The US and Canada appear no closer to resolving their ongoing trade dispute.
Tensions have been simmering between the two neighbours since President Donald Trump returned to the White House just over 18 months ago, and unleashed a wide-ranging global programme of tariffs.
Canada was one of the first countries the Trump administration hit with levies, and is one of two countries to respond with its own reciprocal measures.
With the Trump administration’s promise to impose more tariffs on us in January, many Canadians are asking: What leverage should we use to get them to change course?
The question suggests that there are actually real things we can do to change U.S. President Donald Trump’s mind — that if Canada hits back hard enough, or demonstrates its willingness to suffer enough, we will get that policy change.
Christopher Ragan, the founding director of McGill University’s Max Bell School of Public Policy and former chair of Canada’s Ecofiscal Commission put it this way: “Canada is in a set of negotiations with a party that appears to be unpredictable, volatile, so I don’t think anybody really knows what’s going to work here.”
The decision by Donald Trump to change the name of Lake Ontario to Lake America is dumb, juvenile and designed to provoke a response. On that last front, Trump succeeded, as Canadians reacted to this outrageous decision with their own vitriol and bluster.
Doug Ford had a rough spring and a summer that wasn’t going much better.
His government’s ill-advised purchase of a private jet blew a hole in his everyman persona so much that he might as well have started showing up to public events with a top hat and monocle. Spending scandals followed, solidifying the image of his governing PCs as a party that was self-satisfied, sloppy or both.
The Ontario premier’s poll numbers sagged, so much so that the PCs were behind a Liberal party that doesn’t even have a permanent leader.
President Donald Trump further ripped into Canada as the U.S. trade war with the country escalates, trashing its leadership as the “worst” of all countries he’s dealt with.
While Trump’s insults against Canada are nothing new, his descriptor of Canadian leaders as the worst is a step up, especially given it puts the U.S.’s northern neighbor below Iran, whose fanatical leadership Trump has repeatedly derided as insane and murderous. He made the recent criticisms in a Sunday post on Truth Social.
As everyone knows, the Canadians have their maple syrup panties in a wad and are baby-soft elbows up, warding off the evil capitalist Americans while playing the current round of ‘Trade Wars.’
It all blew up last Friday, when the Canadians inexplicably walked out on what the United States thought was a done deal – a ‘fantastic deal – the best deal in the world,’ as Commerce Secretary Lutnick said this afternoon.
Here’s the key issue: Canada was bringing in Chinese steel and aluminum and selling it as Canadian steel to help China avoid tariffs
When told to knock it off, they refused. This is why the trade deal collapsed
We cannot allow China to build a proxy state on our border
— Department Of Deportations (@DoDeportations) August 23, 2026
U.S. President Donald Trump continued his rant on Truth Social Sunday afternoon, claiming he had “revived and saved” the automobile business in America via tariffs, calling Canada “one of the worst abusers.”
“One of the Worst Abusers is Canada. I don’t want Canadian cars, I don’t want Canadian parts, I don’t want Canadian anything. They’ve been ripping us off for decades, and it’s going to stop,” Trump wrote in the post.
48 researchers were poached from the US, where policy changes have left scientists feeling unsupported.
Canada has awarded 64 global scholars with C$504 million (US$362 million) in funding to relocate their work to Canadian universities and advance projects in areas such as health and artificial intelligence.
Some 48 of the researchers were poached from the US, including from elite institutions such as Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The other 16 researchers are coming from 12 other countries, including the UK, Germany, China and Japan.
