This week, on GrokTALK!, we sift through some commentary and analysis on why Canada walked away from a trade deal they’d already agreed to, and why Trump’s Jan 1 retaliatory tariffs are necessary.
00:00 Introduction and Overview
01:11 The Canada Trade War
02:01 Historical Context of U.S.-Canada Trade Relations
04:39 Canada’s Protectionist Practices
08:32 The Impact of Trade Barriers on U.S. Economy
09:30 Political Motivations Behind Trade Decisions
11:09 Future Implications of Trade Relations
“Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire.” – Gustav Mahler
Watch on the ‘Grok Rumble Channel if the Embedded Video does not load.
Links:
- https://spectator.org/trumps-canada-tariffs-arent-the-betrayal-ottawa-claims/
- https://granitegrok.com/national/2026/08/macdonald-canada-trumps-tariffs-and-demidiots
- https://spectator.org/mark-carneys-smugglers-blues/?utm_source=spectator.beehiiv.com
- https://x.com/ChristianHeiens/status/2091688662782087404
- https://www.prometheanaction.com/the-monday-brief-carneys-war-isnt-about-trade-and-bessent-knows-it-august-24-2026/
- https://x.com/DoDeportations/status/2091569407751278684
Authors’ and Speakers’ opinions are their own and may not represent those of Grok Media, LLC, GraniteGrok.com, its sponsors, readers, authors, or advertisers.
Edited Transcript:
Welcome to a new edition of Grok Talk brought to you by granitegrok.com and Grok Media LLC. We are entirely donor-funded. Very little in the way of ads and things of that nature. So please take a moment, find the donate button, and throw us a couple bucks or subscribe for the cup of coffee a month, or whatever it is you want to do; every dime helps. And it keeps the programming coming, some of which has gotten a lot of attention lately
Like to point out that in the last 30 days, we’ve had close to 600,000 views on Rumble. We are very likely, potentially, I should say, we’re definitely going to break five million views this year. Maybe we’ll get to six or even seven. But that’s entirely up to us to come up with content that you find interesting, entertaining, or both. And when we do that, you guys tune in, and we appreciate it. Even if you can’t afford to donate, please share the content, like it.
Send it out into the internet universe, and hopefully more people will come over and subscribe and see what we have to offer.
So today, if you noticed the title, Democrats are to blame for the Canada Trade War. Yeah, they are in more ways than you can possibly imagine. And it’s all political.
And I have lots of notes today because I spent a great deal of time, probably more time prepping than I will actually spend doing the show, which is usually how it works. You’d be surprised. An episode of the morning update, for example, takes, I don’t know, about an hour to do total from pre-production to post-production. And those are rarely over five minutes. But anybody who’s in the business, and if they’re doing it all by themselves, which I am, they’ll tell you that’s how it works. But it’s worth it because you guys seem to love it and I’ll just keep doing them.
We did episode two fifty of the morning update on Friday, had a special edition on Saturday, and we’re back at it again this morning, where we teased today’s episode of GrokTALK!, which again is about the trade war, scare quotes, with Canada. And
The problem really is that we’ve kind of been in a trade war for decades. Just America hasn’t been fighting back.
From spectato .org, the United States has run a trade relationship with Canada for decades that gave Ottawa nearly unrestricted access to the world’s largest consumer market, while Canada kept its own protections. Most notoriously, it’s a dairy supply management system firmly in place.
Donald Trump’s blunt framing on social media, Canada wants the benefits of being a state without being one, is crude, but he’s not wrong. Trump’s tariffs are not an act of aggression against an ally. They are the predictable consequence of a negotiation in which one side finally stopped accepting asymmetrical terms it had tolerated for years.
Canada has very nearly had a free ride. America tried on good faith to get a better deal for Americans from farms to cars to steel to alcohol to technology and more, and Canada was on board until it wasn’t. If that sounds strange, it should, because Canada walked away intent on starting a trade war, hoping to harm Trump and Republicans in the midterms. Well, actually, to harm you so that you would harm Trump and Republicans in the midterm.
Check this out.
We’ve been talking about this trade situation, the imbalance, for quite a long time. Quote: Dairy, poultry, and egg production quotas combined with tariff rate quotas, TRQs, on American products can exceed 200%, sometimes higher for specific products like butter or cheese, severely limiting U.S. access. Lumber or softwood timber from the U.S. struggles in Canadian markets because the Canadian government engages in predatory protectionism and tariff trade practices that keep domestic lumber cheap while making it nearly impossible for American timber to compete in their markets. Canada has long-run protectionist practices on steel and aluminum that disadvantage US producers, jobs, and families.
Canada has a digital services tax that adds cost to US tech products and services. Canada requires foreign streaming services to pay the bureaucracy to feed its oversight programs while major digital news platforms are required to negotiate payments to Canadian news organizations.
And Canada is also a conduit for products produced by forced labor to enter the United States via the USMCA, which is one of the reasons why Trump didn’t re-up it.
He’s not doing it because, as we’ve explained, they continue to make it difficult for American goods in their country. And they are smuggling; that’s the word that’s been used in the media, not the lefty media. They’re not even covering that part. For goods from China like steel and aluminum and just about anything else that the Chinese make, they send it to Canada. Canada then ships it into the United States as if it were made in Canada. China gets a discount on tariffs it doesn’t want to pay. Americans lose the money on the tariffs China would have paid, and of course it undercuts our market.
So there are some local examples. New Hampshire Dairy, for example, approximately sixty-three million dollars a year in business for the state, and it can’t begin to compete in Canada, which is right across the border. You should ask some politicians why they hate New Hampshire dairy farmers so much. The trade deal probably improved those negotiations, and now that deal’s dead.
