How About an AmeriCon?

Modest Proposal for an Alternative to Trump's Trade War With Canada

The nation is still in the stage of being amused by the trade war President Trump has started with Canada. The cost of a 25% tariff on steel and aluminum hasn’t hit yet outside of Wall Street (if you need a new ‘fridge or SUV, you might want to hurry) and so far, the Canadian-v-US hockey fights have been limited to the players.

Then there’s The Art of the Deal-style wrestling match between Trump and Ontario Premier Doug Ford. As Trump’s tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminum kicked in this week, Ford threatened first a retaliatory 25% rate hike on the electricity his province sells to Minnesota, Michigan and New York State, then upped it to full cut-off of power.

Trump countered by doubling tariffs on Canada to 50%, leading Ford to “back down” – a big concession as far as pundits on this side of the border were concerned.

Toronto Star political columnist Martin Regg Cohn begs to differ. He writes that Ford and Ontario got the better of Trump after US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick phoned the premier and talked him in to backing down. Lutnick offered Ford a perquisite that incoming Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney might envy: An invitation to the White House.

Ford is scheduled to visit with Trump administration trade officials Thursday. (The president may have another reason to be in awe of Ford – a member of Canada’s center-right, er, centre-right Progressive Conservative Party, he is in his third term as Ontario premier.)

Where’s the win for Ford? He got that White House invitation by pausing, not rescinding, his retaliatory tariff on Ontario’s hydro-electric power to the three US states, where it serves a mere 1.5 million customers, according to Cohn. Ford managed to turn a little bit of cross-border trade into a big public relations win while playing political hockey in the same rink as the US president. Should be a shoo-in for a fourth term.

This will do nothing to dissuade Trump from continuing to pursue what The Wall Street Journal’s op-ed page called “The Dumbest Trade War in History” (headline caps the editors’).

With that in mind, I have a modest proposal: An American content law in the mold of the Canadian Content law, or CanCon.

Proposed in 1971 by Stan Klees, co-creator of the Juno Awards (Canada’s Grammys), CanCon requires 35% of radio airplay and 50% of daily broadcast TV – or 55% on a yearly basis – to be created in one way or another, by Canadians, according to its Wikipedia page. The CBC has 60% CanCon, and there is now an Online Streaming Act for Internet-based services.

When the sketch comedy show SCTV moved to the CBC for its third season, in 1980, producers had to come up with more Canadian content. Or at least, that was the conceit behind the weekly Great White North segment with Bob & Doug McKenzie (Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas).

You might think an American Content law for radio, broadcast TV (we’d have to add streaming) and online content would be superfluous. American pop, hip hop and rock ‘n roll already dominate the world’s airwaves, and there’s likely to be outcry in MAGAworld over American music’s diversity.

Another problem is the likelihood that Taylor Swift could singlehandedly account for AmeriCon’s 50%. That means AmeriCon would have to go extreme and become MAGACon, which would mean a lot of Kid Rock, Lee Greenwood and Ted Nugent.

Then there’s TV, which already is dominated worldwide by Hollywood, though PBS had better start cutting back on its BBC programming.

But AmeriCon, or even MAGACon, could provide a bit of a diversion for an administration that wasted no time changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico.

The single institution where AmeriCon could trigger big change is NBC’s Saturday Night Live. Perhaps the White House would be interested in a Trump-Ford-style têt-á-têt with Canadian Mike Myers over his Elon Musk impression.

Lorne Michaels, producer for 50 years, would have to sit out for about half the show. And he would have to turn over a full segment to, say, Tucker Carlson and Greg Gutfield.

Make that two segments, because they’re not half as funny as Bob & Doug.

Lassa is founding editor of The Hustings, where he writes, compiles and edits the center column.