Today's News: "Nobody in this country is in the stands. 40 million of us are on the ice."

graphic by Don DeLeski 

I was hoping PM Carney would give us another Forward Guidance video as Canada fights back against Trump's tariff war, and on Tuesday morning here it was. 

I'm calling it his "Everyone Over The Boards" speech:

Reactions and comments:

Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov on Raging Moderates podcast - "You kind of can't hate Trump enough"



Tod Maffin - bullies fold when nobody flinches


Bloomberg News on Canada's upcoming trade plan with Europe - "as close as Canada can be to Europe without actually joining the EU"


In the Toronto Star, national columnist Susan Delacourt describes Carney's approach: [gift link]

...This latest video follows that pattern, talking of tough times ahead without elaborating on what that looks like or who exactly was going to have to bear them the most. The prime minister was clear on what things would not be sacrificed to the United States, and all of them, as he’s said before, revolve around our sovereignty, whether that’s French-language protection or the freedom to make trade deals with other countries without seeking U.S. permission. What will be sacrificed remains mostly unsaid.
“Now, this won’t be easy, and I won’t pretend otherwise,” Carney said. “The harsh reality is that the American tariffs will hurt some Canadians more than others.”
It’s possible that Carney is still unclear on the cost of this massive falling out with the U.S., and that even as he was driving to shoot the video at the Caivin plant in his Nepean riding, his government was still tallying up the potential damage.
The video was released on the very day that Canada introduced retaliatory tariffs, and the U.S. made noise with further retaliation in return. So the extent of the damage may be a rolling target.
Or maybe Carney’s aversion to spelling out the details comes from channelling another, more recent prime minister, Jean Chrétien, who was fond of the saying, “Everyone wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die.”
That gets at the nub of the question hovering over this tough mood the country is adopting toward the U.S. right now. It’s not a huge sacrifice to buy Canadian, to choose to vacation in this country or to do without American alcohol on store shelves.
But would all this toughness be tempered when people start to lose jobs and income, or face changes to their ways of life?
Carney didn’t throw any jabs at Trump in his video, although I’m pretty sure a lot of Canadians wouldn’t have minded if he did. ...

Chrystia Freeland on MSNOW Katy Tur - "democracy is on life support now in the United States"

View on Threads

View on Threads

View on Threads

On a side note, I found this interesting graphic about what might be more expensive now because of Canada's tariffs.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Marta Raczkowska (@docalgaryrealestate)

Here's a rough summary of the impact of Trump's latest revenge tariffs

The White House just released its counter-counter-tariffs to Canada's counter tariffs. Main take away: More showmanship than escalation: 1) The US response is almost value neutral. The revised 50% s338 tariffs ADD 110 new tariff lines, roughly USD 1,845M worth of 2025 trade. But, the revised lists also ELIMINATE 10 tariff lines collectively worth USD1,739M of trade. Biggies that were removed include Portland cement, switchboards and lead. 2) The US also put in place an IMPORT BAN of certain Canadian products. That sounds bad. But it covers less than USD 1 billion worth of trade or 0.25% of Canadian exports. For example, the US now bans Canadian mopeds worth USD81M. 3) The US ban includes some Canadian alcohol -- but much of it is only banned in PACKAGES, but not in BULK. So you cannot export Canadian beer cans directly to US consumers. But you can send it across in bulk and package it in the US further mitigating the impact. 4) ALL the newly banned goods used to be subject to 50% s338 tariffs. That further mitigates the trade impact of the new measure. To be clear, I am not saying this is not bad. But it could have been much worse. It is clearly more posturing than escalation. For Canada that means keep calm and carry on.

- Wolfgang Alschner

Read on Substack

I'm not sure yet about the wineries and distillers, but we do have options!

View on Threads

And what about those Lockheed Martin F-35 jets?

