“Canada – USA Tariff Wars”

The latest spat between Prime Minister Mark Carney and U.S. President Donald Trump gives the impression that North America is being run by schoolchildren.

Trump often strikes me as an older, more powerful version of my kids. Like them, he has a habit of making things up and confidently stating them as fact; he’s prone to emotional outbursts whenever he doesn’t get his way; and he thinks he’s the best at just about everything.

Confidential government deals worth billions of dollars to help fund a Stellantis-backed electric vehicle battery plant in Windsor, Ont., carry dozens of conditions that, if violated, give federal officials the power to end the agreements and even force repayment in some cases, according to copies obtained by CBC Windsor.

It is unclear, however, if the contracts contain guarantees related to the company’s broader footprint in Canada, as elected officials have claimed. Some portions of the documents are redacted, so the full terms of the agreements are unknown.

Stellantis exec sidesteps questions on whether gov’t deals included jobs guarantees

A Stellantis executive was grilled by MPs Wednesday over whether blockbuster subsidy deals reached with the federal government in recent years included guarantees to maintain Canadian auto jobs — as government officials have repeatedly said.

Speaking to a House of Commons committee, the former president for Stellantis Canada, Jeff Hines, sought to underscore the company’s commitment to the Canadian auto sector, but would not directly address whether protections for existing positions had been inked in past deals.

Our lovable protagonist, Captain Canada, is at it again. Like our very own Inspector Gadget, who tries to foil Dr. Claw but invariably ends up tangling himself in his helicopter hat, Ontario Premier Doug Ford spent millions of dollars to try to persuade Americans to turn on their President’s tariffs. But somehow, Canada ended up with a 10-per-cent hike on existing tariffs. Whoops. These damn gadgets never seem to work right.

The latest round in the very syncopated Canadian-American tariff disagreements and discussions has more the air of oversized children in a sandbox hurling mud balls at each other than statesmen of governments of serious countries attempting to resolve a disagreement. In Canada, the second ring level of jurisdiction between the federal government and municipal governments are called provinces and under the Canadian Constitution, provinces have rather greater powers than American states, including a concurrent jurisdiction in direct personal and corporate income taxes.

At the closing news conference after meeting Asian leaders in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, on Monday, Mark Carney said something curious.

When asked whether Donald Trump really called off trade talks with Canada because Doug Ford broadcast an antitariff ad quoting former president Ronald Reagan, the prime minister said: “I would suggest you take the president at his word for his reasons.”

This doesn’t make sense.

Makes sense if you’re in the bag of the CCP.

Doug Ford urges U.S. ambassador to ‘apologize’ for f-bombs aimed at Ontario diplomat

Premier Doug Ford has denounced the U.S. ambassador to Canada for profanely attacking Ontario’s representative to Washington at a gala reception.

“Absolutely unacceptable. It’s unbecoming of an ambassador,” Ford said Wednesday at Queen’s Park.

The premier said Pete Hoekstra, U.S. President Donald Trump’s ambassador, should “apologize” to David Paterson, Ontario’s Washington point person.

It’s time for Doug Ford to focus on being the premier of Ontario. He’ll be sad to hang up the Captain Canada cape, but the best thing he can do to help this country stand up to U.S. President Donald Trump is to make sure our most populous province is running at peak efficiency. Right now, it isn’t.

Let’s get something out of the way right off the top: I don’t blame Ford for the breakdown in trade relations between Canada and the United States. The blame for that lies entirely with Trump. He blew up the last deal, and he could ram a new one through if he wanted. He doesn’t. The commercial that has so angered the president makes for a convenient excuse. Absent that, he’d have found another one.

Veteran British journalist Andrew Marr offered a dystopian view of the U.K.’s politics in this week’s New Statesman magazine. It’s an article that should probably be viewed as a cautionary tale by Prime Minister Mark Carney’s Liberal government.

Marr said that Britain has become ungovernable and the postwar political establishment is collapsing, with the Conservatives and Labour parties haemorrhaging votes, while Nigel Farage’s populist Reform UK party soars in the polls .

“The nation’s patience has snapped,” he said, with repeated failures bringing an end to the politics of management and the emergence of the politics of outrage and disgust.

Ouch.

Donald Trump is playing down the chances of talks with Prime Minister Mark Carney at a South Korean summit this week after he broke off trade talks with Canada and threatened to hike punitive tariffs on Canadian imports by 10 per cent.

Both leaders are in South Korea for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit and were scheduled to attend the same dinner Wednesday.

UPDATE: Carney had ‘very good’ conversation with Trump, he says

I don’t believe Carney.

On Monday night, as baseball fans turned their attention to the World Series, a gathering at the National Gallery in Ottawa that was supposed to celebrate the cross-border relationship turned sour.

Pete Hoekstra, Donald Trump’s ambassador to Canada, was seen tearing a strip off David Paterson, Ontario’s representative in Washington. It’s been described by those who witnessed it as a heated exchange, a one-way conversation, and yelling, with plenty of F-bombs.

The Canadian auto industry says a new deal with the United States is needed for its survival, and is urging the government to fully repeal its electric vehicle sales mandate as it braces under threats of an additional 10-per-cent tariff amid souring trade bilateral negotiations.

“Fighting protectionism with protectionism doesn’t work,” Brian Kingston, the head of the Canadian Vehicle Manufacturers’ Association, told the House’s Industry and Technology Committee at an Oct. 27 meeting. “We are the smaller partner, and we have to work in a new reality.”

“In Canada, you can retaliate. You won’t win that battle. We’ve learned that lesson. So, your second-best option is to make Canada ultra-competitive.”

OTTAWA — Opposition Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre said on Tuesday that Prime Minister Mark Carney “approved” Ontario’s anti-tariff ads, which U.S. President Donald Trump blamed as the reason for ending trade talks with Canada.

It came the day after Ontario Premier Doug Ford told reporters that Carney and his chief of staff, Marc-Andre Blanchard, were shown the ads before they aired.

The U.S. ambassador to Canada doesn’t foresee a new security and economic deal between Canada and the United States — which could see the reduction or full removal of tariffs amid an ongoing trade dispute — before the new year.

“We have stopped negotiations with Canada,” Pete Hoekstra said in a keynote address to the Coalition of Concerned Manufacturers and Business Canada on Monday. “I don’t see any way that there will be an agreement before American Thanksgiving.”

“I’m not sure what it’s going to take to get people back to the table in a constructive and positive mode,” he added.

OTTAWA — It’s all on Prime Minister Mark Carney to mend the broken Canada-U.S. fence in the eyes of many of tariff-hit business and union leaders.

U.S. President Donald Trump, who said he has no intention to meet Carney, will officially cross paths with the Canadian prime minister Wednesday evening when both attend a leaders’ dinner in Gyeongju, Korea hosted by the Korean president as he hosts the Asia-Pacific annual summit.

What if Xi elects to exert maximum pressure on Carney in light of his failure with Trump.

We’ll all be speaking Mandarin next year.