The NDP government was in the dark like everyone else right up to the provincial budget’s press time about whether the U.S. tariff threat would actually take effect.

How they handled that is summed up in one phrase in the document: “Given the evolving and fluid situation, (it) is not incorporated into the budget.”

They decided to press on with a spending plan that assumed the U.S. northbound runaway train would stop short of the border.

The prospect of it crashing into the B.C. economy was instead addressed in a sidebar that updates an assessment from six weeks ago. The update is more optimistic than the first estimate, but still dire.

So when tariffs slammed into place Tuesday, the immediate impact was to shred most of the forecasts in the budget before it was even introduced. None of the revenue projections, economic assumptions or growth forecasts look to be relevant any more.

It’s the assessment of the tariff impact, separate and apart from the actual budget, that counts. Even freshened up with optimism — the employment-loss estimate is cut by almost two-thirds — it’s a grim........

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