Tag: canada
Meeting With Canada's New Prime Minister, Trump Displays Mental Decay

Meeting With Canada's New Prime Minister, Trump Displays Mental Decay

President Donald Trump hosted newly minted Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney at the White House Tuesday—and in the process showed that his 78-year-old brain has completely turned to mush.

He incorrectly said that a Russian hockey player is from Canada and baselessly claimed to have solved California's drought problems. But let’s break down Trump’s idiotic claims point by point.

In one exchange, a reporter asked Trump about his punishing 145% tariffs on Chinese imports, which for all intents and purposes is a trade embargo on a major U.S. trade partner.

"By not trading, we're losing nothing. So we're saving a trillion dollars. That's a lot,” he said.

- YouTubeyoutu.be

Of course, since China manufactures trillions of dollars worth of goods, not trading with them means we are losing quite a lot. Many of the products made in China cannot be manufactured in the United States, so shortages are about to hit. And with shortages come higher prices, since demand will outstrip supply. And that will hurt U.S. consumers.

“Trading with others generates gains for both sides of the transaction. Trump's tariffs prevent trade, destroying the gains both for Americans and our trading partners. Recognize that symmetry and you'll see how much he's hurting Americans,” Justin Wolfers, University of Michigan economics professor, wrote on X.

In yet another head-scratching moment, Trump claimed that the United States doesn't do much business with Canada, which is absurdly incorrect.

“We don’t do much business with Canada from our standpoint,” Trump said, as a very shocked Carney sat beside him. “They do a lot of business with us.”The United States imported $412.7 billion worth of goods from Canada in 2024, according to U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer. Meanwhile, the United States exported $349.4 billion to Canada in 2024, meaning that we take in more from Canada than we export.

- YouTubeyoutu.be

In 2023, the United States imported $122.9 billion worth of fuel; $64.7 billion in transportation equipment; and billions in metals, machinery, and fertilizers from Canada.

In fact, farmers have been warning against Trump’s tariffs on Canada, saying that the increase in fertilizer prices will cause painful inflation to U.S. consumers.

As Trump continued his meeting with Carney, he tried to bully the newly elected prime minister into making Canada the 51st state.

"I love Canada. I have a lot of respect for the Canadians. … You happen to have a very, very good hockey player right here on the Capitals, he is a big tough cookie too, just broke the record,” Trump said.

He was referring to Alex Ovechkin, who is Russian—not Canadian. Surely if former President Joe Biden had made a similar comment, questions about his mental fitness would blanket corporate media airwaves.

Trump also spoke of his moronic belief that he somehow saved California from droughts, bragging about how he gave Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom “a lot of water.”

“If they would've had that water and done what I said to do, they wouldn't have had the fires in Los Angeles,” he said.

- YouTubeyoutu.be

In fact, Trump's water gambit of opening dams ended up wasting billions of gallons of water that California farmers needed for crops—and it didn’t even end up going to Los Angeles.

“They were holding extra water in those reservoirs because of the risk that it would be a dry summer. This puts agriculture at risk of insufficient water during the summer months,” Heather Cooley, Pacific Institute director of research, told CNN. “It’s providing zero benefit and putting California farmers at risk of water supply constraints in the coming months.”

Well, at least Canadian voters saw through Trump’s bullshit.

Trump Is 'Godfather In Reverse' -- And Now Faces Economic Catastrophe

Trump Is 'Godfather In Reverse' -- And Now Faces Economic Catastrophe

Yesterday’s election in Canada was a bit closer than polls predicted. Nonetheless, Mark Carney’s Liberal Party, which appeared doomed just two months ago, won a solid victory. And the credit goes mainly to Donald Trump.

If Trump had merely made economic demands on our northern neighbor, Canada might have acquiesced, although it’s not clear what concessions it could have made. But by repeatedly insisting that Canada must become the 51st state, he made any hint of Trumpiness toxic in Canadian politics. Hence the stunning defeat for Pierre Poilievre, the Conservative leader (who lost his own seat in Parliament.)

