President Donald Trump’s ongoing trade war with Canada has not only split his own Republican Party, it has revealed that he has lost what one writer described as a “superhuman ability” — much to his political detriment.
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“Throughout his political career, Trump’s signature skill has been to drive the conversation where he wanted it to go. He declares victory when things have not been won,” wrote Slate’s Ben Jacobs on Monday. “He ducks attribution with the rhetorical tic ‘many people are saying,’ frequently followed by things that people are decidedly not saying. He posts outrageous graphics on social media. And, of course, he renames things: Political opponents get nicknames, buildings get Trump’s name, and bodies of water get America’s name.”
Pointing out that Trump used to be able to commandeer the news cycle with his controversies, and thereby rally his base behind him, he failed to do so by changing Lake Ontario’s name to Lake America as a way of taking a swipe at Canada.
“It’s a move we’ve seen before. Immediately upon taking office in 2025, Trump decreed that the Gulf of Mexico would be renamed the Gulf of America,” Jacobs observed. “It was a quick and easy troll for a president who had taken office blaming Mexico for illegal immigration and touting the need to build a wall.”
Instead his reference to “Lake America” has, according to Jacobs, become an “instant political shibboleth.”
“In the meantime, nothing has changed about Lake Ontario,” Jacobs continued. “The water from Niagara Falls still flows down into it and it all still drains down the St. Lawrence River into the Atlantic Ocean. Nothing has changed with the trade war between the United States and Canada either. The only thing that will have changed will be a handful of government maps and, of course, the Canadian public’s view of Trump and the United States, which has only somehow gotten worse.”
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He concluded, “And, of course, Trump was able to drive the news. But not for weeks or even days. Just for a few minutes on a Thursday afternoon in August.”
Trump’s trade war with Canada has only hurt Americans, as the back-and-forth tariffs are increasing prices on hundreds of goods on which America relies. As economist and President Bill Clinton adviser Dr. Robert J. Shapiro told AlterNet earlier in August, “Just this week, Trump announced 50 percent tariffs on our largest trading partner, Canada, which will further increase inflation.”
As Trump’s belligerence toward Canada has increased, Canada’s leaders have vowed to double down on their tariffs, and in particular targeting Americans from states who supported the president in his election campaigns.
“It’s not a surprise that the US would take some form of reprisal to our response to their unjustified tariffs,” Prime Minister Mark Carney, a member of the center-left Liberal Party, recently announced. “But what message does that send to the workers in Michigan and Ohio and Kentucky and Alabama who rely on Canadian demand? We’re their largest customer for automobiles, more than the European Union, Japan, Korea.”
Ontario Premier Doug Ford, who is part of the rival center-right Progressive Conservative Party, also promised that “the red states, we’re going to hit hard.”
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