U.S. Ambassador Pete Hoekstra had three messages this week: Don’t run those ads again, you will need to accept some tariffs and the F-35 contract is key to a deal. On all three elements, Canada’s Laurentian Elite lost their collectivist little minds.
The Elbow People will cut off their nose to spite their face.
OTTAWA — The future of Canada-U.S. trade talks depends on how Canada’s review of its decision to buy U.S.-made F-35 fighter jets turns out, says President Donald Trump’s ambassador to Canada.
Pete Hoekstra told a conference hosted by the Canadian Manufacturers and Exporters on Wednesday that it will not be easy to restart the now-stalled trade talks, and urged Canada to “harmonize” as much as possible with the U.S. on a range of economic and military co-operation issues.
New parents quickly develop a keen understanding of the gains to be had from anything that helps avoid waking the baby. Peace and quiet for one thing. A period of calm. A moment to think.
In Canada’s case, the baby is the current U.S. president. The president, as we know from repeat experience, is easily upset. When the president gets upset, he gets cranky, makes a lot of noise and causes untold disturbances. If you can, you want to avoid getting him upset.
The U.S. ambassador to Canada on Wednesday warned federal and provincial governments to “seriously consider” whether anti-tariff advertising in the United States will help achieve Canada’s goals, adding he thinks the ads amounted to trying to “participate in our electoral politics.”
Speaking at the Canadian Manufacturers and Exporters’ national conference in Ottawa, Ambassador Pete Hoekstra took aim at an Ontario government-funded ad campaign that aired in the U.S. last month and quoted former U.S. President Ronald Reagan criticizing tariffs.
The ad prompted U.S. President Donald Trump to suspend trade negotiations with Canada.
The sunny weather. The beach views. The relaxed lifestyle. These are the things that drew Jo-Ann Rowe to South Florida.
When the Toronto woman retired 10 years ago, she started spending her winters in Fort Lauderdale, renting a condo for three months. Being in the United States was familiar for Rowe, whose grandmother was American, and because she’d travelled throughout the U.S. as a young athlete.
It takes nerves of steel to be a manufacturer these days. Costs and prices now hinge on the whims of a president who treats import duties as if they were a source of external revenue rather than a tax paid by Americans — and uses them as leverage to strong-arm companies into bringing production back to the United States.
And if you’re a North American player with operations on both sides of the Canada-U.S. border, you’re also juggling split allegiances. Like someone who has dual citizenship, you’ve always known which flag to wave depending on where you’ve stood — no need to choose sides, only to protect your interests on both.
That’s no longer so easy.
Despite Trump’s cane sugar activism, Canadian Coke drinkers should get used to high-fructose corn syrup
WASHINGTON, D.C. — “Coke is it” was a popular TV ad for the famed soda back in 1982, featuring teens singing Coca-Cola’s praises around a piano. It was around that same time when the company started using high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) instead of cane sugar in their main product — and would soon launch the flop known as “New Coke” — so a better catchphrase might have been, “Which Coke is it?”
Coke always brings a smile. K loved “Mexican Coke” made with cane sugar.
The ‘high priest of Project Fear’ is struggling to shield Canada’s industrial heartlands from US tariffs
Mass lay-offs at Canada’s rail freight-carriage maker National Steel Car are expected to hit a little bit before Christmas.
After Donald Trump imposed tariffs on steel imports to the US in the spring, the manufacturing plant in Hamilton, Ontario, has had no new orders.
“The building I’m in is working on number 290 of a 300-car order. We’ll be done by the first week of December and then we will be laid off,” says Jonas Barry, 51, who has worked at the factory for the last eight years. “Probably most of the plant will be laid off.
After months of insisting tariffs had nothing to do with rising grocery prices, U.S. President Donald Trump abruptly reversed course this week, rolling back duties on more than 200 food-related products.
The list is broad: beef, coffee, cocoa, spices, bananas, orange juice, tomatoes, tea, and even certain fertilizers.
Recent data from both sides of the border show that Canadians are travelling to the U.S. in much smaller numbers, thanks to an ongoing trade war, U.S. President Donald Trump’s talk of annexation, more intrusive border crossing requirements and a weak Canadian dollar.
But U.S. tourist destinations are fighting back with a variety of schemes to lure Canadians back across the border, either by tugging at their heartstrings or their pursestrings. Here are a few of them.
OTTAWA—Prime Minister Mark Carney and his team are so over it.
From scampering in search of meetings with President Donald Trump and top U.S. aides all spring, summer and early fall — including the PM travelling twice to Washington and overseas to Egypt where he hailed Trump’s dealmaking — to now shrugging off the current suspension of trade talks, Carney is taking a different tack to Trump. And to the politics of a minority Parliament.
Not negotiating is the new black.
WASHINGTON — U.S. President Donald Trump on Friday signed an executive order to exempt a wide range of food imports, including beef, tomatoes, coffee and bananas, from sweeping tariffs imposed earlier this year on nearly every country, the White House said.
The order is part of a major push by Trump and his top officials to address Americans’ growing concerns about persistently high grocery prices.
Prime Minister Mark Carney on Thursday announced another six major infrastructure projects as part of his ambitious plan to reduce Canada’s economic reliance on the United States after President Trump set off a trade war with its neighbor.
Mr. Trump last month abruptly suspended trade negotiations with Canada, which sends an overwhelming majority of its exports to the United States, after a Canadian province ran a commercial on American television that featured President Ronald Reagan speaking out against tariffs.
Since becoming prime minister in the spring, Mr. Carney has focused much of his efforts on expanding trade beyond the United States and starting major domestic projects to boost the country’s economy.
Canadians are keeping up their efforts to boycott travel to the United States, with air travel from the country dropping last month by nearly 24 percent, and car travel by more than 30 percent compared with the same time last year, according to data released Wednesday by Canada’s statistics office.
The decline, which has lasted 10 consecutive months, is part of a broader shift in Canadians’ attitudes toward the United States, amid tensions over President Trump’s tariffs on Canadian goods and the rhetoric that many Canadians feel is condescending.
It is an image that just a year ago would have seemed unfathomable: the Canadian and Chinese leaders standing side by side, shaking hands and grinning.
Ties between the two countries cratered in 2018 when Canadian police arrested Chinese technology executive Meng Wanzhou in Vancouver on US fraud charges. Days later, Beijing locked up two Canadians, Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor, on spying charges that Canada slammed as bogus. (Kovrig and Spavor were released nearly three years later after the US dropped the extradition request for Meng).
The diplomatic tussle soured the relationship and engendered a deep mistrust between Ottawa and Beijing. But as President Donald Trump escalates his trade war with one of the US’s closest allies, Canada has looked to a longtime foe for some common ground.
Carney wants this.
