The U.S. and Canada have agreed to a 30-day pause in the trade war that Donald Trump still seems eager to start, he claims over fentanyl and immigration, but today he added banking to his list of grievances.
The pause comes with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau talking up a $1.3 billion plan that had been on the table since December to strengthen the border and appoint a fentanyl czar.
What the U.S. gets: among other things, the billions of dollars of sales of U.S. liquor to Canada that the country was threatening to cut off.
Elon Musk, if he counts as being on the U.S. side, also gets a pause in the cancellation of a $100 million contract with Ontario for his Starlink satellite service.
Wow, that Trump guy, he sure drives a hard bargain.
(Eye roll.)
ICYMI
Opposition Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre had been pushing internally for the measures talked up today by Trudeau, so in essence, Trump put billions of dollars of business for U.S. companies on the brink to get something that was happening anyway, without him trolling Canada with tariffs and continuing his nonsense about the country becoming the 51st U.S. state.
“It’s different as a state, it’s much different, and there are no tariffs, so I’d love to see that, but some people say that would be a long shot,” Trump said, showing, again, his lack of depth.
“If people wanted to play the game right, it would be 100 percent certain that they’d become a state. But a lot of people don’t like to play the game because they don’t have a threshold of pain. And there would be some pain, but not a lot. The pain would be really theirs,” Trump said.
Notably, even Poilievre, nominally on Trump’s side, philosophically, as a conservative, is making clear that the 51st state thing is a non-starter.
“Canada is an independent country. We will never be the 51st state, and we will have a strong and independent country,” Poilievre said.
The nonsense complaints about banking – Trump complained on social media that American banks “are not allowed to do business in Canada” – are the latest non sequitur from the Trump/Musk administration.
The Canadian Bankers Association responded to Trump on that, in a statement confirming that there are 16 U.S.-based bank subsidiaries and branches with around $113 billion (CDN) in assets currently operating in Canada.
“These banks specialize in a range of financial services, including corporate and commercial lending, treasury services, credit card products, investment banking and mortgage financing,” the association said in the statement. “They serve not only customers with cross-border business activities, but also Canada’s domestic retail market. U.S. banks now make up half of all foreign bank assets in Canada.”
I wouldn’t call this one over and done with, is how I’ll wrap this up.
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Chris Graham
