Prime Minister Mark Carney of Canada is the smartest, most effective, and by far the most capable leader of any democracy anywhere in the world not named Zelensky. Let us pray that the test that would allow a direct comparison never comes.
Donald Trump has been president for 577 days.
Prime Minister Carney’s statement below is from day 576:
Over the past 18 months, Canada’s new government has focused on building our strength at home, diversifying our partnerships abroad, and striking a fair deal with the United States.
Our objectives in our trade negotiations have been to:
Preserve tariff-free access to the U.S. for the vast majority of Canadian business;
Provide greater stability to our trade relationship;
Significantly reduce U.S. tariffs on our key strategic industries, so that Canadian businesses in these sectors would have the best access of any in the world;
Protect our small and medium-sized businesses – the lifeblood of our economy – including by removing the imminent threat of new tariffs; and
Maintain our flexibility, independence, and sovereignty so we can keep building the Canada we want.
We have recognised from the beginning that America has changed, and that we will not return to our old relationship. Our government understood, before many, that America is altering all its trade relationships. Putting tariffs on its closest allies and charging for access to its vast market.
We have worked in that context. To strike a fair deal that would provide the best access to the U.S. market and greater certainty to Canadian businesses and workers. Throughout, our goal has been to secure the best deal for Canadians, never a deal at any price or on any deadline.
In recent weeks, we made important progress toward improving Canada’s position as having the best deal in the world with the U.S.
However, that progress has not been enough to meet our objectives for Canadians. As a result, this evening, I have decided to suspend trade negotiations with the U.S. and have directed Canada’s negotiators to return to Ottawa. They have worked hard, in good faith, to defend the interests of Canadians throughout these negotiations up until the very last minute. However, last-minute changes in the U.S. proposed terms were unfair, uneconomic, and called into question the reliability of any deal.
At midnight tonight, the U.S. intends to impose a 50% tariff on roughly $28 billion of Canadian goods. Canada will match those tariffs dollar for dollar to protect our workers and businesses.
In the coming days, the government will introduce additional measures to support Canadian workers and businesses, building on the nearly $25 billion in support provided over the past 18 months.
These actions complement Canada’s core economic strategy. From day one, we have been focused on building our strength at home and diversifying our partnerships abroad.
That strategy is working. We are advancing nearly $500 billion in major infrastructure projects. In parallel, we are unlocking new export markets for Canadian businesses. Our existing free trade deals already provide Canada with preferential access to 1.5 billion consumers, and we are on track to double that market access by the end of this year.
Canadian economic growth is accelerating, and we are on course to have the second-fastest growth in the G7 over the next two years. Our economy is creating jobs at four times the rate of the United States. Our exports to non-U.S. markets are on track to double over the next decade. Foreign direct investment in Canada is at its highest level in two decades, running at twice the rate of our nearest G7 competitor. Canada now ranks as the most attractive country in the world for infrastructure investment.
Canada has what the world wants. And we will not allow any nation to determine our future. We will set our own course to keep building Canada strong for all.
At the core, for Americans this is a moral issue, and should be understood as such.
Canada is our neighbor, ally and indispensable partner. The insults, aggressions and threats are a stain on the United States, the American people and our character.
What is happening is appalling and profoundly wrong — not to mention supremely stupid and self-defeating.
Trump’s threats must be met in the spirit from which they came.
When Trump’s insanity against Canada commenced I wrote the following. It is from 12 days after he became president for a second time:
My friends, this is vile.
In fact, it is evil.
They are the words of a Putin or Xi.
They are the words of international gangsterism and thuggery.
These are the words of a Hitler.
They are the words of the president of the United States, and they are a repugnant.
These are the words of expansionism and tyranny.
These are the words of derangement. The screams of delight from his menacing mob do not change the core of the issue firmly in front of us at the edge of national dishonor and terrible sins.
Donald Trump is playing a dangerous and immoral game.
