“Canada – USA Tariff Wars”

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.

Before U.S. President Donald Trump terminated trade negotiations with Canada late Thursday night, premiers were clashing over which tariff-beleaguered industries should be prioritized.

With Ontario’s auto industry pitted against the canola industry of the prairies, and B.C. raising concerns that the lumber industry is not getting the attention it deserves, Team Canada was looking increasingly splintered.

Trump’s latest actions have resulted in a more united front across provincial borders. But as tariffs remain, so do those underlying tensions.

OTTAWA—New research suggests that a minority of Canadians now consider the United States to be the country’s friend, except for Conservative party supporters, more than half of whom still view the U.S. as Canada’s friend.

Data from the Environics Institute shared exclusively with the Star shows that 36 per cent of Canadians currently view the United States as a friend, compared to 60 per cent at the end of 2020 and 89 per cent in 2013, and that 27 per cent of Canadians presently view the U.S. as an enemy, a number that stood at 11 per cent in 2020 and as low as one per cent in 2013.

Dressing up as Donald Trump used to be hilarious for Halloween, say Canadian businesses that rent or sell costumes, but they say hardly anyone is finding the joke funny in 2025.

“Certainly I haven’t set up somebody dressing up like Trump in a very long time,” says Christy Greenwood, owner of Theatre Garage in Edmonton.

“And I think a lot of it very much has to do with the rhetoric of the 51st state.”

h/t patthedog

TOKYO — President Trump announced Toyota has promised $10 billion in investments toward new manufacturing plants in the US — urging people to “go out and buy a Toyota” in a wide-ranging speech to sailors aboard the USS George Washington Tuesday in Tokyo Bay.

Trump, who is making trade and economic deals a top goal of his three-nation regional tour, said that Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi told him earlier in the day that the world’s largest car company would pour funds into American manufacturing plants.

“I was just told by the prime minister that Toyota is going to be putting auto plants all over the United States to the tune of $10 billion. So that’s Toyota — so go out and buy a Toyota,” Trump said aboard the 4.5-acre nuclear-powered ship.

Remember when Toyota walked back it’s comments on “Adjustments” back in July …

… That statement is contrasted by messaging from Toyota earlier this week. Scott Mackenzie, director of corporate and external affairs for Toyota, reportedly told the Globe and Mail that, if potential trade deals fail to remove the auto tariffs, Toyota could be forced to make “adjustments” in Ontario manufacturing.

To see these actions as a hissy fit prompts an Oh my God, what can we do to make it right? reaction; a scramble to get him back to the table. Which is exactly what he wants.

Instead, we should see what has happened as a textbook example of his negotiation strategy.

Canadian officials may have said they were caught off guard last week when U.S. President Donald Trump announced he was cutting off trade negotiations with Canada over Ontario’s anti-tariff advertisement, but sources say Premier Doug Ford’s bad cop act— and tough words for Trump — has been an irritant.

Two sources with knowledge of the talks said the Americans had warned Canadians “for months” that the Ontario premier’s comments were troubling to the Trump administration.

CBC News is not naming the sources because they are not authorized to speak publicly about the trade negotiations.

Doug Ford claims Mark Carney and Liberal chief of staff saw the Ontario Ronald Regan Ad prior to being in air.

Everyone agreed to move forward on it airing. pic.twitter.com/2FVgyyVosI

— TheRealMrBench (@therealmrbench) October 27, 2025

h/t Mauser