“So Trump has produced a revived government in Ottawa with a distinct mandate to fight him tooth and nail. But that’s not the only way he was a loser on Monday. It’s not at all unusual for politicians to rally domestic support by picking a fight with other countries; it’s a jingoistic political tale as old as time. In this case, there is zero evidence (outside the hardest core of MAGA loyalists) that Americans have rallied to Trump’s Canada-bashing cause. Au contraire, as they might say in Quebec …. If that’s not enough, the president’s persistent bullying of Canada has drawn extra attention to his single most unpopular economic policy initiative: the on-again, off-again trade war that has unsettled markets everywhere and convinced price-conscious Americans that inflation is about to make a comeback.”

— Ed Kilgore

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