The importance of having Canada in an intelligence-sharing alliance with the United States and other countries was raised when ministers met last week with Donald Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan.
The meeting among Homan, Canada’s Public Safety Minister David McGuinty, Immigration Minister Marc Miller and other officials was staged to show the Trump administration Canada’s efforts to boost border security.
MEXICO CITY—It was the first call U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth held with Mexico’s top military officials, and it wasn’t going well.
Hegseth told the officials that if Mexico didn’t deal with the collusion between the country’s government and drug cartels, the U.S. military was prepared to take unilateral action, according to people briefed on the Jan. 31 call. Mexico’s top brass who were on that call were shocked and angered, feeling he was suggesting U.S. military action inside Mexico, these people said. The Defense Department declined to comment.
The scene in the Oval Office on Friday between Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky and U.S. President Donald Trump was deeply unsettling.
The geopolitical ramifications remain uncertain, but one thing is clear: peace in Eastern Europe may have drifted even further out of reach. For global food security, stability in that region is critical, and the current trajectory suggests an increasingly bleak outlook for Ukraine and its ability to regain economic and agricultural footing.
President Trump and Vice President JD Vance’s televised berating of President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine suggests that things could be worse between Canada and the U.S.
But when Prime Minister Justin Trudeau steps down in a few days, his successor will face the worst relations between the U.S. and Canada since the trade war of the Great Depression. Arguably they are nearing a nadir not seen since the 19th century.
After a week of confusing signals from the White House, Mr. Trump said he was committed to imposing potentially devastating 25 percent tariffs on most exports from Canada except oil and gas, which face a 10 percent tax.
A diplomatic row has exploded after Sir Keir Starmer declined to back Canada against Donald Trump’s ambitions to turn it into the 51st state of the USA.
A Conservative MP in Canada and a former ambassador are among those to criticise the UK prime minister for failing to stand up for their country.
Mr Trump has made repeatedly made calls for Canada to become America’s 51st state in recent months, including a claim that without a massive subsidy from the US “Canada ceases to exist as a viable country”.
The backlash followed The Independent’s White House correspondent Andrew Feinberg challenging Sir Keir on his position on Canada during a press conference after the meeting between the US president and prime minister.
Reporter's White House question to Starmer "And for the prime minister, did you discuss with President Trump his repeated statements of desire to annex Canada?"
"And has the king expressed any concern over the president's apparent desire to remove one of his realms from his… pic.twitter.com/6BpzQrxd6k
— cbcwatcher (@cbcwatcher) February 27, 2025
U.S. President Donald Trump often talks about Canada. Frequently disparagingly, and lately menacingly. But it’s not often he opines on the country’s internal politics.
He broke from that pattern in a just-published interview with a U.S. conservative writer who asked him about the country’s upcoming election.
In that interview with The Spectator, Trump is asked whether Canada’s Conservatives can still pull off a win in the next election, despite the tightening polls.
I’m no fan of Michael Moore’s politics or his propaganda films sold as “documentaries,” but there is one entry on his résumé that I thoroughly enjoy: Canadian Bacon, featuring the great John Candy in his final film. Moore wrote and directed this comedic gem about an American president starting a war with Canada in order to gain traction in the polls. Candy, one of Canada’s most beloved entertainers, plays a hilariously anti-Canadian American sheriff who is thrilled about taking up arms against our northern neighbors. The whole thing is top-notch farce earning a funny disclaimer in the final credits: “No Canadians were harmed during this production.” Strangely, it’s Moore’s only non-documentary effort in three decades.
Brace yourselves: whatever crazy, awful things Trump may have done to date, it’s only going to get worse
Skate to where the puck is going, not to where it’s been. That bit of trite wisdom, attributed to Wayne Gretzky, might usefully be applied in assessing the risks posed by Mr. Gretzky’s political idol, Donald Trump.
