Jon Liedtke joins 610 CKTB’s Gene Valaitis for his regular weekly segment, Liedtke’s Got a Take!
Jon Liedtke discusses how Star Wars: Episode I mirrors modern US-Canada trade tensions, comparing Trump’s unilateral tariffs and executive overreach to Darth Sidious and the Trade Federation’s blockade of planet Naboo, warning that everyday working-class citizens ultimately foot the bill for political and economic warfare.
Transcript (Gemini Generated):
Gene Valaitis: A heck of a job this week, it’s Jon Liedtke with Liedtke’s Got A Take. Good morning Jon.
Jon Liedtke: Good morning, Gene.
Gene Valaitis: Now, people should know that uh Jon’s a a young newspaper guy. I don’t want to call you old because you’re not, you’re still a cub. And uh Jon loves to pitch me on ideas when I’m working on the show in the afternoon at home. So, when I saw your pitch yesterday, okay I’m just gonna be honest, I thought you had lost your mind. So, but you know what? I trust you, man, and I know this is going to be spectacular. But how on earth is Star Wars: Episode I, the movie everybody mocked for Jar Jar Binks, the key to understanding Donald Trump’s trade war? I’m I’m looking forward to this one.
Jon Liedtke: [Laughter] You know, I know I do sound like an absolute lunatic, but I mean while we were all whining about a CGI Jar Jar Binks back in ’99, George Lucas was giving us a masterclass in modern trade politics. He literally opened a $115 million space opera with a yellow text crawl about the taxation of trade routes to outlying star systems and Senate gridlock. Let me just read this to you.
Gene Valaitis: Yep.
Jon Liedtke: This is the beginning of Star Wars: Episode I, the text: “Turmoil has engulfed the Galactic Republic. The taxation of trade routes to outlying star systems is in dispute. Hoping to resolve the matter with a blockade of deadly battleships, the greedy Trade Federation has stopped all shipping to the small planet of Naboo.” I mean, some of that sounds a little bit similar right now. I look out the window over across to Detroit from Windsor, and it seems like that’s the same script playing out on our borders right now. Lucas wasn’t just making movies or selling plastic toys, he was preaching macroeconomics. We were just too busy hating on Jar Jar.
Gene Valaitis: This is getting better. Okay, uh if I remember, in the movie, the Trade Federation uh uh blockaded a planet to protest taxation on trade routes and to serve as a secret uh sort of a political trap to install an evil Emperor. So, how does a spaceship blockade map turn into the Trump USA tariffs against Canada? I’m I’m looking forward to this one.
Jon Liedtke: Well, I mean, and in Star Wars, it took um a uh Lucrehulk-class droid control ship to enforce the blockade there, um and then with their invasion. But with Trump, he’s able to do all of this with just simply tariffs. Um but this didn’t come out of nowhere in the Star Wars universe. Naboo and the Trade Federation specifically threw an absolute corporate tantrum over the Republic taxing these free trade routes to the outlying systems. They used a logistical stranglehold to force the government, the Republic’s hand. Trump forcing this tariff onto all of our goods, and threatening a 50% one on our cars, and trucks, and steel, is this—it’s another hostage situation. It’s the same way. A manufactured, weaponized chokehold on our borders, but Trump isn’t firing turbo blasters or lasers, he’s using customs forms and raw economic extortion to decapitate the cross-border supply chains and squeeze us into submission. But just like in the movie how, you know, Darth Sidious, who became the Emperor, secretly engineered the blockade to manufacture a political crisis to oust the then-current leadership and install himself at the top, these tariffs, though, are just pure political theater designed to consolidate domestic leverage. It’s the same playbook being played out, but we’re just dealing with Mar-a-Lago instead of a Sith Lord.
Gene Valaitis: It’s getting good. Okay, one of the biggest headlines right now is how uh Trump is bypassing uh Congress and uh I guess what we could call standard trade laws to slap these tariffs uh unilaterally. So, [laughter] how closely does that match the political maneuvering in Star Wars?
Jon Liedtke: It’s the same playbook, Gene. In Star Wars, the Galactic Senate was too bogged down in bureaucratic procedural garbage to do a damn thing. Does that sound familiar to the US a little bit?
Gene Valaitis: Hello.
Jon Liedtke: So, in the movie, Palpatine manufactured the border crisis to get the Queen Amidala to grant him uh to become to uh vote non-confidence in the then uh Emperor to put him in as Emperor, giving him emergency executive powers. When the Trade Federation got cold feet and then asked Darth Sidious, “Is an illegal blockade actually illegal?”, what was his line? “I will make it legal.” [Laughter] Look at Trump. He looks to Congress, he looks to the House, he looks to the Senate, he looks to the WTO. He invokes the manufactured national emergency on the border, and he says, “I’m gonna make it legal. I’m gonna use my executive powers to tariff Canada into submission.” It’s the ultimate “I will make it legal” flex. It’s pure unadulterated politics at its rawest, it’s power, and I’m not even gonna go the Ferris Bueller route right now where we could talk about Ben Stein talking about the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act and uh Bueller, Bueller… Bueller, Bueller.
