Now that he can claim to have no choice and people are really mad, then he can even force retirement funds to invest massively here through those "nationnaly important projects". If successful that would seriously boost our stagnant productivity and economy.
Trump threatens the EU, the EU has a reason to implement popular measures.
Trump is the salesman and Reality TV host, the plans are made elsewhere.
As a US citizen, I just want to add that I hope some day we can reestablish a healthy relationship with our neighbors. These articles are saddening.
I don't see how Canada can trust us again without a major cultural and legal shift in the US. The fact is that any president can, apparently, unilaterally shred international friendships, and 30%-40% of Americans will cheer it on.
I would love a return to normalcy, but Americans need to make sure, really sure this can't happen again.
That's not the problem.
The real problem is that the political establishment let things get so out of whack that someone like Trump could enjoy a large amount of support and get elected. If actual issues experienced by Americans were getting addressed in a satisfactory way, none of this would have happened.
But instead of that we got TINA and Trump.
> I would love a return to normalcy, but Americans need to make sure, really sure this can't happen again.
Easy: just repeal democracy. Make elected officials advisors at best, and vest all power in unelected officials that will uphold the status quo.
Are 30%-40% of Americans really cheering for shredding of the friendship with Canada? Is that supported by some specific survey or are we just looking at approval ratings or some proxy?
Isn't this more or less normal for the USA in the broader perspective? Certainly had some very weird presidents in the past? We had things like: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cascadia_movement
I feel like we're just not living in normal times. The lack of normalcy is social media, conspiracy theories, politics. This isn't simply a US-Canada relationship question and "return to normalcy" isn't really just about "how do we ensure a certain level of quality of leadership". I'm not even sure what's normal any more ;)
https://leger360.com/in-the-news-canada-us-trade-war-canadia...
https://leger360.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/OMNI_tradewa...
"Our latest survey finds that 41% of Canadians now consider the United States an enemy country, up 15 points from June 2025. At the same time, 64% say their impression of the United States would change if Donald Trump were no longer president."
I find this insane. Also the weighting towards 55+, male, Quebec, is interesting. It says something about how humans are easy to influence IMO. Not exactly a surprise I guess looking at humanity as a whole but something I would have hoped we had some immunity to in free western societies.
From which country?
Most Americans don’t have a problem with the content of Trump’s proposed treaty either. It would have lowered Canada’s tariffs on US dairy products down from 400% to whatever the US charges on Canadian dairy products. It would have allowed US banks to enter the Canadian market just as Canadian banks are allowed to operate in the US. Etc, etc.
The Canadian government made the soup themselves.
Carney's status as some sort of visionary is a sham. Just another old fart with no new ideas.
Remember that the Canadians claimed to care a lot about climate change, and sending goods to Asian or Europe has a greater environmental cost than shipping to America.
Do you really think the Canadian government will stop advertising on YouTube and Facebook? The Canadian PM mainly does news with American companies...
but from what i can see, the american reaction to this, even from the anti-trump crowd within america, is to basically shrug and assume that canada will quickly forgive and forget.
Just write "Thoughts and prayers!" and save us all some time.
Canadian here. It'll be at least a generation, if it ever happens at all. I have two kids in elementary school and every single one of their peers is talking about America as a threat. More than once I've had one of my kids ask me if it's true Donald Trump wants to take over Canada. It's a whole generation of children growing up resentful of America, viewing it as a threat rather than an ally. Those attitudes aren't going to just evaporate after Trump leaves office.
I took no end of downvotes and snarky comments from arrogant Americans on this fucking website for suggesting that the old days are not coming back, largely because Canadians have realized that Trump is broadly representative of Americans. He is a symptom of an underlying sickness. The problem is Americans themselves.
To wit: Harris got 75 million votes in 2024[0]. The total voting-age population is roughly 270 million [1], which means less than a third of the US electorate voted against Trump. The remaining two thirds either voted for him or were sufficiently unbothered so as to not vote at all. So we see a bunch of Americans in the media or on socials crying crocodile tears about how tHeIr AlLiEs ArE sO vAlUaBlE tO tHeM and traitors in the Alberta government notwithstanding I think broadly speaking Canadians realize it's bullshit and have moved on. Any treaty the US signs is not worth the paper it's printed on.
This schism is permanent, and I think Americans have yet to comprehend just how much foreign attitudes towards America have moved over the last year and a half.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_United_States_presidentia...
[1] https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2024/03/29/2024-06...
Carney is a weasel like all of them.
I don’t know why people think they’re clever when they pose this rhetorical question, particularly when someone is stating their nationality. The demonym ‘American’ refers to a citizen of the United States of America.
I agree with you and I wish more people would understand that Trump is only a symptom of the issue.
Its the same in Europe where everyone is somehow discovering in 2026 that the far-right and far-left parties actually want to do what they say they will do if they get in power.
Instead of addressing the concerns of the population, all they do is talk about how bad these parties would be and try every which way to contain them except never trying to even understand or fix the issues these people are complaining about.
It was the same strategy used by Macron in France in 2017 and 2022.
Step 1: Pretend you care and tinker on the margins but fundamentally don't change anything. Step 2: Paint the opposition on the left and right as monsters that will bring chaos and disorder to the country. Step 3: Present yourself as the only one capable of containing said chaos.
In one word: TINA
Except TINA is no longer working and the mainstream parties are being challenged a lot more because people have trusted them for so long and they are no longer interested in waiting for them to actually deliver on what they promised to do years ago.