Every time we think we have taken the measure of Mr. Trump, every time we think we have understood the depths of his depravity, the absoluteness of his nullity, the scale of the threat he represents – to American democracy, to Canada, to the peace of the world – he defeats us. He does or says something far worse than we had ever thought possible, even of him.
U.S. President Donald Trump is weighing in on domestic Canadian politics as his deadline to impose steep tariffs on Canada inches closer.
In an interview with The Spectator, Trump called Liberal leadership candidate Chrystia Freeland terrible and “a whack” — and claimed credit for her resignation as finance minister.
Trump also remarked on Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre, saying that “his biggest problem is he’s not a MAGA guy.”
If the Poilievre team is smart they'll take this remark from Trump and blast it everywhere, with Poilievre saying:
"He's right, I'm not a MAGA guy, I'm not a Trump guy, I'm a Canada guy…" etc etchttps://t.co/xgnvVDtVa1 pic.twitter.com/HPabgOC3Bf
— Robyn Urback (@RobynUrback) February 28, 2025
The Spectator’s interview with President Trump: full transcript
OTTAWA — From the billionaire financier who dined with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to the adviser who warned there was “a special place in hell” awaiting Trudeau, some key figures have emerged in U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration as the faces redefining Canada’s relationship with its closest ally.
During Monday night’s Liberal leadership debate, there was a lot of talk about President Donald Trump. But whatever your views on Trump, one thing is certain — he’s revitalized his country’s energy sector. Through executive orders, Trump instructed agency heads to identify “actions that impose an undue burden on the identification, development or use of domestic energy source” and “exercise any lawful emergency authorities available” to facilitate energy production and transportation. In other words, let’s become an energy superpower.
President Trump has offered Sir Keir Starmer a trade deal that could exempt the UK from being hit with American tariffs as he hailed the “wonderful” relationship between the two nations.
The US president and Starmer announced that talks on a “new economic deal” were under way and Trump said that they could happen “very quickly” during a joint press conference in the White House.
Trump also talked up the prospect of an end to the war in Ukraine, saying: “I think we’ll have two deals. I think we’ll have a deal on ending the war and I think we’re going to end up with a great trade deal with you.”
US President Donald Trump says he will revoke a license which allowed Venezuela to export some of its oil to the US despite sanctions.
The move is a major blow to the Venezuelan government as the license provided it, through joint ventures between the state-run oil company and US oil giant Chevron, with a crucial income in dollars.
Trump said he was revoking the licence – which gave Chevron permission to operate in Venezuela – because the government of Nicolás Maduro had failed to meet “electoral conditions” and had not transported “violent criminals” deported from the US at a quick enough pace.
Openly transgender service members will be disqualified from serving in the U.S. military and will soon be removed from the ranks, according to a Pentagon memo that marks a significant shift from previous Defense Department policy that prohibited discrimination based on gender identity.
The memo was made public Wednesday as part of a lawsuit filed by LGBTQ+ rights groups against an executive order signed last month by President Donald Trump, which stated that the “medical, surgical, and mental health constraints on individuals with gender dysphoria” were “inconsistent” with the high standards expected of U.S. troops.
MEXICO CITY — Mexico extradited 29 alleged drug traffickers to the United States on Thursday, including Rafael Caro Quintero, a prized target long sought in the killing of a U.S. narcotics agent, and two leaders of the hyper-violent Zetas cartel, in a dramatic gesture apparently aimed at heading off crushing economic sanctions, according to U.S. officials.
President Donald Trump has threatened to impose 25 percent tariffs on Mexico on Tuesday for what he calls its failure to stop drugs — including fentanyl — from crossing the border. A high-level Mexican delegation met Thursday with senior Trump administration officials to hammer out a deal to avoid the economic penalties.
“Twenty-nine, that’s huge! What they’ve done is literally cleaned out the cupboard,” said John Feeley, a former U.S. diplomat who served as deputy chief of mission in Mexico from 2009 to 2012. Normally, he said, extraditions of major capos were handled one by one, often involving long negotiations. But Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum was “pulling out all the stops” to avoid the tariffs, he said.
