This post will be an oddity, but under this current political climate I think it makes sense.
Unless you have been living under a rock, the good ole US of A and the orange idiot in office there as issued tariffs on the rest of the world (for no other reason than to get rich, but that’s my own personal opinion). Canada’s tariffs are primarily shaped through the network of free trade agreements, the most well known is s the Canada-US-Mexico Agreement and the Comprehensive Economic & Trade Agreement with the European Union.
The US tariff war has pissed a lo of us off. It’s purpose I suppose was to impose a high percentage of duties on our steel and aluminum. A result of this, is that it has created an uncertain market for Canadian industries and has raised a social swell of anti-American sentiment. As a direct result of this, agencies like the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency (ACOA) have begun to promote several businesses to champion the strengths of Canada.
I was perusing their site the other day (as I do in my downtime!) and I saw that some Canadians companies took part in a Japan and South Korean mission to promote their interests outside of States. While the US tariffs target originally steel and aluminum, so many other sectors of our industry have been affected. One good way is that now America is suffering from a brain drain of talented professors coming to the Great White North to escape fascist winds down south. You can read about it here.
Now this makes me happy, because there are so many talented people here that I absolutely love for more brilliant minds on this side of the border. I happened to have a lovely conversation with one company listed on the ACOA’s website, Affinity Immuno. I spoke with their head scientist Jonh about their trip to Korea and Japan in the wake of American tariff’s, and it really gave me pause. Here is a man who studied science in order to make a positive contribution to the world who now has to come up with a completely new business model because mr. orange face has decided that he wants to wield economic power like a toddler.
John was talking about his work with monoclonial antibodies specifically, and how they are some of the most important discovers in the world in the past fifty years. But because of Canada’s retaliatory tariffs, most of his American customers have to find their biologics elsewhere. So I was happy to see his company on the website, happy to see the innovation of Canadian’s entrepreneurs in the face of nonsense political ideology.
But it makes me mad too, mr fuck-face down south is screwing with the wellbeing, scientific progress, and human health for what? Power? Lame, do better.
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