Today’s quote – and I am truly embarrassed for the people of Canada to say this – comes to us from Canada’s Prime Minister, Mark Carney.
It seems that Prime Minister Carney is miffed about the fact that President Trump is not ok with continuing trade policies that heavily favor Canada at the expense of United States interests, and wants them to be more evened out – with Canada still getting highly favorable treatment compared to other countries. And since Carney resisted, Mr. Trump has threatened the use of tariffs to make this happen.
So how is Mr. Carney reacting to President Trump’s insistence on a revised, closer to evenhanded trade balance…and the fact that (very childishly, I acknowledge) he ordered that we change the name for Lake Ontario to Lake America?
Here is your answer, in his own words:
“…There’s a positive opportunity that has always existed with the United States for a mutually beneficial trade deal that respects Canadian sovereignty…and when the Americans stop doing memes, stop throwing shade, stop trying to be tough and start being serious about having those discussions we can have those discussions. Look it’s not constructive but that’s their democracy.”
Doing memes? Throwing shades????? What is this man talking about?
Rather than try to make sense of the above comments, I’ll let two Trump appointees do the talking.
First, Commerce Secreteary Howard Lutnick:
“We negotiated and Canada was going to have the best trade deal in the world. And what happened was that Canada walked away — we had a deal, we shook hands, the president announced it, right? And everybody was positive. Canada made the decision for political purposes. They wanted to walk away. This is politics only.”
Second, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent:
“You know, look, I think this is very unfortunate that Prime Minister Carney has turned this into a political shouting match. I mean, we’re not at war with Canada.
“How are we going to be at war with Canada? What, they’re going to take their two submarines from the Edmonton Mall and sic ’em on us?
“That, you know, he came to power on an anti-American, anti-Trump agenda. He was 20-points behind in the polls, and then he started this. And it’s unfortunate that he’s not doing what’s best for the Canadian people, he’s doing what is best for the Liberal Party, what’s best for Mark Carney, and in the long run, the Canadian people are going to see through that.
“And you know, I will say that they were offered the best trade deal of any any country on the globe. And he chose to walk away from it at the last minute.”
To the Trump-hating crowd – and let’s acknowledge that it certainly is a large crowd – Prime Minister Carney’s decision, and his “reasons” for it (if you can call them reasons), might make some kind of sense.
As for me? I award Mark Carney Quote Of The Day “honors” for managing to contort his dislike of Trump – whether real or politically motivated – into a screwing over of the Canadian economy.
We don’t see that very often, but here it is right in front of our eyes.
Way to go, Mark….