King Donald has either offered us all incontrovertible evidence of mental illness, marked by violent delusions, or made a real threat to destroy the peace between two great nations on a shared continent that coexist across the longest undefended border in world history.
What do you think it is?
What Donald Trump is doing is attempting to take something that he has no right to take.
The American people did not elect Donald Trump to wage economic war against Canada and take military action against Denmark, Panama and Mexico.
Remember this when thinking about the Canadian nation.
It was the country in which an American slave could breathe free air.
Trump will debase our nation in a thousand different ways, and while all of his insanity should be opposed, there are some assaults that must be opposed by the American people with vigor and resolve.
Next I wrote:
Memory is a good thing. Remember this:
When The Warning began I said it was my goal to help you observe and orient to the great events unfolding around us so that you could decide and act.
President Teddy Roosevelt, awakened from the dead and briefed for 10 minutes, would know precisely what was happening today, because he understood the elemental harmony required to maintain what has always fallen.
Mostly, our politics has been stripped of any capacity to convey complicated concepts or ideas. It has been thoroughly idiotized by a corrupt corporate media political media industrial complex that has reduced the capacities of the American people to maintain their liberty.
This is tragic and dangerous.
Teddy Roosevelt delivered an incredible address to the New York State Agricultural Association in Syracuse, New York, on September 7, 1903:
Many qualities are needed by a people which would preserve the power of self- government in fact as well as in name.
Among these qualities are forethought, shrewdness, self-restraint, the courage which refuses to abandon one’s own rights, and the disinterested and kindly good sense which enables one to do justice to the rights of others.
Lack of strength and lack of courage and unfit men for self-government on the one hand; and on the other, brutal arrogance, envy- in short, any manifestation of the spirit of selfish disregard, whether of one’s own duties or of the rights of others, are equally fatal.
In the history of mankind many republics have risen, have flourished for a less or greater time, and then have fallen because their citizens lost the power of governing themselves and thereby of governing their state; and in no way has this loss of power been so often and so clearly shown as in the tendency to turn the government into a government primarily for the benefit of one class instead of a government for the benefit of the people as a whole.
Again and again in the republics of ancient Greece, in those of medieval Italy and medieval Flanders, this tendency was shown, and wherever the tendency became a habit it invariably and inevitably proved fatal to the state. In the final result, it mattered not one whit whether the movement was in favor of one class or of another.
The outcome was equally fatal, whether the country fell into the hands of a wealthy oligarchy which exploited the poor or whether it fell under the domination of a turbulent mob which plundered the rich.
In both cases there resulted violent alternations between tyranny and disorder, and a final complete loss of liberty to all citizens--destruction in the end overtaking the class which had for the moment been victorious as well as that which had momentarily been defeated.
The death-knell of the Republic had rung as soon as the active power became lodged in the hands of those who sought, not to do justice to all citizens, rich and poor alike, but to stand for one special class and for its interests as opposed to the interests of others.
Over the last two years, I have had many Canadian friends ask questions with the deepest confusion, sadness and pain.
Why is this happening? Why is the United States threatening Canada?
It is happening because the American Republic is collapsing.
It is being destroyed from within, as Lincoln predicted in 1838:
At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.
This is a moment of burning, smashing and casual nihilism. Donald Trump, filled with rage, is dismantling the world that emerged from the ashes when freedom barely survived the war with slavery.
When it was over, far better and wiser people than Donald Trump imagined a new one into being that is being murdered in plain day.
This hour has long been dreaded and prophesied, but it has arrived.
Fascism has come to America, and it is wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross.
There is a better path.
While Trump attacks Canada, let the people of goodwill in these two essential nations not become divided from what unites us under the deliberate attempts to divide us both.
Heed the words of Harry Truman before the Canadian Parliament in 1947.
This is what Trump wants to snuff out:
Free men everywhere know that the purpose of the United States is to restore the world to health and to reestablish conditions under which the common people of the earth can work out their salvation by their own efforts.
