Brabim Karki’s piece here at The American Spectator on Monday about the breakoff in trade talks between the U.S. and Canada is a must-read, though it’s a little incomplete (and this column is an attempt to fill in a gap). Karki notes, and quite accurately so…
… The White House has released an official and scathing press release outlining the lengthy and long-term issues with Canada and trade disputes.
TheLastRefuge is a good one to follow.
1. Here’s the breakdown 🧵
There are many people in Canada demanding to see the rough draft proposals of the U.S-Canada trade agreement so they can judge for themselves the issues that Carney claimed were irreconcilable. For those people this interview today by Canadian Trade… pic.twitter.com/lGtJLi6jdf
— TheLastRefuge (@TheLastRefuge2) August 25, 2026
Leblanc is eviscerated.
Dominic LeBlanc faced questions from the American media that he would never face in Canada—and it was painful to watch. pic.twitter.com/9WCMVv1znA
— The Food Professor (@FoodProfessor) August 26, 2026
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney appointed a long-time Democrat political operative to a newly-created senior position in his government, the latest action in a long history between prominent Democrats colluding with the country’s leader to oppose the Trump administration. The two countries are now embroiled in a tense back-and-forth years in the making that threatens American interests on trade and national security.
Ontario Premier Doug Ford fired a series of insults and threats at United States President Donald Trump on Monday afternoon in a growing war of words between the two leaders.
Moments before the Ontario premier’s press conference began, Trump posted on his Truth Social platform, accusing him of “bluster” in trade talks and calling him a “flunky.”
A week after Prime Minister Mark Carney announced a new deal to expand the Churchill Falls hydroelectric project, he held a press conference in Lévis, Que., on Monday to announce a contract to build six icebreakers for the Coast Guard at the Chantier Davie shipyards.
While Canada desperately needs electricity to power its economy and icebreakers to protect its shores, Carney has yet to demonstrate that his government is capable of enacting economic policies beyond spending massive amounts of borrowed money.
The Canadians are exceedingly angry. I realise this can sometimes be difficult for foreigners to deduce, given our national struggle to express the full range of human emotion outside ice hockey riots. However, let me assure you that the prime minister Canadians saw take the stage on Saturday morning in the wake of the collapse in trade negotiations with the US was a Mark Carney practically vibrating with fury.
This is my War Room conversation with Steve Bannon about recent U.S.-Canada trade negotiations and U.S. anti-discriminatory tariffs on Canadian goods now taking effect.
A problem we have with Canada is that they severely discriminate against U.S. goods in the auto, dairy, and alcoholic beverage sectors. So, we put out a Section 338 discrimination proclamation, which basically says, stop doing that, or we’re going to put these tariffs on.
Canada announced retaliatory tariffs as high as 50 percent on hundreds of American products on Tuesday, just days after the collapse of trade talks triggered punishing tariffs from the Trump administration.
As a trade war between the countries intensifies, Canada will start collecting tariffs of 50, 25 and 15 percent on about 700 products beginning on Sept. 8. The most significant measure is a doubling of tariffs on American steel and aluminum to 50 percent. But the list of products affected ranges from household rolls of aluminum foil to railway locomotives and steel bridges.
OTTAWA—U.S. President Donald Trump’s latest threat to jack up tariffs on Canadian autos reveals what the now-collapsed trade talks had already confirmed: that Washington wants to “destroy” major industries like the auto sector in Canada, Prime Minister Mark Carney said Monday.
Striking a combative tone against the Trump administration, Carney said Canada is able to find reliable trading partners everywhere in the world, “except for” in the United States and Russia, where authoritarian President Vladimir Putin has faced widespread condemnation and sanctions for his ongoing war in Ukraine.
Reshoring auto manufacturing was part of Trump’s election campaign. Carney knows that.
The trade war and the rupture of what is arguably the world’s closest partnership have sparked anti-American sentiment and economic nationalism. Given the way Canada has been treated by the Trump administration, that is no surprise.
But sometimes rhetoric goes too far, and dreams turn too fanciful. Sometimes we forget the unforgiving pull of geography and the harshness of economic reality. A shining example of that is the recent dust-up in the financial sector.
Trump claims US could rename Lake Ontario as Lake America amid Canada trade war
Donald Trump has claimed he is considering renaming Lake Ontario as “Lake America” as the trade war with Canada escalates.
Lake Ontario lays on the border between the two countries, with New York state on one side and Toronto, the capital of Canada’s Ontario province, on the other.
“The United States is giving serious consideration to changing the name of Lake Ontario to Lake America in that we don’t expect to doing much business with Ontario any longer,” Trump said on his Truth Social platform.
Central banker Mark Carney is doing that peculiar Canadian thing again — acting tough while exuding weakness. Just before midnight on Friday, the former governor of the Bank of England and King Charles III’s current prime minister in North America announced that trade talks with the United States had collapsed. This was expected, even though the Canadian and American trade delegations had publicly expressed optimism on Wednesday that a mutually beneficial framework for future trade relations was within reach.
Carney "“There is a mutually beneficial deal possible here, but it has to be one that respects Canada’s sovereignty, that respects our independence, that uses our complementary strengths to build something better, not tear apart for short term gain. That’s the offer.”… pic.twitter.com/2GOrJHOcEk
— cbcwatcher (@cbcwatcher) August 24, 2026
Friday, Aug. 21, may go down in history as Canada’s Liberation Day. It was the day America came for us, and we said no.
The trade negotiations between the United States and Canada had been moving forward in the weeks after President Trump first threatened 50 percent tariffs on Canadian goods, but just before midnight, Prime Minister Mark Carney rejected the American proposal. “Last-minute changes in the U.S.-proposed terms were unfair, uneconomic and called into question the reliability of any deal,” Mr. Carney said in a statement. “Canada will match those tariffs dollar for dollar to protect our workers and businesses.”
This will have the Elbow people swooning.
Trump’s Canada Tariffs Aren’t the Betrayal Ottawa Claims
Every diplomatic breakup produces two stories, and the one Ottawa is telling that Washington ambushed a trusted partner at the negotiating table has already won the sympathy of most of the press. It is a good story. It is also incomplete.
What actually happened last week is that trade talks fell apart because the United States asked Canada to accept terms Canada found uncomfortable, and Canada refused. Prime Minister Mark Carney called the American position “unfair” and “uneconomic.” He may be right that it was tough. He is wrong to suggest that toughness, on its own, is grounds for outrage. The United States has run a trade relationship with Canada for decades that gave Ottawa nearly unrestricted access to the world’s largest consumer market while Canada kept its own protections, most notoriously its dairy supply management system firmly in place. Donald Trump’s blunt framing on social media, “Canada wants the benefits of being a State, without being one,” is crude. It is not wrong.
Nine centuries ago, the theologian Moses Maimonides, seeking to understand the complexities of life, wrote a volume called The Guide for the Perplexed.
Those searching for wisdom on the state of the Canada-U.S. relationship after the abrupt break in bilateral trade negotiations surely are perplexed − but have no guide.
