It started with a dinner at Mar-a-Lago.
In reality, if we wanted to go all the way back to the beginning, we could point to the acrimonious relationship between Donald Trump and Justin Trudeau in the first Trump administration. We could point to Trump calling Trudeau two-faced after the G7 meeting in Charlevoix, the hot mic moment with BoJo and Macron, or the many times Trump and Trudeau traded barbs.
For now though, I want to focus on how we ended up on the brink of a trade war that could escalate even further this week.
And for that, we start late last year in Florida.
Yes, Trump started the trade war — he even telegraphed it with his post to Truth Social on November 25, 2024.
I remember seeing that post go up and deciding that I had to visit the Forex that night to exchange currency. A few days later I was heading out on a trip to Florida to celebrate my mother’s 80th birthday, and I was sure the dollar would tank at the news.
It didn’t, but I clearly wasn’t the only one spooked by Trump’s words on Canada.
On November 29, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau rushed to Mar-a-Lago to pay Donald Trump a visit. He had Dominic LeBlanc, his fixer and still the man on the border issue for Carney, and Katie Telford, his chief of staff, accompanying him.
At the time, I thought it was a good idea for Trudeau to make the trip. Meeting people and building relationships goes a long way to smoothing over differences.
Unfortunately, as we would learn from Fox News a few days later, Trudeau delivered the wrong message. He told Trump that imposing tariffs would cripple Canada, he showed weakness in the face of a lion, and then things went south.
Trudeau told Trump he cannot levy the tariff because it would kill the Canadian economy completely. Trump replied – asking, so your country can’t survive unless it’s ripping off the U.S. to the tune of $100 billion?
Trump then suggested to Trudeau that Canada become the 51st state, which caused the prime minister and others to laugh nervously, sources told Fox News.
That was before Trump even took office.
Since then, we’ve had a federal government that shut down in the middle of a crisis, a federal election campaign decided on who could be more anti-American, and we elected a PM who promised a deal and couldn’t get one.
It turns out that Mark Carney is the type of leader who talks tough when Donald Trump isn’t in the room and and acts embarrassingly when the president is in the room. We have botched our own trade deals more than once, and we have surrendered cards we could be playing without getting anything in return.
Make no mistake, Donald Trump started this trade war — though whether we should call it a trade war is a legitimate question — but at several points this could have all been settled if we were not our own worst enemy.
That’s the case that I will make here.
Yes, there is a paywall here, this is a long and in-depth, multimedia piece. Feel free to upgrade if you wish.