View on Threads

At The Editorial Board, John Stoehr says Trump is actually insane now:

...For two weeks, I have been saying he's insane and it's getting worse.
And lo, Donald Trump keeps proving me right.
...But to truly appreciate the insanity, we must consider what he is trying to do. Trump believes deep in his bones that he's The Alpha. No matter what the situation, no matter who's involved, he believes he's the dominant figure in every room. He is the main character of a story he's telling about himself. (Not even 9/11 could interrupt the narrative. He famously lied about his building being the tallest in downtown Manhattan after the Twin Towers came down.) He has, as Paul Waldman put it last month, an "obsession with dominance."
"This is how he believes conflict, or really any relationship, works," Waldman wrote. "There is a stronger party and a weaker party; the stronger party shows they’re stronger by threatening or hurting the weaker party; and the weaker party capitulates. When it doesn’t actually work that way — because people, systems, and nations are more complicated than that — he’s at a loss. The only thing he can think of is to do the same thing, only harder."
The paradox of Trump's obsession with dominance can be seen in his relations with Canada and Iran. Canada is not surrendering to his threats. This morning, it announced retaliatory tariffs on US imports. Iran is not surrendering either. This morning, it announced it would keep widening the scope of war to include strikes on US oil interests in the Gulf. Both are standing up to him and Trump has no answer. Standing up to him wasn't in the story!
Waldman said this obsession with dominance is what makes Trump "such a loser." True, but I think it also makes him insane. Fewer people are listening to his story, so he increasingly turns to social media to reassert the authority he's lost. There, he can post pictures claiming that North America is one big US state, that the Strait of Hormuz is a US territory, that New Mexico has been renamed "New America" – all manner of imagery he believes demonstrates his dominance, no matter how detached they are from reality.
You would think a sitting president's insanity would make for banner headlines, but that's not the case. "Major media are afraid if they report the obvious fact that the president is crazy, he'll do something crazy to harm them," Mark Jacob, a former editor of the Chicago Tribune, wrote on Bluesky this morning. "That's one reason they're normalizing his craziness."...

Canada already knows that Stoehr is right.
Dean Blundell writes Carney Broke Him. It’s Over. Punishing Canadian tariffs targeting Trump’s America began at midnight so he spent the weekend rage posting cartoons of him beating Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney unconscious with a hockey stick

...People inside Carney’s circle have stopped tiptoeing around it in private. They are saying, plainly, that the President of the United States is not well.
“Childlike.”
“Deeply unfit, mentally, emotionally and physically.”
“Deeply compromised by foreign states and enemies of democracy.”
The Carney Government is going to start telling THOSE stories with impunity while speeding up the extraction of any dependence on Trump’s America. And that may include blowing up CUSMA in totality.
The posts over the past 48 hours aren’t strategy, aren’t leverage, aren’t a negotiating style. They’re the output of a dementia addled rapist who can’t regulate himself, and Canada is negotiating with the output. And more than anything, the Canadian government is very concerned for Americans.
How Canadian of us.
Carney has refused to say that in public. He’s a central banker. He doesn’t diagnose people at podiums. But I’m told that reluctance is running out, and that some version of that assessment may come out of his mouth in the coming days. The hockey image did it. Inside the government, it’s being treated as a red line, not because it hurt anyone’s feelings but because you cannot conduct a serious bilateral relationship with someone who responds to wanting to normalize a 250-year-old friendship with a meme of himself beating you unconscious. In essence, we can’t do business with an unwell rapist descending into violent madness who tried to replace a trade deal with annexation papers...

Our big-and-bigger tariff exchanges are reminding me a little of how crazy Elmer Fudd got and how well Bugs Bunny played him, in Rabbit of Seville Trump is vain about his hair, too!

Finally, here is a commitment we can all make, I'm sure:

If, as a patriotic Canadian, I have to eat more Canadian cheese and drink more Canadian wine to help off-set an American ban, then by God I'm willing to do my part! (All that drinking will give an extra layer of meaning to #ElbowsUp 😜) https://bsky.app/profile/ourmankoto.bsky.social/post/3mux5v3nzjs2u

- Canadian Returnee

Read on Substack