USA

The line fell silent.

In a phone call from the Oval Office, President Trump had just delivered unwelcome news to three of America’s most powerful auto executives: Mary Barra of General Motors, John Elkann of Stellantis and Jim Farley of Ford.

Everyone needs to buckle up, Mr. Trump said on the call, which took place in early March. Tariffs are going into effect on April 2. It’s time for everyone to get on board.

I’d kiss that Stellantis battery plant goodbye as well as Volkswagen’s.

Fewer than 60 days into his second term, President Donald Trump is determined to expand U.S. dominance across the Americas. His targets are not limited to Canada and Mexico. And while Trump 2.0 is already bending some countries to his will, his presidency also risks triggering dangerous escalation while alienating allies, empowering rivals and unravelling decades of hemispheric stability.

The President envisions a zero-sum world divided between the strong and the weak. He channels the Athenian historian and general Thucydides’s maxim that the “strong will do what they will, and the weak suffer what they must.” In seeking to operate free of institutional constraints and without regard for partners, he is upending the post-Second World War order founded on positive sum rules, trade and alliances.

On the surface, it seems like a surprising split for two powerful unions with decades of shared history and interests.

The United Auto Workers, or UAW, representing thousands of American auto workers, has thrown itself behind U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariffs against Canada and Mexico.

“We are glad to see an American president take aggressive action on ending the free trade disaster that has dropped like a bomb on the working class,” the union said recently.

We had better get used to this.

If the situation were reversed we would expect Ottawa to re-shore jobs just as Trump is doing.

But we don’t live in a normal country. Trump holds his fellow citizens in high regard while our government hates us.

The Liberal Party and their corporate cronies flooded Canada with cheap foreign labour creating a housing and public services crisis while destroying the home ownership dreams of a generation.

The Liberal Party imposed a Stalinesque Net Zero tyranny taxing us to death to change the weather.

The Liberal Party is attempting to normalize the sexual mutilation of children and you can bet Carney is down with that.

The Liberal Party has never let us forget they regard Canada as a genocidal settler state and you as an unwelcome resident.

The people who most fear Trump are the Carney’s of the world.

These ersatz patriots shipped your jobs to China and Mexico and in return you get to enjoy 3rd world customer service at Tim’s.

The Globalists have gotten used to feeding on the working class of both Canada and the United States.

Trump is going to end that ordeal for America. Carney will try to keep you a slave to his Globalist vision.

The United States is treating Canada only a little better than it treats Cuba.

The point is not that Canada and Cuba are similar countries; they are patently not. Rather, it is to note that the U.S. government has chosen purposefully to treat Canada, a vibrant multiparty democracy and the world’s ninth-largest economy, in a similar way.

I thought we already were?

While most Canadians recoil at the thought of becoming the US’ 51st state, an increasingly vocal minority are convinced it is essential for the future of their country.

Secessionists in Alberta say they are sick of their oil-rich province subsidizing the rest of the nation.

A dissatisfaction with the status quo, along with avid support for Donald Trump, has led to around 10 percent of Canadians expressing separatist views, the Telegraph reports.

h/t pathedog