Canada

Mythology does not record whether Trojan priestess Cassandra took grim satisfaction in the vindication of her ignored warnings. I don’t. But I must say “I told you so” when events confirm my claims of some dangerous pattern in public affairs. Including from just last week about widespread disastrous resistance to systematic thought in Canada, from free speech to free trade, unleashing bad policy from muddled theory. Maybe Sean Feucht could sing about it… but not in Canada.

In case you had never heard of Cassandra, sister of Hector, she was gifted with prophecy, but cursed with never being believed. “Don’t take in the wooden horsey thing, it’s an obvious Greek trick,” she said, and the city burned.

@fancypants_s The dude wore suspenders and purple pants. https://t.co/J8G8aKdW0k

— Patti Jo (@TheSupeHero) July 29, 2025

h/t Patti Jo

OTTAWA — U.S. President Donald Trump will accept nothing short of “completely open markets” to American goods in other countries, his commerce secretary said Tuesday, as uncertainty continues over whether Canada and a host of nations can reach agreements with the United States before Trump’s latest threatened tariffs are supposed to kick in Friday.

The statement comes as Canada’s cabinet point-person on U.S. trade talks, Dominic LeBlanc, travels to Washington for the second time in recent days for what Prime Minister Mark Carney described Monday as an “intense” phase of negotiations before this week’s deadline.

For decades, Canadians have been, by a wide margin, the world’s largest buyers of cars and trucks made in the United States. In most years, four out of every 10 vehicles that roll out of Canadian dealerships were shipped from American factories.

But being the most important overseas market for America’s vehicle industry has not insulated Canada’s own auto industry from President Trump’s move to unravel the global trading system. On Friday, Mr. Trump threatened to impose a new 35 percent tariff on Canada unless the two countries struck a deal.

But even before then, Mr. Trump’s recent trade deals with Japan, Britain and the European Union meant that their auto exports would now be entering the United States at tariff rates lower than that on Canadian cars and trucks.

Do not break out the champagne. The trade “deal” agreed this weekend by the United States and the European Union bears the familiar elements of President Donald Trump’s evolving vision of trade under Trumponomics.

What’s been announced is better than the worst-case scenario of a trade war, but worse than the status quo.

WASHINGTON, D.C. — U.S. President Donald Trump wants a Golden Dome of missile defence over the United States, and if you’re thinking this sounds familiar, you’d be right. Back in the 1980s, Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative, aka Star Wars, also aimed to develop a space-based and layered defence system to knock out any incoming strikes.

It didn’t work out.

Prime Minister Mark Carney said negotiations between Canada and the U.S. on a new trade and security deal have reached an “intense phase,” as an Aug. 1 deadline looms.

Carney made the comments in Prince Edward Island on Monday during a separate announcement about the Confederation Bridge.

“The negotiations are at an intense phase,” Carney said. “It’s a complex negotiation you see with the various trade deals that have been agreed by other jurisdictions … there are many aspects to these negotiations.”