What Trudeau is doing is pretending to be stupid while engaging in a very clever strategy of scapegoating. It’s the government and the central bankers that are the foundational cause of inflation, but by blaming individual business sectors he sets the stage for government enforced price controls. When these fail and create a crisis in supply he will then introduce rationing, and once the government has conditioned the public to accept rationing the elites then control the entire population’s access to food and necessities.
Some people may say “Well that’s Canada, what about the US?” The same agenda is in progress in America, but is being pursued at a city and state level. For example, the socialist Mayor of Chicago, Brandon Johnson, just announced a plan for the city (using state and federal tax funds) to build government run grocery stores in “food deserts.” These are places where a combination of inflation and shoplifting has forced grocers to leave certain areas of the city.
The Chicago program would include price control measures and there’s ample opportunity for these institutions to use rationing in the future. Similar projects are also being considered in other cities across the country. In other words, leftist cities are scaring away businesses while planning to replace “essential services” with government run operations.
I wrote about the inevitability of government rationing after price controls last year in my article ‘The Stagflation Trap Will Lead To Universal Basic Income And Food Rationing.’ Rationing generally comes when price controls fail. It’s been a long time since the US has faced these kinds of conditions but we are likely to in the near future. This time around, I believe that if the establishment is given rationing power they will never let go again.
Rationing could also be used to lure the public into accepting Universal Basic Income (UBI) and Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs). Government run food centers can easily restrict purchases of goods to a limited list of items, and also demand payment using specific methods (like digital currencies). In a short period of time, cash would be removed because retailers, pressured by government, will refuse to accept it.
It’s hard to say what the future will bring in terms of politics, given that the next presidential campaign is looking like a complete circus. Historically speaking, though, both Democrat and Republican presidents have tried price controls in the past. Public pressure must be applied (at the state level at minimum) to stop this from happening. As convenient as it might seem to blame producers and distributors, the real threat is coming from governments and banks. We cannot let the people who caused the crisis also benefit from it by giving them even more power.
