Read excerpts from FP Comment columns from April, May and June. Second instalment in a series

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• Donald Trump wants to centrally plan the U.S. auto industry with 25 per cent tariffs on automobile imports and threats to domestic automakers to control prices. Whether his goal is to deliberately harm America and its trading partners or to demonstrate his ignorance of basic economics, I do not know. Both explanations fit. — Matthew Lau, April 2

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• The long list of proposed extreme federal moves into the Canadian housing market could — and should — begin to alert voters to the fact that a Carney government does not represent a shift away from Trudeauism. On the contrary, Carney … is just another Justin, only now even more extreme than Justin. — Terence Corcoran, April 3

• Ottawa has enormous un-used leverage in negotiating civil service pay and getting rid of non-performers. It can unilaterally change the federal pension plan without negotiating with public-sector unions. The plan is so generous it is customarily referred to as the “golden handcuffs” that tie employees to their jobs irrespective of their pay or working conditions. To protect their lucrative pensions, unions would be willing to make concessions that substantially lower the burden on Canada’s taxpayers … — Philip Cross, April 8

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• If Trump’s tariff list hadn’t gone straight from the Oval Office to the Rose Garden with a stop only at a menu-printing shop, somebody might have pointed out that a 50 per cent tariff on a place like St. Pierre and Miquelon — population 5,132, according to the CIA World Factbook, with virtually no exports to the United States — was going to look really stupid. — William Watson, April 8

• Canadians pay lots of tax. Why should they have to put up with long wait times in health care, falling educational standards and a bloated public service unable to provide even basic services promptly? Big bang reforms would scale back ineffective programs, instill better service delivery and invest in productivity-enhancing capital like artificial intelligence. — Jack Mintz, April 11

• Instead of continuing to feed its