A fake deal announced on Truth Social, and a midnight rewrite by the dumbest trade team in American history. Mark Carney looked at all of it and said no. And the country stood up and cheered.
August 22, 2026
Let me tell you what happened last night, because the American networks are already spinning it into “both sides blame each other” mush, and it’s bullshit.
Here’s what happened and why I’m VERY proud to be Canadian today:
At 11:00 p.m. Friday, Jamieson Greer, Donald Trump’s trade representative, got on a press call with his tail between his legs and said Canada “declined to finalize” a trade deal. At 11:30, Mark Carney released a statement saying that the Americans had changed the terms at the last minute; the changes were “unfair, uneconomic,” and Canada’s negotiators were already on a plane home to Ottawa. At 12:01 a.m., Trump’s 50 percent tariffs on $28 billion of Canadian goods went live.
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Bảo tồn quyền truy cập miễn thuế vào thị trường Hoa Kỳ cho đại đa số các doanh nghiệp Canada;
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Mang lại sự ổn định lớn hơn cho mối quan hệ thương mại của hai nước;
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Giảm đáng kể thuế quan của Hoa Kỳ đối với các ngành công nghiệp chiến lược then chốt của chúng tôi, để các doanh nghiệp Canada trong các lĩnh vực này có được quyền truy cập tốt nhất so với bất kỳ quốc gia nào trên thế giới;
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Bảo vệ các doanh nghiệp vừa và nhỏ — mạch máu của nền kinh tế chúng tôi — bao gồm cả việc loại bỏ mối đe dọa trực tiếp từ các mức thuế mới; và
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Duy trì sự linh hoạt, độc lập và chủ quyền của chúng tôi để có thể tiếp tục xây dựng một đất nước Canada mà chúng tôi mong muốn.
Canada is matching them dollar for dollar. Doug Ford, who spent the week getting ready to put Jack Daniel’s back on LCBO shelves as a goodwill gesture, was on X within the hour: “The prime minister has my full support for a strong response. Tariff for tariff, dollar for dollar.”
That’s Doug Ford. Conservative premier. Backing a Liberal prime minister. Within the hour. If you want to know how united this country is right now, that’s your answer.
This was never a negotiation. It was a hostage video with a clown in the frame.
Last month Trump dug up Section 338 of the Tariff Act of 1930. Smoot-Hawley. The law every economics textbook on earth uses as the example of how to turn a recession into the Great Depression. No American president in 96 years had been stupid enough to use it. Trump pointed it at Canada.
Fifty percent. On hockey sticks. On plywood. On cement, dairy, furniture, clothing, whisky and fishing rods. Effective Wednesday at 12:01 a.m.
And look at what he left out. Energy. Potash. Critical minerals. Everything America can’t survive a winter without got a hall pass. Everything that puts a Canadian kid’s dad out of work in Hamilton or Trois-Rivières or Prince George got hammered. That isn’t trade policy. That’s a bully picking the kid he thinks won’t swing back.
Tuesday night, less than two hours before his own deadline, Trump went on Truth Social and announced in capital letters that Canada and the U.S. “have a DEAL!” Subject to “finalization of documents.” He pushed the tariffs three days. He said Keystone XL “may be awoken from the grave.” This is the President of the United States announcing international trade agreements the way a drunk uncle announces he’s buying a boat.
Trump Says There’s a Trade Deal With Canada. There Isn’t One Yet. Here’s Where We Actually Are.
August 20, 2026
Wednesday morning, Greer told reporters the administration was “confident that we’ve reached an agreement.”
There was no agreement. There was a framework with holes you could drive a Kenworth through. The Americans said they’d drop the steel tariff from 50 to 25 percent, and nobody, including our own trade minister, could get a straight answer on whether that applied to all Canadian steel or only to whatever sliver the Americans decided to let in under a quota they controlled. Manitoba’s steelmakers were already on the record saying it wasn’t enough.
What they actually wanted from us
Here’s the ask, in plain English, because the U.S. press won’t print it this clearly.
Washington wanted Canada to kill its retaliatory tariffs on American cars. They wanted changes to how dairy licences are issued under supply management, a system that every party in the House of Commons voted unanimously to protect. They wanted every province to put American liquor back on the shelves. They wanted every province to scrap Buy Canadian procurement rules. And according to the Globe and Mail, they dragged the F-35 purchase, imaginary Golden Dome missile defence, critical minerals and oil exports onto the table under the banner of a “national security partnership.”
So the deal was: hand over dairy, hand over your auto retaliation, hand over your provinces, hand over your defence procurement, hand over your minerals, and in return the United States will go from crushing your steel industry to merely strangling it.
And Carney still tried. That’s the part people should understand. He went to the premiers this week and asked them to restock American booze and wind down the procurement bans because that’s what the other side said it needed to close. Quebec said it was analyzing it. Ontario was ready to go. Canada moved. In good faith. With a government that had already spent $25 billion cushioning workers from this maniac’s tantrums.
Good faith does not exist in the United States government in any capacity whatsoever. Trump just wanted to punish us. The fact we played along, actually, bothers me.