The Canadian election, then, demonstrates why Trumpist trade policy, and foreign policy in general, is doomed to catastrophic failure. Trump isn’t trying to drive tough substantive bargains. Mainly, he seems to want to indulge in narcissism, demanding that other nations humiliate themselves so he can put on a display of dominance. And America doesn’t have remotely enough leverage, even against Canada, to make such demands. You could say that Trump is a reverse Godfather, making offers other countries can’t accept.

Consider the state of negotiations — or, actually, non-negotiations, since talks appear to have broken down — with Japan, another country Trump appears to have thought he could bully. Japan does sell a lot to the United States and might have been willing to offer something to preserve its access to our market.

But reports indicate that Japanese representatives sent to Washington left without accomplishing anything because they found Trump’s people impossible to deal with. The Americans insisted that the Japanese make offers without giving any indication of what our side wanted — in effect, they demanded that Japan make a show of obeisance without any reason to believe that it would get anything in return. The Japanese government wouldn’t, probably couldn’t do that. After all, it has to answer to its own voters. So there is no deal.

And then there are the Chinese, who — unlike the Canadians or even the Japanese — probably have more economic leverage over us than we have over them. They have no interest in helping Trump sustain his fantasies of dominance. Bear in mind that Trump’s trade war is working out very well for them. Bloomberg reports that

President Xi Jinping’s diplomats are fanning out across the world with a clear message for countries cutting deals with Donald Trump: The US is a bully that can’t be trusted.

Unfortunately, they’re right. And Trump’s repeated insistence that the Chinese are negotiating with him, when they say they aren’t, comes across as pathetic.

Will Trump manage to make any trade deals? I guess it’s possible that Trump will announce trade deals with a few countries here and there. But his ability to get even fake deals is rapidly dwindling, for two reasons.

First, he’s plunging in the polls. True, he’s insisting that the polls are wrong and that pollsters should be investigated for election fraud. And the MAGA base may believe him. But this denial just makes him look even more pathetic to foreign governments, and they won’t be inclined to throw a drowning Trump a lifeline.

Second, Trump’s trade war is about to have a disastrous effect on the U.S. economy — more disastrous than even pessimistic economists, myself included, expected. Tariffs always raise prices. But the sheer size and suddenness of Trump’s tariffs, combined with the paralyzing effect of uncertainty about what comes next, are about to deliver a Covid-type supply shock to an economy already sliding into recession. This looming disaster, which will further weaken Trump, makes it even less likely that our main trading partners will help him pretend that he’s achieving anything.

Oh, and Amazon is planning to show the effects of tariffs on its prices — and the White House has gone berserk.

Back to Canada: Our northern neighbor is, along with Mexico, among the countries most at risk from Trump’s trade war. Canada does a lot of trade with the much larger U.S. economy. According to Statistics Canada, 2.6 million Canadians, 13 percent of the work force, are employed directly or indirectly producing goods exported to the United States. So U.S. tariffs will impose a huge shock on Canada’s economy.

It's not clear how much Carney can or will do to mitigate that shock. But he has no alternative to going elbows up: There’s no way to satisfy Trump’s demands. And you do have to wonder whether Trump will fold once it becomes clear how badly his trade war is going.

Paul Krugman is a Nobel Prize-winning economist and former professor at MIT and Princeton who now teaches at the City University of New York's Graduate Center. From 2000 to 2024, he wrote a column for The New York Times. Please consider subscribing to his Substack, where he now posts almost every day.

Reprinted with permission from Paul Krugman.


'Universal Revulsion': Top American CEOs 'Privately' Disgusted With Trump

'Universal Revulsion': Top American CEOs 'Privately' Disgusted With Trump

Several top corporate CEOs recently confided that despite their public shows of fealty to President Donald Trump, they are less than flattering of him behind closed doors.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Trump was the main topic of conversation a gathering of corporate executives at the Yale CEO Caucus earlier this week. The economy has been on a roller coaster ride since Trump announced — and then almost immediately withdrew — punishing new tariffs on all goods imported from Canada and Mexico. Twenty-five percent tariffs on Canadian imported steel and aluminum products went into effect Wednesday, however.

When Trump suggested doubling his steel and aluminum tariffs, the roomful of CEOs — which included JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon, Pfizer CEO Albert Boula and Dell CEO Michael Dell — the room "responded with a mix of groans and shocked laughter, according to the Journal.

