Posted on 09/13/2026 7:43:27 AM PDT by 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.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailysignal.com ...
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Carney knows exactly what he is doing with the China pass-through. As a leftist he favors China over the USA. Most Canadians won’t hear the truth through state-controlled media.
VDH ping
Spot on essay by VDH. Canada will come crawling back sooner or later and the deal they sign won’t be what they were going to get.
That was a good piece. Well worth reading, in its entirety.
Canada has had two very suspicious national so-called leaders in a row. Something smells fishy, in the Great White North.
The Chinese pulling the strings on puppet Carney aren’t doing him any favors with the exception of swelling his bank account. Canada has been sold out just like we were under joe Briben.
We need a northern wall also at this point. Canada is a Chinese proxy.
The old man gets a little feisty!
During WW II the US extended to Canada extensive trade considerations. Canada of course maintained the protections for their industry and and agricultural enterprises. Somehow these considerations were never recinded for close to 80 years. In fact Canada became downright haughty in its attitudes and policies regarding the US. Trump decided the nonsense must end.
All we need to know about Mark Carney is he used to be the President of the World Bank. 🙄
His example of Chinese steel, produced under cost from subsidization from the CCP, being sent to Canada to produce cars more cheaply than America can to get around tariffs is a very good example of the perfidy of the CCP and the willing participation of our formerly good neighbor, Canada have been collaborating in.
It isn’t an outlier. This is in character with the Canadian government. And VDH is correct. They don’t want to go down that road.
That is called “making a deal with the Devil”. And anytime you do that, a price will come due, and you will be forced to choose a side at that point, when it is beyond your ability to make a real choice.
Sad.
In 1776, Ben Franklin led an unsuccessful diplomatic mission to Montreal trying to convince French Canadians to join the American Revolution.
In the 1783 Treaty of Paris negotiations, Ben Franklin pushed for the Quebec and other Canadian territories to be ceded to the US.
After WWII, there were uneven tariffs and trade practices all over the world with the USA, but we were wealthy enough that it suited our global needs to have prosperity in other countries as well as our own.
Little did we realize how that would be used against us, to greater and greater effect, culminating with the CCP which is, and has been for the last 45 years, waging economic warfare against us, hollowing out our industries using exactly and with full intent the same scenario that VDH described in their cheap communist-subidized steel they sell to Canada to undercut US steel production and put them out of business.
Trump correctly, in his second term, realizes two things: we MUST rebuild our industrial base, because we cannot cut spending and increase taxation to get out of our $40 trillion in debt.
Our only hope is to grow our way out of it. And to re-shore our industrial base, that requires ending that largesse we demonstrated post WWII as a cost of doing business, especially since those we helped took full advantage of our country to fight against us, weaken us, and core out our industrial base.
Then again Carney and Iran only have to hold on until November 3rd where there is chance Trump will be neutered at the ballot box. Voters are likely to weigh $4 gas and $5+ diesel over the righteousness of Trump's trade and foreign policy.
Well, as long as they don’t blame DEI-loving Chevron!
Better buy some gasoline now, while you still can.
He’s right, but for one thing: The American people are clueless about any of this and are likely to stay that way beyond the mid-term elections. If the Slave Party takes over Congress, we may be unable to sustain these pressures on our competitors.
And after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the West did not check course, either.
Red China was a menace, then, but America maintained policies that supported it. NATO is now a world-wide menace, but we gleefully welcome Sweden - as gleefully as they welcome muslim rapists.
Then again Carney and Iran only have to hold on until November 3rd where there is chance Trump will be neutered at the ballot box. Voters are likely to weigh $4 gas and $5+ diesel over the righteousness of Trump’s trade and foreign policy.
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Now you know why Trump will be campaigning non stop between now and november.
Trump will still be president and in control of trade policy and the military.
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