Trump’s unhinged proposal to take Gaza, “relocate” more than a million starving people to an unspecified locale, and turn their bombed homes into a resort for the wealthy didn’t go over well. Coming on the heels of his threats to Colombia, Panama, Mexico, Canada, Denmark, and Greenland, the civilized world is aghast at the madman at the helm, and has learned a new lesson from which the US may never recover: that America betrays her allies.
Anti-American forces, on the other hand, are giddy.
Russia and China can stop infiltrating our social media with bots—Trump is doing their work for them. Putin has long known that Trump and Musk would destroy the U.S. government from within while abandoning our allies, and he is elated as his hopes materialize. China’s Xi takes a more economically calculated approach but likes what he sees. Even Islamist militants will thank Trump for breathing new life into their Great Satan propaganda.
Trump follows a consistent playbook
No one knows how seriously to take Trump’s insanity. It could all be a non-stop ruse to distract while he robs the treasury as Musk dismantles it.
The tariff drama was merely put on hold, which means we have to watch Trump cosplay as a “strong negotiator” all over again in just 30 days.
Trump craves attention like an addict craves opioids, so he manufactures drama on a closed loop feed. At least the playbook is consistent: 1. Declare an emergency 2. Blame someone. 3. Coerce the blamed to do or say something, anything, even if it’s the same thing they’ve said or done for years, or will worsen the problem. 4. Declare victory, no less impressive for being hollow. 5. Watch Fox and the oligarch-owned media fawn.
Trump’s tariff drama was pointless
The Wall Street Journal editorial board leans consistently Republican in support of low taxes for the wealthy and barely-there regulations. Even they described Trump’s sloppy, across-the-board tariffs on Canada and Mexico as “The dumbest trade war in history.” They might have added, “for no legitimate reason.”
Trump’s tariff theatrics created chaos and uncertainty for two of our most important allies and trading partners. Stepping back from the brink, Trump claimed both countries made major concessions, no doubt calling him ‘Sir’ in the process, and agreed to delay the tariffs. Fox News fawned on cue, end of scene, on to the next act.
But about those concessions. Trump, declaring an “emergency” under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, demanded that Canada and Mexico do more to stop migrants and fentanyl from crossing the border. Both countries merely reiterated what they were already doing: Canada’s “concessions,” Prime Minister Trudeau announced to everyone outside the Fox bubble, were already in progress before Trump “demanded” them. Squeezing Canada at all, when Canada is responsible for under 1% of America’s fentanyl while Americans are 100% responsible for the demand, is next level stupid to begin with. Mexico, too, had already acted, having agreed to beef up border enforcement several years ago under the Biden administration and had already deployed 10,000 troops to the border.
None of these facts stopped Trump and Republicans from taking a victory lap, or the imbeciles at Fox News from cooing about a win that wasn’t.
Our neighbors brought a surgical scalpel to Trump’s rock fight
Canada and Mexico are our customers, as we are theirs. They are American farmers’ and American manufacturers’ biggest export destinations. Somehow, in smacking them with 25% across the board tariffs, Trump didn’t think they would smack us back, and he seemed surprised when they announced retaliatory tariffs of their own.
The takeaway from the whole fiasco is that our neighbors’ leaders are smarter and more mature than ours is, and not just because they played Trump’s ego with token concessions. They also responded to Trump’s Neanderthalic hammer attack with a surgeon’s scalpel.
Mexico and Canada had the good sense to not only coordinate their national responses, but to precisely aim them at GOP officials who are aiding and abetting Trump’s lunacy. Their retaliatory tariffs were joint, coordinated, and aimed at specific products exported from precise geographic regions in Republican-controlled states.
Canada listed 1,256 such items, including oranges and fruit from Ron DeSantis’ Florida; appliances from Lindsey Graham’s South Carolina; household goods from J.D. Vance’s Ohio; motorcycles and coffee from southern Pennsylvania (where voters supported Trump); food, agriculture products, textiles and furniture from Texas and Louisiana, along with Kentucky Bourbon and distilled spirits exported from southern states.
Their targeted response suggests our neighbors know more about our domestic politics than most Americans do. It’s oddly comforting to know the whole world isn’t getting stupid, it’s just us. Our neighbors are also aware that half the US loathes the felon-in-chief, while Republican senators fear him. When Trump runs out of other drama (he hasn’t threatened Asia yet) and re-starts the tariff fiasco, Mexico and Canada will hit southern states where it hurts. The pain may help GOP senators locate their missing spines.
Sabrina Haake is a 25–year litigator specializing in 1st and 14th Amendment defense. Her columns appear in the Chicago Tribune, Salon, Raw Story, Out South Florida, Alternet and Windy City Times. Her substack, the Haake Take, is free.