Blazingcatfur

TORONTO—Doug Ford came out swinging.

After trade talks collapsed and the U.S. imposed new tariffs on Canada last weekend, the Ontario premier urged his country to take a hard line with the U.S. President Trump, he said, was a “dictator,” a “loser,” the “king of bankruptcies” and could “kiss my ass.”

How angry was he on a scale of one to 100? “110,” he told The Wall Street Journal.

Related …

Raitt “But I do agree with the Conservatives that it would be very helpful to have a very coherent session with media, with Parliament, from the trade negotiators at a table being able to answer questions as to what was on the table, what was not on the table and what caused the… pic.twitter.com/oh1gXuZaoO

— cbcwatcher (@cbcwatcher) August 26, 2026

Despite the U.S. and Canada coming very, very close to a concord on trade, it fell apart at the 11th hour.

The result? 50 per cent tariffs on more than $28 billion worth of Canadian exports. And Canada pledging dollar-for-dollar retaliation.

Now, there is still reason to believe this might be temporary. Both sides get hurt in a trade war. Canada more so, obviously, just given our relative size as compared to the U.S. market.

“We’ve got the reserves, we’ve got the resilience, we’ve got the plan,” a defiant Mark Carney told journalists after the breakdown of trade talks with the White House over the weekend.

Few would make the case that Canada was “attacked” and therefore is “at war”, as its prime minister plainly put it, and the idea that the country is in a position to withstand a full-blown economic conflict with the US is pretty silly.

Nearly 75pc of Canadian exports head to the US market, and the US economy is roughly 10 times larger. Meanwhile, the new sweeping tariff slate covers another C$28bn (£15bn) worth of Canadian exports – equivalent to 5pc of products sent south of the border.

In response to the ongoing trade dispute, the Canadian government has placed new surtaxes on a wide range of goods imported from the United States.

The table below includes some of the key products on the government’s list. CTVNews.ca has broken down the items into simple, everyday categories—from dairy and household appliances to clothing and sporting goods—to show you which items will be affected and at what rate, either 25% or 50%.

Potash is Canada’s “pink gold” — one of the country’s most valuable natural resources and a cornerstone of global food production.

With tensions escalating between Canada and the United States, some Canadians want Ottawa to impose a surtax on potash exports to the American market. The proposal appears compelling. The United States depends heavily on Canadian potash, an essential fertilizer used to produce corn, wheat, soybeans and many other crops. If Washington targets Canadian industries, why shouldn’t Canada retaliate with a resource American farmers cannot easily do without?

It’s rare to hear so many figures in the U.S. administration talking about Canada.

On Monday, U.S. President Donald Trump posted a threat to impose 50-per-cent tariff on all Canadian cars and Vice-President JD Vance was at a rally in Maine smiling at his own smarmy joke about Canada being a state. The day before, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy was predicting a weak Canada would rush negotiators back to the table to avoid the devastating impact of U.S. tariffs.

Prime Minister Mark Carney blew up the trade discussion based on his demand that: Canada should be allowed to make any deal they want with China; that Chinese component parts be allowed in Canadian assembled Semi Trucks; that streaming services install a French language search… pic.twitter.com/Nqt9LFYT8p

— TheLastRefuge (@TheLastRefuge2) August 25, 2026