"There was universal revulsion against the Trump economic policies," Yale School of Management professor Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, who organized the event, told the paper. "They’re also especially horrified about Canada."

Bill George, who is the former CEO of Medtronic, remarked that the corporate world has since learned to keep its criticisms of the 47th president of the United States under wraps out of fear of retribution. He said he was "struck by how fearful people are and how unwilling they are to speak out," adding that executives "don’t want to get on the wrong side of the president and his constituents."

He went on to lament the new uncertain economic climate that has taken hold in Trump's second term, which has lately seen financial markets dip precipitously this week as investors fear a trade war. He said companies are worried that outbursts from Trump could end up hurting their bottom line, leading some to consider moves to curry favor with the regime in order to be spared from his wrath.

“The mood has totally changed,” George said. “What you’re hearing publicly is not what you’re going to hear privately.”

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

Trump's Aggression Against Our Neighbors Brings Us Shame And Pain

Trump's Aggression Against Our Neighbors Brings Us Shame And Pain

Never mind how Donald Trump's threatened trade war ultimately pans out. Though a 25 percent border tax would hurt the economies of Canada and Mexico more, Americans would also feel the ill-effects. But America is already suffering. Start with the shame of menacing and sliming our good neighbors with lies.

Even if it's part of a twisted game of negotiation — Trump has already put off the war with Mexico and Canada by a month — the economic damage is lasting. (Trump's game is to jump on some small concession to declare victory.) Meanwhile, Made-in-Trump's-USA is becoming a toxic label.

Canadians recently booed "The Star-Spangled Banner" at a hockey game in Ottawa. Something tells us they don't want to become the 51st state.

Now Canada and Mexico could retaliate against American exports, starting with steel, pork and bourbon. They would focus on economic interests in Trump country, a reflection of their understanding that much of America shares their mystification, if not horror, at this sadistic show.

But these trading partners have more subtle weapons than slapping their own tariffs on American products. They can decide that the United States is an unreliable trading partner and look for replacements.

America's Midwest refineries rely on crude from Alberta. Trump says Canadian energy would get a special deal, a tariff of only 10 percent. Alberta Premier Danielle Smith says even 10 percent is not OK. She likes to point out that if you subtract energy from the trade numbers, the U.S. would probably have a trade surplus with Canada.

For all of Trump's sniveling about the price of oil, it would go higher if Canada, our largest foreign supplier, decided to sell it to someone else. Canada is already considering ways to move the product west and then onto Asia.

The best-selling beer in the U.S. is Modelo Especial from Mexico. It is made from barley harvested in places like Idaho, Montana and North Dakota. About 75% of U.S. barley exports go to Mexico. But Argentina, Chile and Brazil also grow barley and would probably be very happy to take over those sales. And the loss of that business would hurt American farmers.

Note that none of these responses involve retaliatory tariffs toward American products.

The North American economy has been integrated to our benefit as well as that of our neighbors. A "Made in America" vehicle, for example, crosses borders several times before the final product rolls to the showroom. This production sharing lets things get done in the most cost-efficient places. It is also done in Europe and Asia.

Contrary to Trump's baloney excuse for making economic war against our neighbors, Canada is the source of almost no fentanyl entering this country. And the fentanyl that comes over the border from Mexico enters through legal ports of entry, hidden in truck tires and suitcases. If that's the case, isn't it the job of U.S. authorities to check those tires?

Same goes for undocumented migrants. Of course, the border was already peaceful by the time of Trump's inauguration. Before the tariff standoff, Canada and Mexico had already stepped up helping control these migration flows on their sides of the border.

The usually Trump-friendly Wall Street Journal has called this "The Dumbest Trade War in History." That it isn't in our interests doesn't even seem to matter. The crisis serves Trump's unhinged need to be constantly at the center of the world's attention and his sick pleasure in extracting pain. War or no war, he's already achieved both.

But the pain felt by Americans trapped by a leadership in Washington that has gone haywire endures. And when the cruelty gets dumped on our friends, the pain starts with shame.

Follow Froma Harrop on Twitter @FromaHarrop. She can be reached at fharrop@gmail.com. To find out more about Froma Harrop and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators webpage at www.creators.com.

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