Riding Roughshod Over Canada Releases a Hornet's Nest

"We can't back down. We need a full Team Canada approach.Everything is on the table, but Ontario can't do it alone. We need the support."

"I'm tired of the bully trying to take our lunch money all the time. We always seem to be on our back heels. We need to be on the offence ... We need to stand up to the bully, and we need to hit him tariff to tariff -- all the way across the board."

"And that's my message to the prime minister. We need a plan moving forward."

Ontario Premier Doug Ford 

 

"There is not a chance in hell that U.S. alcohol is going back on a shelf in British Columbia. And I'm proud of that, and I know the British Columbians support that."

"And the idea of the president that he can bully us into whatever he wishes is incorrect."

"This attempt by the president to hurt Canadians to, for some reason, attack our country was entirely predictable. [He] will probably do it again. And there's no reason to believe that this is the bottom in terms of where he's willing to go."

"The end of the trade agreement between the United States and Canada would be devastating for Americans and for Canadians alike. The extent of that self-inflicted injury on the United States would be profound. U.S. business will be very clear with the president about that." 

British Columbia Premier David Eby

 

"It most certainly is time for us to intensify our negotiations, be very ambitious."

"The ultimate goal isn't to counter-tariff and further weaken the North American economy. The ultimate goal is to get to a renewed agreement, a trade agreement that is going to build and ensure that our North American economy is more competitive moving forward."

Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe

U.S. President Donald Trump, left, watches as a Spanish soccer player shakes hands with Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney at the World Cup final on Sunday. The next day, Trump hit Canada with threat of 50 per cent tariffs. (Frank Gunn/The Canadian Press)

 

Fighting another war in the Middle East that is beginning to wrack up American casualties, making the Trump administration very unpopular in significant sectors of the U.S. voting public, hasn't distracted Donald Trump from his delusionary vendetta-pathology of making his trading partners and neighbours suffer pangs of trade punishment for imagined trade imbalances that Mr. Trump insists preys on the American economy. Even nature herself has come in for some extraordinary treatment, assigning her extreme weather tantrums to Canadian forest-management malpractise.

 

As for a generous move by the Government of Canada to improve truck traffic flows between the U.S. and Canada in the busiest such trade exchange benefiting the U.S. as much as it does Canada, by fully committing to paying for the enormous cost of installing a new bridge between Windsor and Detroit, riled President Trump who claimed the U.S. was being cheated again, despite Canada paying the complete $6.4 billion cost of building the Gordie Howe International Bridge. Toll revenues in the initial years of operation were to have paid off this debt but yielding to Trump pressure Canada is now deprived of that debt-revenue in the interests of Trump's 'permission' to open the bridge to traffic as intended.

 

Canada's wildfires sending plumes of smoke over the border another wrathful issue, and the punishment for Canada in not immediately shielding the U.S. from the out-of-control wildfire smoke wafting over to the U.S. necessitated another round of tariffs subject to the new Section 338 invoked by Mr. Trump's ire, where cement, dairy products, wood products, alcoholic beverages, paper products, sporting equipment, jewelry, glass products, salt, essential oils, clothing, swimming pools, gaming consoles, smartphones, lamps and furniture products now come with hefty 50 percent tariffs attached. 

 

Financial Times

 

Yet when the provinces respond to these devastating tariff impositions by imposing tariffs of their own, the Canadian boycott of U.S. alcoholic products by provincial liquor commissions enrages the Trump administration. According to a White House fact sheet Canadian imports of U.S. alcohol have decreased between March 2025 to February 2026 by 81 percent, an intolerable situation. Canadian provinces have made it abundantly clear that as soon as Mr. Trump moves the needle downward on his ever-increasing tariffs, they have no intention of lifting their boycotts.  

"I think this does provide a big reset to the negotiation agenda and will force Canada into difficult decisions in the coming 29 days."

"What we're hearing from our clients right now is those that are hit, that are caught by this list, their export sales are going to go to zero, and this is actually quite catastrophic. Because the 50 percent tariff is very, very high, and no one else in the world has to pay that. Right? This is a new tariff unique to Canada."

William Pellerin, international trade partner, McMillan LLP 

Prince Edward Island premier Rob Lantz speaks to reporters with fellow premiers at a press conference closing the Council of the Federation meetings in Charlottetown on Wednesday July 22, 2026. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darren Calabrese

 

Economists are aware of the documentation studies that reveal when governments impose tariffs seeming to be paid by exporters, what is actually occurring is that their own citizens are being taxed. The National Bureau of Economic Research published a paper by a Harvard University economist and a economist at University of Chicago which studied the extent to which the 1918-19 [Trump's previous administration] as well as 2025 tariffs ended up with the American public and not the exporters. The tariff pass-through rate to U.S. importers, they concluded is "pervasively high, during both the 2018-2019 and 2025 episodes". With 80 percent of the burden of the former and 94 percent of the latter tariffs paid by the U.S. public.

 

A German think tank, the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, analyzed $4 trillion of shipments between January 2024 and November 2025, concluding that U.S. consumers and importers paid 96 percent of the cost of Trump's tariffs; foreign exporters paid four percent. A National Bureau of Economic Research paper and an analysis by New York Federal Reserve researchers estimated approximately 90 percent of the U.S. tariffs' economic burden fell on Americans.

 

Across the border, Canadian studies document how protectionism harms Canadian consumers. A Montreal Economic Institute study lat month estimated supply management -- which involves quotas and high tariffs on dairy eggs and poultry -- cost the average Canadian $224 annually in inflated food prices. Statistics Canada's income survey and low-income cutoffs [a threshold for relative poverty] suggested that inflated food prices effectively slid about 120,000 Canadians below the poverty line. So much for supply management. 

