“Canada – USA Tariff Wars”

U.S. President Donald Trump wasn’t wrong when he said that Canadians got to enjoy all the benefits of U.S. statehood without being one.

Free trade enabled Canada to shelve concerns with innovation or industrial modernization, ship primary materials to the American industrial economy, and live an easy life. Furthermore, knowing that the U.S. would never allow a hostile country to invade Canada, we were also able to slash our defence budget to the bone, offloading our security to the Americans.

As Canada’s trade war with the United States continues, more voices within and outside Alberta are proposing using Western Canada’s resources as leverage in trade negotiations. The federal government can impose export tariffs or even curtail oil and gas exports to pressure the USA. But using Alberta’s oil as a bargaining chip in a trade war would be economically risky and politically explosive.

The problem is that Canada has limited pricing power. The costs would land first on Canadian producers and consumers, and the political memory of the National Energy Program (NEP)—the last time Ottawa tried to conscript Alberta’s energy wealth—is still raw.

OTTAWA — A frightening scene played out on Tuesday morning, when a parked semi-truck rolled into an excavation site and hit an exposed section of the Enbridge Line 5 pipeline near the Wisconsin-Michigan border.

Drone footage that was widely circulated online showed a thick, white cloud of natural gas spreading from the accident site to a meadow on the other side of a dirt road.

For William McDonald, 38, a diesel mechanic from Thunder Bay, Ontario, “Canadian is always the first choice,” even if it means his weekly bills are higher.

“As soon as Trump started putting those tariffs on in February [last year], I started boycotting US goods,” he said. “Avoiding American products has driven my costs up, and I’m still happy to do it.

“I used to drink US beer, but now I drink Canadian beer, and that costs me an extra C$1,000 (£531/US$720) a year. Likewise, groceries cost about C$50 more a week, but you work that extra hour to pay for it.”

CAPE VINCENT, N.Y.—It’s just after 7:40 p.m. when news of the executive order reaches the squat white cottage underneath the lighthouse.

Pat Schamerhorn is locking up the gift shop. She lives just down the road, in the house with the picket fence, with views of the end of Lake Ontario and the start of the St. Lawrence River out her front door.

She decided to head home early, catching the last wisps of an achingly beautiful sunset dipping below the horizon, when news arrives — in person, in the form of a Toronto Star reporter and photographer.

Oh come on Star, Elbows Up is driven by the inbred Anti-Americanism afflicting the Liberal-Left in Canada.

It is easy to forget it was only last year, during an Ontario election campaign focused on the threat of U.S. tariffs, that Premier Doug Ford let slip he wanted Donald Trump to win the presidency.

“On election day, was I happy this guy won? One hundred per cent I was,” said Ford, caught on a hot mic at his Etobicoke campaign office.

“Then the guy pulled out the knife and f—-ing yanked it in me,” he said, motioning his arm as if stabbing someone.

HAHA 🇨🇦 nothing says “we’re not triggered”like an emergency BILLBOARD to remind people of Lake Ontario 😅 what a waste of money pic.twitter.com/VC9U6zbogT

— Melissa 🇨🇦 (@MelissaLMRogers) August 29, 2026

“Reindustrialization is a real thing, and no one would argue that’s not a good thing for our countries,” said Glenn Stevens, the chief automotive and innovation officer at the Detroit Regional Chamber. “The issue really for us has been here in Michigan is we want that, and we’ve seen some of that, but we really don’t want that at the expense of a trading partner that we’ve been with for, in the auto industry, almost 125 years together.”

The name change was the talk of the docks on both shores of Lake Ontario this week. But neither American nor Canadian sailors seemed to be taking it all that seriously.

“It’s a nonissue for us, other than watching the memes and enjoying the humor,” said Howie Colt, captain and founder of Gone Sailing Adventures, a charter sailing company in Toronto.

It’s a rowdy U.S.-Canada border war—in bass fishing.

(Yup, bass fishing.)

The “Angler of the Year” competition for the 2026 Bassmaster Elite Series is down to a weekend battle between a 41-year-old Canadian pro and a 21-year-old hotshot from Southern Illinois, playing out in the smallmouth bass paradise of the St. Lawrence River and Lake Ontario.

When Tom Holder watched Donald Trump become U.S. president for the second time, it was the last straw.

For years, he and his wife would winter in South Carolina, in a villa they rented months in advance. By the time Trump won the U.S. election in 2024, they had already put down deposits for their stays in 2025 and 2026.

“We were besides ourselves,” the Ontario resident described in an interview with CTVNews.ca.

“We could see the way things were going.”

What the Canadians don't seem to realize is that as they point and yell at US, Lutnick, Bessent and others are quietly shifting purchasing patterns, investment opportunities, and distribution channels to counter an impending decrease in trade with Canada. The US has been focused… pic.twitter.com/inLRVFLiVe

— Metal Nana (@Inadvertantview) August 29, 2026

Last year, I sat down for a cup of coffee at the Tim Hortons in Caribou, Maine, with Ron Turcotte, the legendary Canadian jockey who rode Secretariat to the Triple Crown in 1973.

Ron lived across the border in Grand Falls, New Brunswick, but he picked up his mail almost every day at the U.S. Post Office in Van Buren, Maine. His life, like so many people who call our border communities home, didn’t fit neatly on one side of an international boundary.

Hours after Trump’s latest tariffs on Canadian wine, dairy, and autos took effect, California’s Democratic Governor and likely presidential contender Gavin Newsom posted on X calling Canada America’s “closest ally.” Then a few days after his initial tweet, Newsom did interviews with CBC and CTV, and on CTV he said something very important for Canadians to take note of. When asked if he would remove all of the tariffs Trump has put in place, he waffled for about a minute before eventually coming to say “I can’t guarantee that, but I can guarantee you nothing like this — the level of disrespect, talking about the 51st state.” In the CTV interview, Newsom even explicitly brings up some of the tariffs from Trump’s first term that Biden then kept in place.