The best pizza I’ve ever had was in Japan. You probably don’t immediately think of Japan when you think of pizza, but trust me, they have incredible, top tier pizza over there. The wife and I were walking around Kanda and happened into this place called Devil Craft, whereupon we were served the most incredible deep dish pizza I’ve ever tasted. Absolutely dripping with the cheesiest cheese imaginable. The second best pizza I’ve ever had was in South Korea, where they put corn niblets on their pizza, which is surprisingly delicious. The third best pizza I’ve ever had is in the first most sketchiest part of Buffalo, at La Nova Pizzeria on Ferry Street.
Basically, every good pizza I’ve ever had was in not-Canada. Because we have the absolute worst pizza on the planet.
The reason we have crap pizza here is not because we lack the culinary expertise to produce a delicious slice. The reason is much more mundane, much more steeped the usual Canadian bureaucratic industrial complex.
Sadly, the reason you can’t find good pizza in this country is due to tariffs and supply chain management.
Tariffs are a hot topic these days thanks to Trump’s pledge this week to slap a 25 per cent tariff on our stuff. The premiers are freaking out and demanding an emergency meeting to address the issue.
Over the past few days, everyone seems to have a hot take on tariffs, so I feel compelled to toss my two cents in also.
Unfortunately, I have no idea how tariffs work, or how global trade works, or how the economy works. I don’t even know how money works, my wife doesn’t let me have any, she takes it all and uses it to pay bills and buy diapers, and if there’s any leftover after that, I might get to use some to play golf or buy a new Pokemon game.
The only thing I do know about tariffs is that they make our pizza bad and our electric vehicles expensive.
I wrote recently about how Canada’s lame tariff on Chinese electric vehicles is silly and they should just let me buy a cheap EV. I also know that Canadian cheese is expensive because the Canadian Dairy Commission keeps prices artificially inflated, which wouldn’t be a problem if I could just go get some cheese in Buffalo.
Cheese is dirt cheap in America. I can go over to Buffalo right now and buy enough cheese for 1,000 pizzas, but of course, I’m not allowed to bring it back to Canada. I’m only allowed to buy overpriced Canadian cheese. Which is why our pizza sucks.
The most confounding part of this whole debate for me, is trying to figure out how someone can be so against tariffs on one thing, while ardently supporting it on other things.
Shouldn't tariffs either be good or bad?
The main argument I’ve seen people making against Trump’s 25 per cent tariff is that it will make consumer goods more expensive for us, which is a bad thing. Kinda like how tariffs on electric vehicles and cheese are making those products more expensive for us right now, which those same people argue is a good thing.
Can someone make this make sense please, because I’m not understanding this at all.
At some point in the very near future, we’re going to have to have a sit down with Trump about these tariffs. I don’t know what the answer is, clearly.
All I really care about is making our pizza less crummy, because pizza is at its best when it's absolutely smothered in cheese and dripping with grease, and the way to make that happen is to open the cheesy floodgates and let cheap, plentiful American cheese imports pour over the border and straight into our pizza ovens. It’s time we Make Pizza Great Again.
James Culic can’t wait to eat cheesy American pizza in his Chinese electric vehicle. Until then, scroll to the bottom of this page to find out how to yell at him, or fire off a thin-crust letter to the editor with extra anchovies here.