So you get Reform in the UK, One Nation in Australia, National Rally in France, the AFD in Germany, Swedish democrats in Sweden and much more....
The parties in charge could have tried to address the issues that are fueling the rise of the far-right across Europe, they could have listened to the concerns of their citizens even if they did not agree with their ideas.
Instead, they have let the situation deteriorate and portrayed themselves as the only solution to the problems they never addressed and it backfired spectacularly.
As Jack Kerouac said: After Me, the Deluge.
Maybe some Americans don't take all the "51st State" and annexation talk that's become a full-on party line seriously, but Canadians are perfectly in their rights and sense to take it seriously and literally.
Tariffs today have one real value only: protecting domestic industry. And to do that correctly, it needs to be thoughtful, consistent (legislated rather than by executive order), and coordinated with the industries they are designed to protect.
The US hasn't withdrawn from CUSMA. On July 1st it declined to extend the agreement past 2036, which isn't the same thing. The deal stays in force until 2036 with annual reviews, and no withdrawal notice has been given.
It was also the US, not Canada, that declined to renew. Canada and Mexico both pushed for extension with the same administration that renegotiated NAFTA into CUSMA only a few years ago. So what changed exactly?
Also, the 6 year review is about whether to extend the term. Withdrawal is a separate clause that a nation can use at any time on six months' notice. As I understand it the treaty doesn't set up "if negotiations fail, then withdraw" mechanism but IANAL.
The 400% dairy figure is incredbily inflated. The steep tariffs, roughly 200-300% depending on the product, apply only above quota, and in quota imports come into the states without duty. The US also runs its own dairy quotas, and it's incredibly disingenuous to portray Canada as the overbearing protectionist entity in a scenario where Americans twice elected a leader running on an overtly and relatively unprecedented (in modern times anyways) protectionist policy.
> The Canadian government made the soup themselves.
On this we are in full agreement. The integration of the Canadian economy into the American one has placed Canada in a precarious place and only further decoupling from America and seeking trading partners abroad will change that.
https://cassels.com/insights/cusmsa-still-in-force-notwithst...
Better to just believe everyone who disagrees with you must be a bot, though.
I'd agree in the context that this wasn't necessarily a case of driven by natural forces of the universe rather than some key events that could have been better addressed to hold them off. And the best way to do that is lots of sunshine and awareness.
Those key elements being:
The Powell Memo -- https://www.inequalitymedia.org/explainers/v/the-powell-memo
Reagan's embracement of evangelicals (ignoring Barry Goldwater's warning)
Rush Limbaugh's unfettered demonization industrial complex
Bill Clinton's sellout of labor to the corporate class -- https://www.theglobalist.com/bill-clinton-hillary-pivoted-am...
IMHO politics is two distinct things: control of law and the circus of those who vie to take that power. Everybody focuses on the circus because that's where the media points to and is the most engaging.
But it's the former that actually matters, and it's boring, slow, and opaque, but literally a matter of life and death to every citizen of the union.
One final thought: the creation of literal Red vs Blue was a masterclass in division and distraction. It's crazy-making to watch it play out from the sidelines.
Last year our population only grew by 0.5%. We have a long time before it doubles.
More than 20% of Canada's current population was born outside of Canada. That's a substantial block of people!
I'm not against immigration by any means, but still. Immigrant Canadians are strongly likely to outnumber born Canadians in my lifetime
I asked some of my Indigenous friends here how that worked out for them and they said not great
More importantly, they are talking over a time frame of 2100. Doubling the population over the course of 75 years is probably fine. The economy can handle it over that time frame.
That's right only America is capable of providing a livelihood and productive economy for its citizens. Silly Canada, just become a client state and let America make all those hard decisions for you.
Canada has a massive amount of untapped potential, and it’s time we tap it.
Trump was deeply unpopular at the end of his first term too, and Americans still went back for a second bite.
We gotta look inward and, metaphorically speaking, go to rehab.
This isn't a deeply unpopular anomaly. This is a significant chunk of America, and they may easily regain the majority if the economy improves in a few years (or if it worsens further under a Democratic president).
Reducing America to one simple statement is not possible.
American re-elected him, despite the cronyism, jan 6, mental decline, etc. Combined with the democrats are so self defeating and they also repeatedly poked at trade issues (the loooooong running softwood lumber disputes, Keystone XL, "buy American" provisions that ignored NAFTA/USMCA for projects that were going ahead w/o the provisions, etc).
We know what populism is (we've experienced and are experiencing it ourselves) and know that it is usually fleeting, but we don't trust another "smarter" nativist president to come along and screw us again.
Also, there's an internal game going on here. Canada has (institutionally) took the "easy" way out of controversial projects, often due to our proximity to the US. This has meant that when some projects run into a greater than normal amount of political resistance (eg environmental fights against pipelines or LNG terminals), the default has usually been to back off. But Trump has in a way given cover to actually move forward.
I don't expect the next president to "cave" so easily. Even before he was sworn in, republicans had their messaging in full swing against Obama about the deficit. I fully expect the same thing to hammer the next president on trade if they're a democrat.
Current day politics are about polarization. More so than ever. There is no room for nuance. This is what worked for Trump and this is what worked for Carney and the Liberals in Canada. The Liberals didn't win on some brilliant policies they simply won on anti-American feelings.
This is not a statement on who is right or wrong. There are certainly many aspects of Trump's behaviour here that most would say are wrong. The problem is when we lose nuance and debate we can't make progress. But a leader in today's world that introduces nuance loses to the leader that polarizes. Dragging us all down.