“Canada – USA Tariff Wars”

OTTAWA — Hours after U.S. President Donald Trump “terminated” trade talks with Canada over Ontario government anti-tariffs ads, Premier Doug Ford says he will pull the commercial from U.S. airwaves after it airs during two games of baseball’s World Series this weekend.

In a post on social media, Ford said he made the decision after speaking to Prime Minister Mark Carney.

LOL. Read between the lines. @fancypants_s https://t.co/PhwIHCML1f

— Patti Jo (@TheSupeHero) October 24, 2025

That’s some ratio you got there Doug.

h/t Patti Jo

Canadian-resident return trips from the U.S. were down for nearly 30 per cent year-over-year in August, according to new data from Statistics Canada.

It marks the third time since 2006 that trips to Canada by U.S. residents outnumbered Canadian residents travelling to the U.S., excluding August 2025 and September 2021 during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Trips to Canada by U.S. residents also decreased for a seventh consecutive month, down 1.4 per cent year-over-year.

… In Mr. Reagan’s original speech, the late president defended imposing duties on Japan during a trade dispute over semiconductors; he alleged Japan was failing to enforce Japanese companies’ violations of a trade agreement with the United States.

Mr. Reagan explained why tariffs are bad for the U.S. and hurt free trade, which is largely what the Ontario government quoted in its ad. However, Mr. Reagan also argued that his duties on Japan were justified “to stop unfair practices against American products,” while extolling the virtues of free trade overall.

The bottom line is Trump is more right than Ford and most nations have historically applied stiffer tariffs against the US than vice versa. 

“Free Trade” is really managed trade that has done great harm to the working class of both Canada and the USA as well as gutting the industrial base of both nations.

There is no such thing as “Free Trade” with low wage nations despite the insistence of our corporate class and no benefit to working people unless becoming a citizen of an aspiring low wage 3rd World state is on your wish list.

These captains of Industry are the same people who insist they can’t operate in Canada without importing millions of unskilled 3rd World economic migrants to depress wages.

They’re liars, they broke the social contract. Feck em’ they destroyed your children’s hopes and dreams.

Shitty if true …

@fancypants_s https://t.co/3FI9IAJCKn

— Auntie Polly (@auntie_polly) October 24, 2025

h/t Auntie Polly

OTTAWA — Stellantis and GM will pay an immediate price at the border for bailing on their production promises to Canada, the federal government advised the U.S. automakers Thursday.

According to a source with knowledge of a letter sent Thursday to Stellantis and GM, the federal finance and industry departments notified the companies they are no longer considered eligible to get the full break on Canadian counter-tariff duties on autos and auto parts they import to Canada because the carmakers fail to meet the requirement to maintain Canadian-based production.

Joly is mad. Watch Out Trumpers!

Prime Minister Mark Carney admitted a broader trade agreement with U.S. President Donald Trump is no longer within reach and gave his strongest signal yet that talks to lift 25-per-cent auto tariffs will be punted to next year’s review of the Canada-U.S.-Mexico trade agreement.

The prime minister, speaking on the eve of a nine-day trip to Asia where he will meet Trump, said he is still working to get a better deal for autoworkers and that “starts with working up the supply chain on (eliminating tariffs on) steel and aluminum. We go to that, so it’s part of a bigger set of negotiations with the Americans.”

U.S.-based truck maker Paccar Inc. has laid off 300 workers at its Sainte-Thérèse, Que., plant, just weeks before a 25 per cent U.S. import tariff on commercial trucks is set to take effect on Nov. 1.

The manufacturing plant builds Kenworth and Peterbilt trucks and depends heavily on exports to the U.S.

After giving Stellantis close to $105 million to retool two Ontario plants, the federal government is now reviewing the contract to see if the automaker violated the deal by announcing it’s moving some production to the U.S.

Stellantis publicly revealed its plans last week to move its Jeep Compass production from Brampton, Ont., to Illinois.

Asked by CBC News if he wants to recover taxpayer money already given to Stellantis, Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne suggested the government is taking action.

OTTAWA—Auto industry and union representatives fear the Mark Carney-led Liberal government is willing to push off tough auto sector talks about American tariffs to whenever formal negotiations on a scheduled review of the North American free trade deal get underway.

But they warn that is not an option, and puts the future of major companies and thousands of jobs at risk.

Lana Payne, head of Unifor, the largest private sector union that speaks for hundreds of thousands of auto, aluminum, and forestry workers, said in an interview Trump’s punishing tariffs on steel, aluminum, autos, copper and forestry are “strategic, surgical and designed to destroy Canada’s industrial economy.”

Are we close to reaching a deal with the Americans and if so does it include auto? It’s tough to tell based on what the government is saying, but their actions are speaking louder than their words.

On Tuesday morning, Mark Carney’s point man on cross-border trade was downplaying a story in the Globe and Mail that said the government was close to a deal with Trump on steel, aluminum and energy — but not autos.

“Lest it be forgotten, cultivating oligopolies rather than competition is more Canada’s economic forte. We have a banking oligopoly, an insurance oligopoly, a telecom oligopoly, an airline oligopoly, a retail-grocery oligopoly, big oil, big rail and a beer oligopoly too.”

It’s not going well. The depth of despair in Ottawa over tariffs and trade talks with the U.S. has inspired a sudden conviction that “competition” is the new “sustainability.”

Canada’s climate-change strategy is now a “climate-competitiveness strategy” according to Prime Minister Mark Carney.