So here are some cartoons and some funny-good posts:
Still my favourite:
And more:
To brighten your day, here's some good news:
— JeffTrnka (@jefftrnka.bsky.social) September 9, 2026 at 6:56 PM
This is seismic news for fisheries scientists. Northern cod is *the* iconic symbol of total fisheries collapse due to overfishing (and other factors) *and* the iconic symbol of a complete failure to recover for decades afterwards. This is like announcing the complete recovery of bison on land.
— Trevor A. Branch (@trevorabranch.bsky.social) September 8, 2026 at 5:15 PM
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Finally, since life isn't all chuckles, I saw a few serious comments about our trade warTeam Canada Strong ❤️🇨🇦
— stash1234.bsky.social (@stash1234.bsky.social) September 5, 2026 at 9:57 AM
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Though we will keep on seeing Canadian media complaining that the sky is falling, Trump's counter-counter tariffs are actually nothing-burgers for many Canadian businesses - though not all, of course
— The Globe and Mail (@theglobeandmail.com) September 9, 2026 at 7:13 PM
...“Trump, if you were to ask him, he would say, ‘Oh, we really now put the screws tight on Canada. So that’s a little bit of the showmanship,” said Wolfgang Alschner, a trade law professor at the University of Ottawa. “But if you then look at the data, it’s really more of a nothing burger.”...Paul Krugman isn't so sanguine:
There have been many trade conflicts in history, some of them more destructive than the US-Canada fight. But I don’t think there has ever been a dispute this stupid.I thought this was an interesting observation:
Bear in mind that this crisis is entirely gratuitous. Canada has done nothing wrong. Even if one buys into Trumpian nonsense about how every nation that sells us more than it buys is ripping us off, Canada isn’t a villain. Last year Canada did run a modest trade surplus with the United States in goods, but more than half of this imbalance was offset by a U.S. surplus in services. Overall trade between our nations was almost balanced.
So what is this about? Clearly, we’re looking at a symptom of deranged Trump syndrome. As Trump’s failures, from soaring fuel prices to plunging approval, multiply, he is doubling down on his disrespect for and attempted bullying of our northern neighbor and former ally. That is, you should think of this conflict not as something reflecting U.S. national interests, but as a form of self-medication from a sundowning president....
...The essential thing to understand about U.S.-Canada trade is that our two economies have been closely integrated for a very long time. We’ve had free trade in autos and automotive products since 1965. We signed an overall free trade agreement in 1988, six years before the creation of NAFTA, which included Mexico. And all those decades of free trade have encouraged a great deal of specialization.
That is, the Canadian economy isn’t a miniature version of the U.S. economy, producing the same mix of stuff on a smaller scale. Instead, Canada concentrates on producing a limited range of goods. In some cases Canada produces goods like lumber or aluminum that take advantage of Canada’s natural resources — vast forests and abundant hydropower, which generates the electricity used to smelt aluminum. In other cases, like autos, Canada achieves economies of scale by manufacturing a limited range of goods, exporting most of what it produces to the United States while importing the auto models and components it doesn’t produce.
The flip side of this Canadian specialization is that while the U.S. economy is roughly a dozen times larger than Canada’s, Canada supplies a surprisingly large share of many crucial goods. Canada provides 70 percent of the oil refined in the U.S. Midwest. Canada supplies about 60 percent of US aluminum. Canada supplies almost all of America’s spruce-pine-fir lumber — preferred for framing in residential construction.
If the tit-for-tat with Canada were to escalate into all-out trade war, could the U.S. economy manage? Yes — but it would be expensive and take a great deal of time.
In short, if Trump, Bessent and company think that trade conflict with Canada is a trivial issue, one that Americans will barely notice, they’re in for a rude awakening.
Now, I haven’t talked about the damage a trade war would do to Canada, but it would clearly be immense — possibly bigger in dollar terms than the damage here, although that’s unclear. What is clear is that because Canada’s economy is far smaller than ours, Canada would suffer much more damage from a trade war as a percentage of GDP than we would.
But Canadians understand why they are being asked to suffer this pain: They are defending their sovereignty and their national identity. Will Americans be willing to suffer economically to soothe Trump’s bruised ego?
Also in The Globe and Mail, columnist Andrew Coyne calls out anyone who thinks this trade war is just an extension of business by other meansView on Threads
...[Trump's] administration is not trying to protect this or that industry, or crack open our markets. It seeks to impose its will on us on a much broader front – to contain us within its sphere of influence, economically and otherwise; at worst, to weaken, exhaust and divide us, such that annexation looms as an option.Yeah, Canadians know what is at stake
As such there is no immediate prospect of peace, or at least not on terms acceptable to Canada. The Trump regime has no interest in giving up the leverage it supposes it derives from the constant threat of tariffs. Any assurances it might offer in that regard, in exchange for whatever concessions we might make, are certain to be temporary, to be followed by still more extravagant demands backed by even graver threats.
Criticisms of retaliation, then, that are rooted in traditional economic analysis – the gains and losses from responding to their tariff on industry x with our tariff on industry y – ignore the open-ended nature of the assault we are under.
Likewise, any analysis that suggests there was a deal to be had that we should have taken – that had we sacrificed the auto industry, for example, we could have secured tariff-free access to the U.S. for our other industries – fundamentally misreads the situation. There is no relief to be purchased from U.S. tariffs. All we can do, rather, is to demonstrate that they cannot succeed.
More discreditable are arguments that seem to suggest this is all a misunderstanding, a breakdown in “the relationship” for which Canada is as much or even more to blame than the Trump administration. Or what else are we to assume from demands that the government “repair” it?
In the same way, to suggest, as the Conservative critic for Canada-U.S. relations, Shuv Majumdar, has done, that Canada’s position is rooted in “anti-Americanism” is to view events through a lens that would be appropriate in some contexts – there is indeed a long history of that in our politics – in a context in which it is wholly inappropriate.
Resisting Mr. Trump’s depredations has nothing to do with anti-Americanism and everything to do with self-preservation, not to say self-respect...
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