot make a withdrawal if you haven’t put the money in – and most of the premiers and certainly our Ottawa federal government, has not been putting money in the bank.”