We seek a ‘peaceful world, a prosperous world, a free world, a world of good neighbors, living on terms of equality and mutual respect, as Canada and the United States have lived for generations.
We intend to expend our energies and invest our substance in promoting world recovery by assisting those who are able and willing to make their maximum contribution to the same cause.
We intend to support those who are determined to govern themselves in their own way, and who honor the right of others to do likewise.
We intend to aid those who seek to live at peace with their neighbors, without coercing or being coerced, without intimidating or being intimidated.
We intend to uphold those who respect the dignity of the individual, who guarantee to him equal treatment under the law, and who allow him the widest possible liberty to work out his own destiny and achieve success to the limit of his capacity.
We intend to cooperate actively and loyally with all who honestly seek, as we do, to build a better world in which mankind can live in peace and prosperity.
We count Canada in the forefront of those who share these objectives and ideals.
With such friends we face the future unafraid.
Here is what Dwight Eisenhower said about the contributions of the Canadian National to the rise of humanity in a fallen world in 1953.
As I stand before you, my thoughts go back to the days of global war.
In that conflict, and then through the more recent savage and grievous Korean battles, the Canadian people have been valorous champions of freedom for mankind.
Within the framework of NATO, in the construction of new patterns for international security, in the lengthy and often toilsome exploration of a regional alliance, they have been patient and wise devisers of a stout defense for the Western world.
Canada, rich in natural gifts, far richer in human character and genius, has earned the gratitude and the affectionate respect of all who cherish freedom and seek peace.
After a long and difficult slog north from Boston, General Benedict Arnold discovered much to his dismay that His Majesty’s loyal subjects had no interest whatsoever in joining the colonial uprising.
He retreated, and today, near a charming coffee shop in Quebec City, there is a marker that notes the failed American invasion of Canada.
During the first half of the 19th century the great European powers competed against each other for the riches and spoils of the North American continent.
The newly formed United States quickly became the dominant continental power, expanding westward and south, at the expense of Spain, France and Mexico.
The dominant ideology of the era was called “Manifest Destiny,” and it claimed a divinity that mandated the United States expand until she was a continental nation as much a Pacific as an Atlantic empire.
It was American expansion that fueled the inevitable civil war over an irreconcilable issue that had been postponed, but not resolved. Slavery would cause the greatest and most deadly war in American history.
By the mid-point of the 19th century, only the British remained entrenched in North America.
The border that runs along the 49th parallel was fixed in 1846 after years of American bluster that included the infamous campaign slogan of “54-40 or fight!” which would have annexed most every inch of present day British Columbia as part of the Oregon territory, and made Vancouver an American city.
Sometimes our modern era and its comforts, which include relatively easy access to every inch of North America obscure how new the discovery of every inch is.
The US Army was still mapping west Texas mountains in the second decade of the 20th century. Maps of the Pacific Northwest were sketchy, to say the least, in 1846. The last and best maps of the region were drawn by George Vancouver and they were incomplete.
The boundary line was disputed because in reality there were two possible straits through which it could be drawn.
The first is present day Rosario Strait that runs through the San Juan Islands.
The second is Haro Strait that separates the San Juan Islands from Vancouver Island. What this meant as a practical matter was that the last unsettled land dispute between the British and the United States was over idyllic and beautiful little San Juan Island.
The negotiations over the joint claims of sovereignty continued at a languid pace through the 1850s with neither side willing to budge off their claims.
By the end of the decade, the Hudson Bay Company had set up shop and there were upwards of 50 American farmers on the island.
One of them was named Lyman Cutlar, a beet farmer. While likely untrue, it is claimed that in the year 1859, Mr. Lyman Cutler, American, said the following to Mr. Charles Griffin, manager of the Hudson Bay Sheep Ranch, loyal subject of the King and nascent Canadian:
“It was eating my potatoes,” to which Mr. Griffin replied,” It is up to you to keep your potatoes out of my pig.”
Of course these positions are completely irreconcilable, and therefore it was war. The Pig War to be exact.