Trump Doesn’t Want a Deal. He Wants Canadians On Their Knees.
July 21, 2026
Friday, LeBlanc, chief negotiator Janice Charette, the PM’s chief of staff Marc-André Blanchard and our ambassador Mark Wiseman sat in Greer’s office by the White House from the afternoon into the night. Right up to the wire.
And then, with the clock running out, the American numbers moved.
A U.S. official briefing the Globe admitted it came down to “one or two of the tariffed sectors,” and that Canada wanted more relief than Washington would give. Read that the way it actually reads. Canada gave on its side. The Americans then changed their side. Then they went on a press call and blamed us for “new demands and walkbacks.”
I know which of those two governments has lied to my face every minute of every day of every week for 18 months. It isn’t the one run by the guy who steered two G7 central banks through two global crises.
The indictment
Let’s lay out the record of the Trump regime on Canada, because this is the most incompetent, dishonest foreign economic policy any American administration has ever run against an ally.
They signed USMCA. Trump negotiated it. Trump called it the greatest deal in history. Trump put his own signature on it. Then this year Trump refused to renew it, shoved it into rolling review purgatory, and imposed Section 338 tariffs that Carney correctly called a “direct violation” of Trump’s own agreement. The man is in breach of contract with himself.
They blew up talks in 2025 over a digital services tax. Canada killed the tax. The tariffs kept coming.
They threatened to double steel and aluminum to 50 percent in March of last year, backed off for a day when Ford threatened to turn off the electricity to Minnesota, Michigan and New York, and then did it anyway.
They spent a year telling Canadians they should be the 51st state, then acted shocked when Canadians stopped buying their bourbon.
They announced a deal on a Tuesday that their own trade representative could not produce by Friday.
And now, before the ink is dry on last night’s collapse, a U.S. official is already telling reporters that Trump will be handed “options to escalate” if Canada retaliates. They’re gaming the next punch while still claiming they wanted a handshake.
This is not a trade strategy. This is a confused 80-year-old man who thinks tariffs are paid by the other country, surrounded by yes-men who are too scared to tell him what day it is, running the largest economy on earth like a failing casino. And the American Chamber of Commerce knows it. They put out a statement this week warning these tariffs would raise prices for American families and endanger 13 million American jobs tied to the North American trade pact. Trump did it anyway.
Mark Carney, ladies and gentlemen
Here’s what a prime minister with a spine looks like.
He didn’t take the bait Tuesday when Trump announced a deal that didn’t exist. His statement said “substantial progress” and “important work still to be done.” He never once said the word deal. He’s been in rooms with liars before. He knew.
TACO Tuesday: Trump Announced A “DEAL” With Canada. Carney Killed It In Under An Hour.
Trump TACO’d on Canada (on a Tuesday no less), lied about why, and got owned by Mark Carney in less than an hour.
He gave the Americans every chance to be serious. He moved the provinces. He sent his best people to Washington and kept them there until the last minute.
And when the Americans rewrote the terms after dark, he didn’t cave, didn’t beg, didn’t sign a blank page to make a deadline set by a lunatic. He sent the negotiators home, matched the tariffs dollar for dollar, and went to bed.
That is Canada’s giant brass balls on full display, and the country knows it. Gallup has roughly 80 percent of Canadians disapproving of the American leadership, the lowest number ever recorded. Polls all summer showed most Canadians didn’t want a single concession made to Trump. A Conservative premier endorsed the Liberal PM in under an hour. Wab Kinew in Manitoba said Fight. This isn’t a political moment. It’s a national one.
Carney’s statement had the receipts too. Nearly $25 billion in support for workers and businesses over 18 months. Close to $500 billion in infrastructure moving. Preferential access to 1.5 billion consumers through existing deals, on track to double by year-end. While Trump’s been screaming on social media, Canada has been building the exits.
Here’s the deal
Trump will wake up today, realize Canada didn’t blink, and post something unhinged about the 51st state. Greer will be sent out to mumble about walkbacks. Somebody at Commerce will draft the next tariff. There will be another deadline, another “DEAL!” in all caps, another midnight rewrite.
Ignore every word of it.
Pipelines east and west. Deals with Europe and Asia. Keep the American booze in the warehouse. Buy Canadian. Build Canadian. Ship Canadian. Let the people of Buffalo and Detroit and Minneapolis explain to their kids why a hockey stick costs 50 percent more this winter and why their President thinks that’s a win.
The same President whose economy has collapsed; bond markets are screaming while the US rushes to buy back debt to prevent the GREATEST DEPRESSION. At the same time, Trump’s approval rating is 32 percent in the US, compared to Canada’s 80 percent.
We don’t need to do the Regime any fucing favours, and now, we won’t. Carney is running out TRUMP’S clock. We didn’t need this deal for 15% of what’s left in CUSMA. The US did.
Not that it matters, but I’ve been right about all of this for one reason. Trump doesn’t want a deal; he just wants to punish Canada.
Now it’s our turn. Just wait. And no, I’m not sorry.