Jeffrey Blehar writes for National Review Online about the poor timing of President Donald Trump’s latest tariff tirade.
The economy and all that pertains to it — the rapidly increasing cost of living, tariff-based inflation, and Trump’s seeming indifference to all of this — is the No. 1 focus among voters. As a secondary matter, voters are concerned about the Iran war — but again, mostly because of its visible effects on the price at the pump.
And Donald Trump has decided to go back to banging the drum about a trade war with Canada, again. According to the New York Times:
President Trump threatened on Monday to increase tariffs on all cars, trucks, car parts and steel from Canada to 50 percent, starting Jan. 1, as the relationship with America’s closest traditional ally morphs into a full-blown trade war.
Writing on Truth Social, the president said that Canada was “among the worst Nations in the World to deal with” and that it “will be treated like a State no longer.”
“They feel entitled, and yet, WE DON’T NEED CANADA, THEY NEED US!” he wrote.
Ho-hum, another threatened trade war. “Canada wants the benefits of being a State, without being one!!!” Trump added later, just to make sure nobody had forgotten about his threat back in 2025 to annex the entire country. This all arises from the breakdown of trade talks between the United States and its neighbor to the north; Canada is not feeling particularly responsive toward Trump’s demands that it do things like eliminate French-language labeling requirements or sacrifice national sovereignty to Trump’s whims after being hit with 25 percent tariffs on most of their industrial products (steel, aluminum, lumber, etc.) back in 2025.
Of course, Trump’s theory of “national sovereignty” needs little elaboration at this point: In his opinion, it is something that belongs solely to the United States, particularly when Trump is running it.