"A lot of that [Canadian tourism to Vermont dropped 40 per cent] has to do with the rhetoric that the president has used, [referring to Trump’s threats to turn Canada into the 51st state and repeatedly calling the prime minister 'governor'."

"We really value our relationship with Canada both emotionally and financially, and economically."

Democratic Vermont Sen. Peter Welch

 

"How are you [Jamieson Greer, U.S. trade negotiator] approaching the risk of retaliatory tariffs from Canada now that you’ve imposed 50 per cent duties on a wide range of products that were previously exempt?"

Colorado Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet  

 

"Yes or no, when the new tariff on Canada takes effect, will Canada have higher tariffs than China on some products?"

"Let me work through that math. The 50 per cent tariff is higher than a number of tariffs on China."

Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden 

Left: Colorado Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet. Right: U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer. CTV News

 

 

 

Canada 'Poisoning' U.S. Atmospheric Conditions

The U.S. is the world’s most tornado-prone country, recording more than 1,100 tornadoes during an average year.  The Weather Network

"The U.S. is the world’s most tornado-prone country, recording more than 1,100 tornadoes during an average year."

"Tornado activity there this year is unfolding a bit different than normal, with many twisters touching down early in the season across the Midwest and Deep South."

"An odd tornado season south of the border has sent storm chasers and news outlets looking north toward Canada for decent storm chasing opportunities."

The Weather Network 

Tornadoes originating in the American Mid-West have increasingly slopped over into Canada for the past decade, presumably part of Climate Change where weather patterns are discovered to be more extreme and such events presenting more frequently. Although these tornadoes hitting Canada are fearfully inconvenient, causing loss of life and infrastructure damages, it is  highly unlikely that the Government of Canada would persistently rag its American counterparts to 'do something' to stop those immense forces of nature from crossing the border in a northerly direction. 

"I [President Trump] told him [Prime Minister Carney] you've got to stop these fires [forest wildfires] from coming in and poisoning our air, our air's been poisoned."

"I have a good relationship with Mark Carney but, you know, we've got to stop the fires up there. If we can help them we'll help them but maybe they should pay us some damages or something, or we should do some tariffs?" 

"It was terrible. I mean, you had businesses closing. In particular Michigan ... Detroit, Michigan, they had to close everything, they had to close car plants and a lot of other things. I've never remembered this happening. Over the last four or five years you saw it starting to take place."

"We are holding Canada responsible for the fact that they are not properly maintaining their Forests, and Brush therein, and the United States is being unnecessarily invaded by filthy, polluted, and unhealthy air, the quality of which is dangerous, and totally unacceptable!"

"This is Willful Negligence, and becoming a yearly occurrence, costing the United States Billions of Dollars, which cost of this pollution must of necessity be added to the TARIFFS Canada is currently paying." 

U.S. President Donald J. Trump 

Discussing various governmental matters in New Jersey at the FIFA World Cup final, the U.S. President and Canadian prime minister certainly would have had much to discuss between them, but the first order of business would surely have centered around the trade-crippling tariffs that the Trump administration has imposed on its neighbour, while ragging Canada over becoming the 51st star on the Star-Spangled Banner. On the other hand, anything that rankles Mr. Trump will come up in any conversational gambit informing of his displeasure and Canada's wildfires in its great boreal forests certainly ranked.

 

There's Climate Change in action again, as the climate warms and forests become more susceptible with thunderous rainfalls or in some instances, lightning storms minus rain, that spring forest fires into action on dry underbrush, the parched forest understory, leaping to the forest canopy with high winds whipping the fires to a fury, sending sparks in every direction to alight on nearby forest tracts and spread the menace of wildfires out of control. Some of which are in such remote areas fire-fighting crews are unable to reach them in a timely manner. They're air-dropped into these flammably-dangerous scenarios and get right to work.

Wildfire smoke is seen above Lake Superior in Thunder Bay, Ont., in this photo from July 20. (Marc Doucette/CBC)

 

But the weather itself can aid the process or continue the trajectory of moving curtains of flame. There are a limited number of water-bombers when hundreds of wildfires are burning the land and priority is given to those fires which threaten human settlement, with hopes that more far-flung wildfires in remote forested areas will eventually burn themselves out -- with or without nature's help.

 

"When California was burning, Canada sent fire fighters, planes and assistance -- not insults", responded Democratic Senator Adam Schiff from California. "I was proud to meet them, and to thank them, when they would break for dinner. As California and other states step up to repay the favor, we should do so without the threats and ramblings of a failing leader. We should show some humanity."

 

"Maybe if he got rid of the tariffs on softwood lumber it might make a difference, until we can harvest these areas and ship them down."

"I've got to remind President Trump that 33 percent of the lumber -- and we have better quality lumber here in Canada -- comes from Canada to build their homes."

"He's wondering why the housing costs of building is going up. Because he's putting tariffs on his number one trading partner."

"Maybe President Trump would offer his closet allies and friends some support rather than sit there and threaten tariffs."

Ontario Premier Doug Ford 

 

Premier Ford also spoke of the reality that at the present time 3.9 million acres of forest fires are burning in the United States; one of the largest began in Minnesota "and that's not a knock against Minnesota, because Governor Walz and I have a tremendous relationship." When Hurricane Helene devastated areas of the U.S. in 2024, he recalled, Ontario sent hydro crews to assist in the restoration of power. 

"That's what we do."

"So rather than criticize and threaten Canada, your closest friends, maybe one day you're going to need our help, like you did last year, and we deployed the people."

"I get frustrated just listening to this bunch of rubbish."

Ontario Premier Doug Ford 

Premier Doug Ford has pledged that the province will spend whatever is necessary to combat the fires. CBCNews