Trump called the newspaper “globalist” and “always wrong”. The White House followed up by highlighting a number of clippings from the past 35 years in which the paper opposed protectionism and backed free trade.
While Trump regularly portrays tariffs as taxes charged to foreign producers,in reality,they are paid by US importers. Costs are mostly passed onto consumers. Other members of Trump’s cabinet also said Americans could face higher prices.
Canada’s opposition leader,Pierre Poilievre,gave his support to dollar-for-dollar retaliatory measures.Credit:Bloomberg
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem sought to blame US trading partners for any cost-of-living increase.
“If prices go up,it’s because of other people’s reactions to America’s laws,” she told NBC’sMeet the Press. “Canada can help us,or they can get in the way,and then they’ll face the consequences.”
Trump mused again on Sunday (Monday AEDT) thatCanada should become the US’s 51st state,asserting the northern neighbour would “cease to exist as a viable country” without hundreds of billions of dollars of trade with America,which he portrayed as a subsidy.
“We don’t need anything they have,” he said.
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But the response from Canada was uncompromising and bipartisan.
Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre,the man expected to become prime minister when elections are held this year,gave his full support to theretaliatory measures announced by Trudeau,calling for dollar-for-dollar tariffs that would do the most damage to American companies while protecting Canada’s.
“There is no justification whatsoever for[Trump’s] tariffs or this treatment,” Poilievre said.
“Canada will never be the 51st state.”
Canada’s provincial premiers,led by Doug Ford in Ontario,also ordered state-owned liquor retailers and wholesalers toremove US alcohol products from their shelves and catalogues. Sports fans booed the US national anthem at games at the weekend.
Meanwhile,the Associated Press reported the Trump administration had placed two senior officials on leave from USAID after they refused to hand over classified material to inspectors working under the direction of Musk’s so-called department of government efficiency.
Despite its name,DOGE isnot a real government department. It has,however,been granted powers by Trump to embark on a series of drastic cost-cutting exercises across the government.
Amid a freeze on foreign aid that has caused chaos for emergency health clinics and humanitarian programs abroad,USAID’s standalone website abruptly disappeared over the weekend.
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On Sunday (Monday AEDT),Musk made a barrage of posts about USAID on his social media platform X,calling it “a viper’s nest of radical-left Marxists who hate America”,and accusing it of funding bioweapon research “including COVID-19″. (The CIA nowleans towards the theory the virus leaked from a lab in Wuhan,China,but there is no suggestion it was deliberate.)
Later,in a social media talk on X,Musk said they were working to shut down the agency.
“You’ve got to basically get rid of the whole thing. It’s beyond repair,” he said.
Trump issued an executive order on his first day back in the Oval Office initiating a 90-day pause on foreign aid and a review of all spending programs. The order said the US’s foreign aid industry and bureaucracy were “not aligned with American interests and in many cases antithetical to American values”.
Dozens of senior USAID staff have been suspended and Reuters reported hundreds of contractors had been terminated or placed on leave.
Democratic senator Chris Coons said Trump “spent two weeks harassing and laying off USAID employees,and now his team is trying to gut the agency altogether”.
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