The two farmers could not agree on compensation for the pig, and so Royal Marines were sent to arrest the American farmer who was soon protected by scores of American soldiers. Both sides set up camp on opposite sides of the island and got ready for battle.
Within a short span of time the situation escalated completely out of control until there were hundreds of heavily armed American soldiers and Royal Marines spoiling to provoke the other into firing the first shot.
George Pickett, a Virginian who graduated last in his West Point class, and would lead his divisions into complete annihilation during “Pickett’s charge” at the battle of Gettysburg four years later, was the American commander.
Eventually word reached horrified officials in London and Washington that war was about to break out over a small island in the Pacific Northwest.
The situation was quickly de-escalated, and the American and British forces decamped to opposite ends of the island where they quickly settled into a peaceful island lifestyle filled with sports, competition and all manner of socializing.
Yet, the sovereignty of the islands remained in dispute.
Ultimately, both sides submitted the matter to international arbitration and both agreed that the wisest statesman of the time should hear the case.
Of course that was Kaiser Wilhelm, and in the end, he awarded the islands to the United States, and set the boundary lines for what had become the longest, peaceful border in the history of humanity.
Each day, American park rangers raise and lower the British Flag over their old camp with full honors. It is one of the few places on Earth where a foreign flag is raised and lowered by Americans like that.
It is done to denote respect, affection and our shared story.
There were many consequences from the Pig War, including a growing unease with decision-making from far away London.
One of the results of the dissatisfaction was manifested on this day, July 1, 1867. Three colonies became the Dominion of Canada, and the world became a better one.
Every American should appreciate the giant country that spans the North American continent from the Atlantic to the Pacific and from the Rocky Mountains to the Arctic.
She is the world’s oldest bilingual, pluralistic, parliamentary democracy and a force for human dignity, rights and liberty around the world.
Wherever the Canadian maple leaf flies, it is as a symbol of tolerance, freedom and equality.
Canadians and Americans have fought and died with each other from the killing fields of the First World War, Normandy Beach, the Pacific, Korea and Afghanistan. Our peoples have married and raised families together (including me) that have strengthened the bonds between our countries.
We share sports leagues and a vast economy that trades more than a trillion dollars a year across the most prosperous border in the world.
The bonds between America and Canada are unbreakable.
More than 50,000 Canadians volunteered to serve in the US Armed Forces during the Vietnam War.
Canadians rescued scores of Americans during the Iranian hostage crisis in 1980, and sheltered thousands during the terrifying hours of 9/11.
Canadians are our friends, colleagues, partners and spouses.
They are our family, and we are theirs.
The Canadian nation is 41 million strong and growing. It is a land of great and modern cities filled with the energy of new immigrants.
It is a country of ephemeral beauty.
The birth of Canada is among the most momentous events in human history for it means a land where justice, peace and prosperity was born.
Let us understand that the Second Pig War is at hand.
Once again, it has been started by a pig.
A pig named Trump.
This pig has done something most indecent.
He has raised his hand against Canada. Every American should reflect with the deepest shame.
I stand with Canada because I am an American patriot. I will not accept this shame without comment, protest or fighting back against it.
Neither should you.
Congress went home, the Senate cleared out, and “Dead Air” is taking a little break — but we’re not leaving you alone with the news. Today at 12 pm ET, we’re digging into the “Dead Air” archives for EAT THE PRESS, a best-of collection featuring some of our favorite media meltdowns and moments from the past few months. Trump walks off “Meet the Press” in Wisconsin; we take on the disaster that was the White House Correspondents’ Dinner — twice; Scott Pelley enters the chat; and Kristen Welker gets the “Dead Air” treatment. Then, as a much-needed palate cleanser, we’re bringing back our conversation with Marshan Camese, aka Nola the Progressive, who lit up the internet and will be back with us in September. Tune in to relive some of our favorite media meltdowns, press disasters, and moments from the past few months.
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