He’s on the blue team. He’s always making mistakes for which he needs to apologise, to the eye rolling exasperation of his colleagues. I’m talking of course, about Clumsy Smurf. In the real world, PM Christopher Luxon’s latest reason for issuing an apology has had to do with his government’s mis-management of the winter energy payments to beneficiaries. This past winter, thousands of people did not receive the entitlement that would have enabled them to heat their homes, and thus avoid falling ill.
The government bungled this process not once, but twice. Rushed, poorly vetted legislation seems the prime reason. Reportedly, about 15,000 eligible people were denied their rightful payments. As the Spinoff succinctly explained:
The new law required them to prove their eligibility for a payment that has no means testing – a simple administrative oversight perhaps, but one that meant thousands of pensioners had their payments suspended simply because they hadn’t confirmed their eligibility for a payment that doesn’t require it.
Moreover, the same legislation passed under urgency required beneficiaries to reconfirm their circumstances at the end of every year. An avalanche of people did so, and MSD staff were snowed under by the paperwork. Too bad that Nicola Willis had previously sacked 700 of them. Evidently, many of those backroom staff had been serving a very useful purpose.
Being wantonly careless about the wellbeing of beneficiaries is nothing new for this government. It turfed people out of emergency housing, and lived in denial when a steep rise in homelessness soon followed. It passed “move on” laws without caring where people will relocate. More recently, it has chosen to deny access by 18 and 19 year olds to the Jobseeker benefit once their parents household income reaches $65,500. By law, these 18 and 19 year olds are defined as adults in every other respect. Yet they are being re-defined as children when it comes to their access to welfare support. Incredibly, this access block has been put in place in the midst of a cost of living crisis, and at a time when youth unemployment is running at nearly 25%.
No new taxes on wealth, but extra cost burdens for the poor. Once again, the socio-economic costs of the government’s failure to run the economy in ways that create job opportunities for young people are being offloaded onto their parents, many of whom are already struggling. In those households that have lost child support once their child turns 18, the added loss of the Jobseeker support for their 18 and 19 year olds will hit family finances particularly hard. No jobs, no benefit support, no future is a recipe for young people being further exposed to substance abuse, mental health problems and crime. But as the economist Shamubeel Eaqub pointed out yesterday this measure has been adopted without any cost benefit analysis.
The blue team won the last election by claiming it would fix the cost of living crisis. Well, grocery prices have not come down, wages have fallen behind inflation (again) and unemployment is running at peak Covid levels. Undaunted by this track record of abject failure, Luxon is now promising to fix the basics and build for the future. Fat chance.
US vs Canada = China
So far, Foreign Minister Winston Peters has been rendered speechless by the Trump administration’s attack on one of our oldest allies. Donald Trump’s perverse trade war with Canada has come decked out with the usual bizarre trappings e,g. Trump has renamed Lake Ontario as Lake America, and thereby launched a thousand derisive memes. (One suggestion has been to re-name Canada Geese as Donald’s Ducks.)
The declared aim of America’s attack on its northern neighbour is to shift all US manufacturing out of Ontario and back into the United States. The attempt to un-make the North American trade omelette looks more likely to inflict lasting competitive damage on the auto industry in both countries, raise prices to consumers for North American-made cars and trucks, and significantly assist China’s efforts to achieve total domination of the global market for electric vehicles.
Take that last part first. Because of his own co-dependent links to Big Oil, Trump has done all he can to depress the US market for EVs, regardless of the world’s inexorable shift in that direction. On the first day of his second term, Trump signed an executive order scrapping the federal target that EVs should reach 50% of new car sales by 2030. He also froze the $5 billion that Joe Biden had set aside to fund a nation-wide EV charging network.
Subsequently Trump scrapped the $US7,500 tax credit for EV new car purchases. The American Prospect has charted the knock-on effects of this, and other anti-EV measures :
This [EV tax credit decision] led directly to a sharp drop in planned EV investment in Georgia, South Carolina, and Arizona. Ford cancelled production of its F-150 electric pickup truck; GM moved its Orion plant back to manufacturing heavy luxury gas-powered SUVs, and Stellantis abandoned its planned electric Ram truck. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy rolled back President Biden’s strict fuel economy goals that were intended to promote the shift to EVs. He cut the 2031 fleet average target from over 50 mpg down to 34.5 mpg. Long-standing fines for automakers failing to meet fuel rules were eliminated entirely.