And you should ask why.
And I can’t say it too often enough. Trump’s targeted 50% tariffs on steel and aluminum coming from Canada are targeted and specific for a very good reason.
Quote: Canada was bringing in Chinese steel and aluminum and selling it as Canadian steel to help China avoid tariffs. When told to knock it off, they refused.
So, it is smuggling; China is skipping out on tariffs meant to balance trade deficits and encourage manufacturers to invest in America and its workers instead of the human rights-violating Chinese, where sweatshops, forced labor, and outright slavery keep costs down. Canada is helping China violate human rights.
America said, Hey, we don’t like that. Let’s make a new deal. They made a new deal. And Canada walked away.
To reiterate, Canada is not some neutral trade partner, but has in fact been taking advantage of America for years. More examples from a Real Clear Politics article that we shared in April of 2025:
The Investment Canada Act has regulated foreign investment in Canada since 1985. National security and a more nebulous standard of economic net benefits for Canada is a determining factor in reviews of foreign investments. Canada also restricts foreign ownership and board positions in many of its industries. In 2024, Canada began taxing online sales, advertising, and social media, signaling out companies for taxation while effectively excluding Canadian firms and similar businesses, the tax is retroactive to 2022. Canada’s regulation of the dairy, chicken, turkey, and egg industry severely limits imports.
Canada also limits U.S. imports on seeds, cheese, fresh fruits, vegetables, and electricity. Most Canadian provinces greatly hamper U.S. imports of wine, beer, and spirits. More than 50% of TV channels and at least 35% of popular music broadcasts on radio must be Canadian, and the needs and interests of Canadians must be prioritized in video, music, and digital media. Canadian cable and satellite suppliers rebroadcast US border stations without consent while denying tax deductions to Canadian businesses that advertise on these stations. Canada also offers tax credits, loans, and subsidies to companies and projects owned by and hiring Canadians.
By contrast, the US has long been hospitable to Canadian investment goods and people. Canadian-headquartered or owned businesses that are well known in the US include Burger King, Lululemon, Canada Goose, TD Bank, Mac Cosmetics, which was recently sold, Saks Fifth Avenue, Shopify, Rumble, and Pornhub. The Wikipedia list of prominent Canadian Americans is 35 pages. Most spend their lives in the United States, which accorded them the economic opportunities available to all Americans. Canada’s trade barriers reduce our GDP by less than 1%, but boost Canada’s economy by considerably more.
That’s a lot of protectionism. And you could say, well, yeah, Canada really wants that. But Canada’s economy is in the toilet. Its standard of living is in the toilet. Its housing industry is in the toilet. Trading with China for cheap shit isn’t gonna help. They need America. Something like 70 to 90 percent of their trade is with the United States. There is no economically sensible reason for abandoning the trade deal because doing so will hurt Canadians.
So why do it?
Politics. That’s why. Democrats and the globalists ask them to. More than willing to cause economic harm to people and small businesses on both sides for the potential of political gain. Take a look at this.
Wait, it gets better.
So the Democrat Party colluding with the Kearney government in Canada is responsible for any trade war. They want to let China dump aluminum, steel, and all sorts of other goods into the United States to avoid tariffs that exist to prevent exactly that – that are in place to help US steel and aluminum compete to get back on their feet, which they’ve been doing.
Ask yourself why Democrats and globalists would object to that.
Why do they oppose a level playing field in farming, lumber, tech, media, entertainment, or finance?
Why are they willing to harm Americans and Canadians and businesses in pursuit of political power? We had a trade deal.
It would have been signed last week, ending the tariffs. Coincidentally, Democrats had been milking as an affordability issue in their campaigns.
If they went away, that would pose a political problem. We had a deal. Suddenly we didn’t. but it’s not just the midterm outcomes that the left, domestic, and globalists are after.
Trump is a threat to their world order. Globalism. UN globalism, you know the deal. I don’t have to repeat it.
He’s been reeling it back for eighteen months.
Taking back and onshoring American jobs, manufacturing, energy dominance, supply chain security.
Chips, pharmaceuticals.
Border security, financial controls.
And balancing trade all over the globe to the advantage of Americans and American businesses, something nobody on the left even cared about.
So basically the world is now Donald Trump’s bitch and the globalists don’t like it. China doesn’t like it, and now all of a sudden Canada doesn’t like it.
The midterms are an opportunity for the progressive left all around the world to stop Trump.
Before he completely topples their dysfunctional anti-American apple cart. Here’s another clip.
If Republicans manage to hang on to Congress or add to their numbers the day after the election results are announced, Canada will be begging, begging for a deal before the fifty percent tariffs take effect January first, twenty twenty seven.
Did I say begging? They’ll be begging. And Trump will make a deal that is even better than the one Canada walked away from. Better for us. Because they’ll have no choice.
They’ll have no choice but to take it, and the American Democrats will be at fault for that too.
If Democrats win a majority in either chamber, Canada can probably go back to screwing Americans over the way it has for decades. And the Democrats are to blame for that too. For all their talk about regular Americans and small businesses, all they really care about is political power.
Power they will use to tax and regulate you, like California and New York, for example, while giving away all our strength to our enemies abroad while allowing them to invade our nation and hollow it out from within, all at your expense. Any trade war talk. Democrats are responsible for that. Just make sure they know it. That’s it for this week.
We’ll be back next week to do it all again.
Check out more of this and all our podcasts here!
Get More Morning Update Here! – Or watch it where you hang out on Spotify, Rumble, YouTube, Instagram/Reels, and Steve’s Substack.
Follow ‘Grok on X – Rumble – Facebook – YouTube – Signal – Telegram
WE ARE READER-FUNDED – PLEASE DONATE