“Canada – USA Tariff Wars”

U.S. President Donald Trump says he is working on a “massive deal” to purchase potash from Belarus.

“The pricing would be for substantially less than we are currently paying to Canada, very good news for our Farmers and Ranchers,” he posted to Truth Social on Monday.

As I’ve said time and again, the world’s largest economy has options.

President Trump’s message below about potash makes that abundantly clear. Our arrogance as a country remains our greatest weakness. pic.twitter.com/ozzVZdXImm

— The Food Professor (@FoodProfessor) September 21, 2026

In the early days of the world’s stupidest trade war, outsiders seemed impressed, amused and somehow surprised when Canada pushed back by yanking American booze from our stores, booing The Star-Spangled Banner and dishing out retaliatory tariffs.

The same punchline kept surfacing online and among late-night TV hosts: “Do you know how obnoxious you have to be to tick off the Canadians?” Because everyone knows that Canadians are docile, polite and self-effacing, basically the world’s stuffed animals.

The Globe is still pushing the Carney line. It’s a lie, Carney sabotaged the talks to further his agenda.

An image of Lake Ontario was pulled up on my public hotel computer kiosk in Manitoba recently. The website was Google Maps, which shows the correct name to Canadians and the Trump-ordered “Lake America” to Americans.

No one was using the computer when I came across it. Someone had just called up Lake Ontario then left the kiosk, perhaps wishing to remind all who strolled by: Don’t forget this insanity for a second.

🇺🇸🇨🇦 EXCLUSIVE: U.S. Ambassador Pete Hoekstra tells me that Canada will NEVER have as good of a deal as Mark Carney was first presented with.

“Anyone who walks away from a deal with the President… when they come back, it’s never as good of a deal as they had before.”

Watch… pic.twitter.com/4E3fRRsoGo

— Élie Cantin-Nantel (@elie_mcn) September 17, 2026

For much of the past year, the Canada-U.S. trade war has been measured in tariff rates.

On Sept. 8, that started to change.

As President Donald Trump escalated his latest round of measures against Canada, his administration did more than raise duties. The White House directed the U.S. trade representative and the General Services Administration to remove Canadian-origin products from federal procurement schedules that manage more than $50 billion USD in government purchasing. On the same day, Trump also moved to ban certain Canadian products from entering the U.S. altogether, rather than simply subjecting them to higher tariffs.

By now it is abundantly clear that the time for elbows up is over. Most of us have a schoolyard sense of justice, and we desperately want a bully to get his due. But those feelings have a time and place. Now is the time for more serious responses.

The bully is certainly a pest, but he is not our responsibility, and we will not influence whatever justice awaits him. The challenges we can and will meet are of our own creation. It’s time to put the elbows down and get our heads up.

Canada is long zombified by a kneejerk hatred for America.

Canada looms over Lance Thrailkill’s office as a dead, stuffed bird.

Mounted above the Texas manufacturer’s desk, a Canada goose, flanked by a mallard and four deer heads, fixes a glassy stare on the room. An open bottle of rye whiskey sits on the floor below.

It is a fitting backdrop for a conversation about another Canadian presence hanging over Thrailkill’s business: the escalating trade war between Washington and Ottawa.

Unifor national president Lana Payne is warning that Stellantis is “100 per cent serious” about exiting its Brampton assembly plant and she is asking Ottawa to step in and prevent its sale to Canadian armoured ⁠vehicle maker Roshel.

With Stellantis and Unifor still at an impasse just days before their collective agreement expires on Sept. 20, Payne said at a press conference on Thursday that thousands of auto jobs could be permanently erased.

“Stellantis is looking for an exit, and no one, no one, should be holding the door open,” Payne told reporters Thursday. “This would make Brampton the first auto plant to fall in this trade war. And when plants close, they rarely, if ever, come back.”

Say your goodbyes.