While the Trump administration has been busily reducing North America’s ability to compete on the global EV market, China has been expanding its domination of it. According to this report, China accounted for 75 per cent of all EVs manufactured globally last year, and Chinese brands are dominating new car EV sales throughout the developed world.
What happens next?
As the Canada/US tariff war raises prices for cars and trucks that are often constructed with inputs and labour from both sides of the US/Canada border, Canada’s motorists are likely to turn, eventually, to China. For a chilling precedent, the New York Times recently cited the fate of the car-making industry in Australia (and by extension New Zealand) as a cautionary tale. On both sides of the Tasman, market forces killed the local car-making industries destroying the jobs and technological skills that these local car assembly enterprises used to support.
As was the case here, Australian motorists initially imported their cars from Japan, South Korea, Europe and the US. But then came the shift:
Less than 10 years later, Australia looks very different. Nearly one in three new cars bought in Australia in the first half of 2026 was made in China, up from less than one in 250 back in 2017. (Only one in 50 Australian purchases in the first five months of 2026 was made in the United States.) Mr. Trump should expect Canadian consumers to go the same route.
Reportedly, New Zealand’s car market is following much the same route as Australia. It is an interesting example of how market forces – in anything beyond the very short term – are no match for forms of capitalism funded and managed by a state like China, which is willing and able to play a longer game.
Footnote One: To repeat: a sustained trade war based on 50% tariffs on both sides of the US/Canada border would not only gut the auto industries in Detroit and Ontario, but make those relatively cheap Chinese EVs look very attractive indeed to Canadian consumers.
Trump’s stupid 50% tariff offensive will raise prices on all the cars and trucks that the three biggest American automakers ( Ford, GM, and Stellantis, which includes the old Chrysler brand) currently build in Ontario. At the other end of the auto construction process, Trump is also putting 50% tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminium.
What staples of the US auto trade will be hit? Reportedly, the casualties will include the Dodge Charger, Chrysler Pacifica and Chrysler Voyager. Among US trucks, GM’s Chevy Silverado, and Ford’s F-350 and F.450 are also made in Canada. There could be sizeable job losses in both Michigan and Ontario.
Footnote Two: By fracking its oil sand deposits, Canada has become the world’s fourth largest oil producer. Even Trump is aware of the political impact of higher prices at the petrol pump, so Canada’s crude oil exports to the US have been exempted from this latest round of tariffs.
Footnote Three: The state of Michigan – where Detroit’s auto industry giants are based – is a significant swing state in the US midterm elections. (Maine, another border state held narrowly by a Republican, is also experiencing political fallout from the trade war.)
Against Kamala Harris in 2024, Trump flipped Michigan into the Republican column by a 1.24% margin. Come November, Democrats will need to win the Senate race in Michigan to have any chance of taking control of the US Senate. The Dems’ candidate is a Bernie Sanders/AOC endorsed left wing politician called Abdul El-Sayed – he’s a populist in the Mandani mould – who is running against a wealthy Trump-endorsed Republican called Mike Rogers.
After Rogers streaked out to an early polling lead, the combined effect of the unpopular Iran war and the tariff war on Canada have seen the charismatic El-Sayed take a narrow but consistent polling advantage. However…among voters over 50 years of age (who tend to vote in high numbers) Rogers is still well ahead, and El-Sayed’s strongest poll support is among young voters, many of whom do not turn out to vote at all.
El-Sayed has experienced this turnout problem before. In the bruising Democratic primary that chose him to be the party’s flag bearer, El-Sayed had enjoyed a double-digit lead in the polls against a party machine candidate, but that advantage all but evaporated on polling day, with El-Sayed eventually eking out only a one point victory. Those very real caveats aside, Trump’s tariff war with Canada is currently making Michigan – and with it, the entire US Senate- look winnable for the Democrats.
Anger as motivator
On “Hipster Runoff” Lex Walton is angry about M.J. Lenderman singing about houseboats, about Republicans sleepwalking us into the Apocalypse, “shitgaze landlords,” killer cops and a lot more besides. The track may be musically retro, but her anger feels contemporary:
The title of the new Olivia Rodrigo single “Serena Joy” is a reference to the till-fated wife in The Handmaids Tale, and the lyrics are about being consumed by the evil you benefitted from and helped to build – either directly, or by just standing around while things took their deadly shape. Trump’s fixation with gold and ICE patrols both get a mention. “While they’re out on the street/we’re having a ball..” Some of us, anyway.