Canada just spent half a billion dollars poaching 64 academics, three-quarters of them from the U.S., and then CTV put the most revealing quote on TV
Talia Bettcher (trans philosophy / gender studies) is leaving Cal State LA for a taxpayer-funded chair at Waterloo because, in… pic.twitter.com/CqN1PjoPU5
— cbcwatcher (@cbcwatcher) August 30, 2026
Just what the hell are the Canadians thinking? Do they think that if they cry enough, America’s going to roll over? We’re now in another trade war with them, and the Canadians are whining, and the Democrats — who never side with America — are whining right along with them. It’s about time to be done with the country that is touted as America’s best buddy but is actually tied for its most annoying next-door neighbor. They cry that America is being mean because it’s looking out for its own interests. How dare America expect Canada to pull its weight on its own defense? How dare America not want to perpetuate unfair and unbalanced tariff and trade rules in perpetuity? And how dare America not recognize the moral superiority of a country that, if it were a stereotype, would be a fugly, sexually dysfunctional wine woman with a “Hate Has No Home Here” sign on the front lawn of the condo it shares with five cats, all named after characters in “Twilight.”
Following the collapse of trade talks between Canada and the United States continentalism is apparently dead in Canada, again. It would not be the first time that the demise of North American integration has been celebrated prematurely.
In the 1911 federal election, the then-protectionist Conservatives triumphed over the Liberals and their program of conditional commercial reciprocity, which meant equal tariffs on identical goods traded with the U.S., rather than free trade.
Watching the tussle between Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney and President Donald Trump unfold — the former “Lake Ontario”/”Lake America,” ya know… Well, I’ve decided it’s about time I waded into this fight.
Carney rode into power in 2025 on a wave of manufactured Canadian nationalism, casting himself as the last line of defense against American economic influence — “elbows up,” as the slogan goes. Strip away the branding, though, and you find a man deeply, personally enmeshed in the very country he’s built his entire political persona around opposing. Grade-one hypocrisy, dressed up in a maple leaf.
Let’s start with the good news.
Statistics Canada reported Friday that the Canadian economy grew by 3.3% on an annualized basis in the second quarter (April to June) of this year, its best performance since 2023 and highest in the G7.
The federal agency also revised an earlier finding that the economy contracted by 0.1% in the first quarter (January to March) to a 0.3% increase.
New Ipsos research suggests that support for Canada’s position on trade is more conditional than the government’s current defiant stance may suggest.
For older Canadians and for those who can afford it, sovereignty is something they have the means to fight for. For younger Canadians and those with lower incomes, their finances take precedence. It isn’t necessarily that these Canadians do not want Canada to take a strong stand; they just don’t think they can take the hit.
🚨 JUST IN: President Trump announces America is SIPHONING businesses away from Canada
This is what FAFO looks like! Trump always wins.
"Canadian businesses are pouring into the United States. We want to make our own cars, etc. That’s what’s going to happen. Canada has been… pic.twitter.com/dOaUBofW94
— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) August 30, 2026
President Donald Trump on Saturday posted an apparently AI-generated video depicting an army of buff, bequiffed and heavily-armed “Donald Ducks” patrolling the shores of “Lake America.”
Hours later, while he was at his Virginia golf course, the president posted another AI-generated video, this time showing himself knocking over a “Welcome to Lake Ontario” sign and installing a “Welcome to Lake America” one in its place. He then dances to the Village People’s “YMCA.”
President Trump posted "Donald Ducks" guarding the new Lake America 🤣☠️ pic.twitter.com/LjBSXBc31h
— J (@JayTC53) August 29, 2026
President Trump spent months declaring his ouster of Venezuela’s leader had secured the country’s oil for America. When U.S. energy companies resisted investing at the speed and scale he wanted, his administration devised an extraordinary solution to turn his vision into reality: make the U.S. government itself an investor.
The agreement announced Friday evening would transform the U.S. government from a broker of American oil investments in Venezuela to an investor itself.
It would give Washington a direct financial stake in a private company that would be granted centurylong rights to some of the world’s largest proven oil reserves—and tie the U.S. more closely to the unelected government that is granting those rights.
CANADA BEWARE – Trump’s Massive Venezuela Oil Gambit is Also Another Massive Wake-Up Call for Canadian Energy
If Washington secures access to 90 billion barrels of Venezuelan oil, Canadian producers could face a powerful new competitor in their most important market. Ottawa can no longer afford to delay pipelines, regulatory reform or the investment conditions needed to diversify Canadian energy exports.
