Call it Impulsive, Call it Compulsive, Call it Insane

In today’s episode of Trump’s bully negotiating, Trump figured out that tariffs will add thousands of dollars to the price of a car, something everybody else already knew. So, after a call with the big three automakers, he decided to delay the tariffs by one month.

Nothing’s going to change in a month — the supply chains that require parts and partially finished assemblies to travel all over North America can’t be remade in four weeks. So Trump clearly wants Canada and Mexico to have a Groundhog Day experience on April 1 where he’ll once again threaten something and then pull back. In other words, he wants to be the main character, and he expects our North American neighbors to be walk-ons with a couple of lines.

This is insanity, and since Mexico has (wisely) delayed their retaliatory tariffs show until the weekend, Canada is leading the response. Finance Minister Dominic LeBlanc told the CBC that Canada is not interested in “meeting in the middle” on tariffs. This is absolutely the right answer, and I hope that Canada can stick with it. Jack Daniels’ distiller Brown-Forman is already whining about Canadians taking their liquor off the shelves. Even Alberta, Canada’s Texas, is taking US liquor off the shelves, and Premier Danielle Smith, who was once MAGA-curious, is now advising the citizens of her benighted province to stop buying US products.

Canada has a new slogan: “elbows up,” which is a hockey term (of course) indicating that a fight is imminent. That link goes to a CBC story about the “menopause mafia” — older women protesting in Ottawa.

The fact that Canada is so united at this moment is despite their leadership undergoing a transition, sparked by Chrystia Freeland quitting as Finance Minister when Justin Trudeau asked her to step aside for Mark Carney, the former Bank of Canada Governor. Dominic LeBlanc is Justin’s former babysitter and long-time friend. He is supposed to be a caretaker, but we’re at a point in Canadian politics where anyone with a modicum of political sense could do what’s necessary: oppose, strongly. The Liberal leadership election to replace JT is happening now, and it will be over on March 9. A new prime minister, probably Carney, will be picked then.

Hopefully the new PM will have some of the strong “fuck you” energy that Joseph Phillipe Pierre Yves Eliot Trudeau had. This guy went months without talking to the media after they pissed him off. His work on the Constitution of Canada, and his opposition to attempts to weaken it, make him arguably one of the key movers in the formation of the modern Canadian state. His boy is finding that spirit now, and hopefully Mark Carney will carry it forward.

I’m sure I’ll have full coverage of whatever Mexico does over the weekend, but until then, let’s turn to Europe. French President Emmanuel Macron just appeared on French TV to say that France and Europe must help Ukraine until a peace is negotiated. He told his country to prepare for tariffs. He also said that he’d consider extending France’s nuclear umbrella to other European countries.

Macron is in charge of a nuclear power with a significant army, navy and air force. Trudeau’s replacement will govern a country with the 9th-largest GDP. Claudia Sheinbaum is the very popular leader of a country with 130 million people. These are not a bunch of contractors that Trump can push around. It’s a fundamental political fact that once a country has decided that their sovereignty is more important than any other factor, that any leader who tries to bargain that away is a sure loser.

He’s not the main character in those countries’ lives. In fact, his position is precarious if prices go up, unemployment goes up, and the stock market continues to take a shit. These leaders know it, and they’re going to act accordingly.