“Canada – USA Tariff Wars”

The President of the United States is low-key obsessed with Canada, and it’s getting, like, a little embarrassing.

Back in 2017, Mr. Trump called then-prime minister Justin Trudeau “a man who has become a friend of mine” and said the two leaders had “a very good relationship.” The sentiment didn’t last long, perhaps because the Canadian leader represented, at the time, a lot of what Mr. Trump was not: young, popular, competent. Or perhaps Mr. Trump was salty that he couldn’t replicate former president Barack Obama’s bromance with Mr. Trudeau. Whatever the cause, after leaving early from the G7 Summit in Quebec in June, 2018, Mr. Trump tweeted that Mr. Trudeau “acted so meek and mild during our @G7 meetings,” before calling him “very dishonest & weak.”

The Globe and Star have switched places.

It is illustrative of the decline in Canada’s credibility as a durable and successful country that the essay section of the influential American political media aggregator RealClearPolitics recently ran a column by John Dominguez, an investment banker in Virginia, laying out a strategy for the American absorption of Canada. His opening gambit reads: ”While Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney shops his country to China and Qatar, Americans should revisit an idea the Founding Fathers first proposed: welcoming Canada into the Union.”

Conservative MP Jamil Jivani says Mexico is further ahead of Canada when it comes to negotiations on the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA).

“Mexico—the third partner in our trilateral trade agreement with the U.S.—is further ahead in its engagement with the U.S. than Canada is,” Jivani said in a Feb. 8 op-ed in The National Post.

Jivani, who recently returned from a trip to Washington to meet with officials in the Trump administration, noted that Mexico and the United States began formal talks on the USMCA on Jan. 28.A week later, the two countries announced a joint action plan on critical minerals.

President Donald Trump is privately musing about exiting the North American trade pact, people familiar with the matter said, injecting further uncertainty about the deal’s future into pivotal renegotiations involving the US, Canada and Mexico.

The president has asked aides why he shouldn’t withdraw from the agreement, which he signed during his first term, though he has stopped short of flatly signaling that he will do so, according to the people who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe internal discussions.

The U.S. House of Representatives passed a resolution against President Donald Trump’s tariffs on Canadian goods, delivering a stinging rebuke to the administration for launching a trade war on its northern neighbour.

The House voted 219-211 in favour of a resolution seeking to terminate the national emergency that Trump invoked in February 2025 to empower his tariffs on a range of imports from Canada.

Six Republicans defied the White House and joined the Democrats in voting for the measure.

Trump warns GOP lawmakers they will ‘suffer’ serious consequences if they vote to end Canada tariffs

The warning occurred shortly before six House Republicans voted with Democrats to end the tariffs in a 219-211 split, but the vote is largely considered symbolic because Trump is expected to veto it, which would then require a two-thirds majority in both chambers to overturn.

Prime Minister Mark Carney said he spoke to his U.S. counterpart early Tuesday morning about the Gordie Howe International Bridge, which Donald Trump has threatened to block, explaining to him that Canadians paid for the bridge in full and that the Americans already have an ownership stake.

Carney said he told Trump that the federal government paid some $4 billion to build the Windsor-Detroit bridge and that it was built with Canadian and U.S. workers and steel from both countries, despite the president’s bogus claims that there was “virtually no U.S. content” used during construction.

U.S. President Donald Trump is threatening to block the opening of the Gordie Howe Bridge, poised to become the newest border crossing between Windsor, Ont., and Detroit.

“I will not allow this bridge to open until the United States is fully compensated for everything we have given them, and also, importantly, Canada treats the United States with the Fairness and Respect that we deserve,” Trump wrote in the post on Monday.

Interesting …

EXPOSED: Corruption in the Canada-U.S. P3 Gordie Howe Bridge Project Puts Taxpayers in Debt Forever

Industry whistleblower Bob Rai reveals concerning patterns of fraudulent activity perpetrated by Canadian politicians that put the taxpayers in multigenerational debt to foreign… pic.twitter.com/XvxJ6wcJae

— Mocha Bezirgan 🇨🇦 (@BezirganMocha) February 12, 2024

The GM plant in Oshawa often feels like a mythical place. Long-time residents in the region tell stories of a time when it was a hub of prosperity for tens of thousands of families. They say, when shifts would end, there were so many GM employees that some roads would become one-way streets so workers could drive home in an orderly fashion.

Oshawa’s GM plant is still a very important place, but far fewer Canadians work there today. The fighting spirit of a proud union remains in the face of layoffs and shift cuts.

Amid a year-long trade war, Canada’s outgoing ambassador to the United States says she doesn’t know whether U.S. President Donald Trump hopes to keep the Canada-U.S.-Mexico Agreement (CUSMA) in place, because his messaging around the deal has been inconsistent.

The agreement, inked during Trump’s first term, is up for review this year. In 2018, Trump called it the “most modern, up-to-date, and balanced trade agreement in the history of (the United States),” but just last month called it “irrelevant.”

Canadians aren’t visiting the US as much as they used to.

Data from Statistics Canada up to November showed that fewer Canadians returned from the US — indicating fewer visited the US — than in the past couple of years.