Victor Davis Hanson: Canadians Feel Real Pain in Stage 4 of Trade War

Daily Signal ^ | 11 Sep, 2026 | Victor Davis Hanson

[MtnClimber]

Hello, this is Victor Davis Hanson for the Daily Signal.

I’d like to offer an update on the Canadian-American trade spat.

Earlier, I had staged it. I said stage one was surprise on both sides of the border that two neighbors who spoke the same language, had the same civilizational origins in Britain, were close neighbors, and had the largest undefended border in the world were at a point of very angry disagreement.

The second stage was that Prime Minister Mark Carney started to suggest that the United States was solely culpable, was a bully, and had forced him to cancel the agreement at the 11th hour late on a Friday afternoon without warning.

And he said that the United States tried to impugn or intercede or limit, prune back, whatever term you use, Canadian sovereignty, both by telling Canada that it couldn’t import cheap Chinese EV vehicles or that it could not import cheap steel and aluminum from China that were really, to be fair, dumped below the cost of production as a way of getting around American tariffs via being used for assembling autos or vehicles in Canada and then shipped into the United States at a cheap price.

And he accused us of trying to squelch Canadian and indigenous Canadian expression. In other words, our digital media companies were so successful in bringing the news and social media accounts to Canada that people who wanted to get the indigenous voice out and the French voice out couldn’t, and therefore he was going to unilaterally tax us 5% on top of corporate income tax, which nobody else does.

We don’t tell Canadian broadcasters or Canadian newspapers we’re gonna tax you so you include the particular culture of the San Joaquin Valley of California.

[ckilmer]

How does Trump convince his MAGA followers to TURNOUT and vote without motivating the others against those same candidates?

/////
the opposition is already motivated to turn out by tds. you can see it in the stats. currently the dems are much more motivated to vote than republicans.

this is a base vote. the whole deal is gettting out the base—especially the coalition that voted for trump in 2024.

[spintreebob]

“How does Trump convince his MAGA followers to TURNOUT and vote WITHOUT MOTIVATING THE OTHERS ?”

FOR my 82 years it has always been the GROUND GAME...knocking on doors of friends, neighbors and total strangers.

Talking to people at my church, at my club, at my work, at my kid’s sports teams. Placing an attractive pamphlet in their hand.

The ground game of the DSA is precisely why they have shown strong. It still seems to be the deciding factor. They are not winning on the issues...they are winning because they show up and our side is (for the most part) AWOL.