The controversy over American tariffs has quickly escalated from a corrective action supposedly prompted by complaints about the porosity of both the southern and northern borders of the United States, to a comprehensive attempt to reset America’s commercial relations with the world, to restore the strength of American manufacturing and to discontinue trade and foreign aid practices from the Cold War, which were effectively bribes to persuade a variety of foreign governments to remain in the western, rather than the Soviet, sphere of influence. Following the Second World War, there was a great wave of decolonization, most of it — such as in the old British Raj, which included present-day India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Nepal and Bhutan — voluntarily, but some of it — such as Algeria, Indochina and up to a point, Kenya and Cyprus — violently and painfully. As the Cold War developed, the foreign aid practices of the U.S. and other western countries (including Canada) had a humanitarian component topped up by the political understanding that recipient countries would remain passably co-operative with the West.