{"id":17451,"date":"2025-07-23T07:36:06","date_gmt":"2025-07-23T07:36:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/17451\/"},"modified":"2025-07-23T07:36:06","modified_gmt":"2025-07-23T07:36:06","slug":"keep-it-up-nasty-canadians","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/17451\/","title":{"rendered":"Keep it up, nasty Canadians"},"content":{"rendered":"

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

The U.S. ambassador to Canada, Peter Hoekstra, called Canadians \u2018mean and nasty\u2019 for boycotting American products, including removing American liquor from store shelves.Chris Helgren\/Reuters<\/p>\n

When four Canada-friendly, non-MAGA U.S. senators came to Ottawa to meet Prime Minister Mark Carney<\/a> this week, Oregon\u2019s Ron Wyden advised Canada to de-escalate trade tensions by quickly making permanent changes to tax laws the U.S. doesn\u2019t like.<\/p>\n

But elsewhere, Donald Trump<\/a>\u2019s ambassador to Canada, Pete Hoekstra, said Canadians are \u201cmean and nasty\u201d<\/a> because they took U.S. liquor off store shelves and cancelled vacations south of the border.<\/p>\n

So which one do you think worries Mr. Trump more?<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not Canadian tax laws, or retaliatory tariffs \u2013 those are the things that the U.S. can push back on with threats of their own.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s the stuff Mr. Hoekstra, exhibiting a mind-boggling lack of self-awareness, calls \u201cnasty.\u201d It is Canadian customers rejecting U.S. products.<\/p>\n

There are talks on now to reach some kind of trade deal<\/a> with Mr. Trump\u2019s administration, with a supposed Aug. 1 deadline. But even if there is a deal, you can bet it won\u2019t be the end of trade disputes with Mr. Trump. The nasty things that Mr. Hoekstra complains about could be the best tool that Canada has.<\/p>\n

The U.S. President likes to brag that he\u2019s holding the cards, and there is truth to that, especially when it comes to government-to-government negotiations. The U.S. has the bigger market and an economy less dependent on trade. <\/p>\n

That\u2019s why Mr. Carney gave in last month and paused collection of Canada\u2019s digital services tax (DST)<\/a> when Mr. Trump broke off trade talks, citing the levy. It\u2019s why Ontario Premier Doug Ford caved on his March threat to add a 25-per-cent surcharge to electricity, after Mr. Trump said he\u2019d retaliate by raising steel tariffs to 50 per cent. (Mr. Trump later did that, anyway.)<\/p>\n

On Tuesday, Mr. Ford called for \u201cdollar-for-dollar\u201d retaliatory tariffs against the U.S., but other premiers were not so gung-ho.<\/p>\n

Yet the premiers \u2013 and Mr. Carney \u2013 did encourage the consumer boycotts: \u201cKeep it up,\u201d British Columbia Premier David Eby said.<\/p>\n

Good advice. And there is still zeal for it among Canadians.<\/p>\n

Tony Keller: Trump\u2019s trade policy is completely nonsensical, and entirely clear<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re not getting as much coverage in the Canadian media, but I keep my eyes on what the U.S. press is saying, and they are starting to really notice massive drops,\u201d said former New Democratic MP Charlie Angus, now a \u201cResistance\u201d ringleader who writes Substack essays and speaks at boycott rallies.<\/p>\n

U.S. alcohol sales have been hit. American exports of food to Canada amounted to US$28-billion in 2024, but Mr. Angus noted that some grocery stores pulled many U.S. products from their shelves. He argued that ordinary Canadians have more tools to pressure the U.S. than political leaders.<\/p>\n

Canadians expected Mark Carney to be a tough-talking, \u201cwartime\u201d prime minister, Mr. Angus said, but \u201cwe haven\u2019t seen that.\u201d But he also said he realizes Mr. Carney is trying to navigate the complexities of \u201cdealing with a gangster regime\u201d in Washington.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is where the power of the boycott is a unique political lever, because Mark Carney or Doug Ford or Daniel Smith can\u2019t tell people to stop the boycott,\u201d Mr. Angus said.<\/p>\n

The senators who met Mr. Carney on Monday \u2013 three Democrats and Alaska Republican Lisa Murkowski, a moderate swing vote in the U.S. Senate \u2013 declared their friendship and conceded that the boycott has had an impact. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe are seeing a decrease in the travel from Canadians to Nevada,\u201d Nevada Senator Catherine Cortez Masto said. New Hampshire Senator Maggie Hassan even said, \u201cWe miss you.\u201d<\/p>\n

That\u2019s nice. The senators had suggestions on how to settle the issue, such as Canada permanently rescinding the DST. But they didn\u2019t seem to include living up to past U.S. trade commitments \u2013 or stopping aggressive U.S. attacks on Canada\u2019s economy.<\/p>\n

Mr. Trump, after all, has said he wants the U.S. to imposes tariffs on Canadian autos so that it becomes uneconomical to make them in this country. That\u2019s pretty nasty. <\/p>\n

It isn\u2019t easy for Canadian political leaders to counter that kind of strong-arming. But Canadian consumers can have an impact as long as they keep being nasty.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Open this photo in gallery: The U.S. ambassador to Canada, Peter Hoekstra, called Canadians \u2018mean and nasty\u2019 for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":17452,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[49,15147,48,15148,44,714],"class_list":["post-17451","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-canada","tag-ca","tag-campbell-clark","tag-canada","tag-canadian-politics","tag-news","tag-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17451","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17451"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17451\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17452"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17451"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17451"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17451"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}