Gene Valaitis: Okay, this is getting good. Okay, so you compare the Trade Federation in Star Wars to countries and modern multinational corporations with CEOs scrambling to Mar-a-Lago in Florida to protect their supply chains or cutting profit sharing with the government. So are today’s corporate leaders basically acting out the same script from Star Wars?
Jon Liedtke: Yeah, I mean, abs- absolutely. You know, the Trade Federation in Star Wars wasn’t a government. They were just a massive megacorp with a standing droid army, and they did get a seat in the Senate. They got into bed with the populist authoritarian to protect panic margins, and when things got out of hand, they panicked, and they ultimately did get nationalized for their troubles. But look at things today. Look at the boardrooms, or look at countries. You have terrified executives, you have terrified elected leaders, all either running down to Mar-a-Lago or bending the knee to try to get tariff exemptions or to grant 15 points of their gross margins to keep their, you know, operations running, and we’ve seen that happening right now with uh private corporations. They think that they’re playing 4D chess against Trump to be able to protect their quarterly dividends or their GDPs or their voting base to still stay happy with them, but at the end of the day, they’re just getting played by Trump’s executive branch. I mean, this is this is cowardice meeting corporate greed meeting domestic politics. I’m I’m still happy that uh Mark Carney stood up to Trump, but I still do want to see what that deal was that we walked away from.
Gene Valaitis: Yeah, we all do. Okay, so if the US, according to your scenario here, and I’m loving this, is the central power, and the countries and megacorporations are the Trade Federation, where does Canada fit into this whole Star Wars scenario?
Jon Liedtke: Oh, I’m sorry to say this, Gene, but we are Naboo in this situation. We’re the planet being blockaded and invaded. [Laughter] We are the polite, overly apologetic, resource-rich neighbor. We just want to sell our goods in peace and exist, but because we share this border with the massive geopolitical entity that’s having an absolute meltdown, we’re getting squeezed in the crossfire. We didn’t start the trade war, we just woke up to find our trade routes blockaded while the politicians in the capitals argue over whose fault it is. It’s a siege on our economy.
Gene Valaitis: Okay, so we got Ford saying kiss my ass. He’s talking about shutting off electricity exports. And uh Trump team not backing down. So, um have we completely gone off script or is there yet another Star Wars equivalent for this kind of retaliatory escalation?
Jon Liedtke: You know, Ford going full WWE right now on uh Trump, and I saw him walk it back a little bit, but I don’t buy that he actually believes that. I think he probably got a phone call that said, “Dial it back 10 points right now. Come on, guy, you made things a little bit worse.” I mean, threatening to tax the electrical grid, calling Trump a dictator, king of bankruptcies, he’s basically become Queen Amidala realizing she had enough of all the garbage and the gridlock and the bureaucracy and that she was gonna go back to Naboo and fight the battle herself. I mean, her line in the movie was, “I was not elected to watch my people suffer and die while this is discussed in committee.” And it seems like Ford is actually waking up to the fact that playing nice with an economic bully does get you nowhere. So I like the harsh language right now, and you know, the idea if they’re gonna park a battleship in our orbit, shoot back at them and hit back harder. And even if your weapon of choice is slapping a massive surcharge on electricity and threatening to shut the lights off, um and you know, not bringing a blaster or a lightsaber, um it might work a little bit to make them realize that we’re not here to play games.
Gene Valaitis: Okay, finally, uh in Episode I, in this whole Star Wars scenario, uh the whole trade dispute in Star Wars eventually leads to the fall of the Republic and mass suffering for everyday people. So what is the ultimate takeaway for the average Canadian consumer caught in the middle of this trade war thingy and considering it could be yet another Star Wars episode?
Jon Liedtke: [Laughter] I think the takeaway, Gene, and stick with me for this one, is that when the guys in the suits, the government suits or the Sith robes, start to weaponize the global economy for their own political egos, it’s always gonna be the working class, the middle class, the lower class that foots the bill. So while Trump and Carney and Ford are playing this multi-billion, trillion dollar game of chicken right now, you know who’s actually being affected by it. It’s the workers on the line, it’s the consumers in the grocery store, it’s everyone in between. The Galactic Republic fell because its leaders stopped caring about the actual citizens and got caught up in the bureaucracy of the machinery. We just need to hope that our leaders figure out our border and trade disputes before someone starts building a Death Star.
Gene Valaitis: Well, listen, on behalf of all Star Wars fans listening this morning, I only have two words: Brilliant take.
Jon Liedtke: Thank you so much, Gene.
Gene Valaitis: Talk to you tomorrow morning, okay? 9:15.
Jon Liedtke: Looking forward to it. May the Force be with you.
Gene Valaitis: [Laughter] 9:15 on Friday morning, Liedtke’s Got A Take.
This aired on 610 CKTB
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