When Mark Carney shut down the so-called “trade talks” last week, the apparent reason was that US negotiators threw in several intolerable — and indeed insulting — provisions at the last minute. I have no trouble believing this, no matter what lies the regime tells.
But to me, that last-minute bait-and-switch was simply rancid icing on a poison cake. The real outrage is that anyone needed to “talk” at all. There was already a major trade agreement, in force for years, not perfect but perfectly workable. There was nothing that needed negotiating. There were no disagreements in any real sense, only the feigned grievances and warped ambitions of a single malignant narcissist with no impulse control.
This was never a trade talk, it was a shakedown. It was Trump in mob-boss mode, the playground bully stealing your lunch money. Most people I know hate bullies, so it’s especially upsetting to see my country acting like one. The US came to the table in bad faith, and even if a “deal” had been reached, Canada had no reason to assume it would be observed longer than Trump’s next tantrum.
We don’t do the bully thing well at all. Whenever we go into any kind of conflict these days, it’s with eyes wide shut. Ready, fire, aim. Nobody thinks it through. Nobody weighs risk vs. reward. Nobody consults people who actually know what they’re doing.
There are now two prime examples of asymmetric war — Ukraine and Iran — happening in real time, and it seems this administration has learned nothing from either of them. Granted, we’re not in a hot war with Canada, at least for now. But it’s asymmetric nonetheless.
Intrinsic to asymmetric warfare is the innovative use of small inexpensive weapons, strategically deployed to cause not just economic damage, but psychological damage as well. Canadians are already engaged in doing just that, throwing what amounts to economic drones at us. They know they’re as much an underdog as Ukraine was four years ago, and just as Ukraine did, they’re preparing for pain and figuring out what to do about it. They will only get better at it over time.
In fact, ever since Trump 2.0 took office, ever since he started flinging his “Liberation Day” tariffs around like confetti, Canada has been chipping away at our illusion of comfort. Americans never took that 51st state bullshit seriously, but Canadians sure did.
The first thing they did was stay home. I have Canadian friends and relatives who will not set foot in this country while Trump remains in power, and they’ll think twice even when he’s gone. That’s how much trust has been lost.
This is not without consequence. In 2024, Canadian tourists accounted for $20 billion in US revenue and roughly 140,000 American jobs. In 2025, that figure was down a whopping 80 percent. There are a lot of American towns — especially in the border states, but also, notably, in Florida — that depend on those tourist dollars for their economic survival.
The next thing Canadians did was decide — as a nation, apparently — to change their national priorities, to drastically reduce their dependence on American goods and services. In following the so-called Carney Doctrine, Ottawa has aggressively sought out other trading partners in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East, building the scaffolding for a new way of doing business with the world. It has also enacted “Buy Canadian” laws, requiring that procurement for all large government contracts start with Canadian companies. They’re cutting American businesses out of the loop wherever they can.
In the case of Kentucky, they cut the whole state out of the loop. I’ve looked for Kentucky bourbon in Ontario, and trust me, there is none. Canada is a major market for Kentucky in general and bourbon in particular. And it’s no coincidence that Kentucky is a deep red state.
But the alcohol boycott is old news. Now Ottawa is putting in place tariffs that match the U.S. dollar-for-dollar, but with a difference: they’re explicitly targeting states with tight senate races.
Especially Michigan, where the entire state economy is inextricably entwined with Ontario’s, and where Abdul El-Sayed is in a tight race against Trump stooge Mike Rogers. There is no doubt Canada will do all it can to swing that race to El-Sayed.
Ohio exports $21 billion a year in steel, aluminum, and agricultural products to Canada, and Sherrod Brown would make a much better friend to Canada than his MAGA opponent. Maine is likewise heavily dependent on Canadian markets for their seafood, paper, and wood products, and you can just bet Susan Collins is concerned. Iowa, Alaska, and even Texas have significant exposure to Canadian economic pressure, and all have Republican senators who have been deemed vulnerable in the midterms.
No single one of these tactics will ever be a knockout blow, but that’s not the intention. The overall strategy is what matters, which is to inflict damage on the American economy in proportion to the damage being inflicted on Canada’s. A race to the bottom that everybody loses.
Which is not to say that Canada doesn’t has some big guns it can deploy if it needs to. They do, in fact, have economic weapons that might not bring us to our knees, but which could make our winter colder, our gas tanks emptier, and our groceries a lot more expensive.
Most of us don’t realize that Canada is our gas station. Most of the oil refining capacity of the Midwest was built to accept Canadian heavy crude specifically, which means that what we pay at the pump is directly dependent on Canada’s willingness to keep pumping. If things keep going in the current direction, they could change their minds.
They don’t have to turn off the spigot altogether. They can impose an “export tax” in proportion to comparable American tariffs. Meaning that for all the ways those tariffs have demonstrably hurt Americans, Canada can make our gas prices spike, maybe up to 40 more cents a gallon, some say as much as 70 cents.
And mind you, we as a nation don’t have a lot of wiggle room on the energy front. We have been drawing down the nation’s strategic reserve at an alarming rate as it is. And the Strait of Hormuz is still closed.
Then there’s potash. A critical component of fertilizer, which makes it a critical component of American agriculture, over 80 percent of the US supply of potash comes from Canada. There is no viable alternative supplier. Without potash, crop yields diminish rapidly, squeezing farmers even more than Trump has squeezed them already. It is not lost on Canada’s strategists that farmers, who were once among Trump’s biggest supporters, are now among his biggest victims.
So far, Canadians have been too nice to cut off our potash. Through all this insanity, they’ve been better neighbors than we deserve, but there’s only so much insult they’ll take. Insult is now baked into US policy, and as with everything in this regime, it’s as stupid as it is cruel.
Look at it from their point of view. A monster from next door comes to power and immediately imposes onerous tariffs on Canadian products, undermining generations of good will and mutual prosperity. Then that same monster throws a tantrum of a war with Iran, that closes the Strait of Hormuz, and throws the energy and agricultural sectors into turmoil. Then, because he’s bored, he starts yet another moronic trade war, not with Russia, not with China, but with Canada. No Canadian voted for this fool, but they all got him anyway.
Same with the rest of the world. They’re all paying for something they didn’t buy.
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