# The United States Declares Economic War on Canada **URL:** \ **Category:** Politics & Elections\ **Tags:** trump\ **Created:** [February 1, 2025, 9:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-united-states-declares-economic-war-on-canada/1013734 "2025-02-01T21:16:01Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Showing post:** 1033
**Author:** ![wolfpup](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpup/32/10618_2.png) [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2025, 1:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-united-states-declares-economic-war-on-canada/1013734/1033 "2025-03-21T13:30:49Z")
There have been suggestions, I think in this thread and also in others, that the most likely outcome of all this is that Canada will make some trade concessions, Trump will hail this as a major victory and evidence of his superb leadership, and it will all blow over. I believe this is, indeed, the most likely outcome, but there’s a much darker possibility. I’m going to link to a post and a cite I made in the Canadoper Cafe thread. I think the article by Timothy Snyder is well worth a read. The main thesis is around what historians of Hitler call The Big Lie – an accusation against a people or a nation that is completely untrue, but repeated again and again and eventually used as a pretext for whatever escalation the authoritarian wants. Trump is already doing this with respect to Canada. The “fentanyl pouring into the US from Canada” is a complete and total lie (the amount is something like 0.02% of the total amount smuggled into the US each year). Blaming Canada for illegal immigrants is equally a lie. And the trade deficit argument is a lie, too – the numbers are grotesquely exaggerated, and are accounted for entirely by US imports of Canadian oil and gas which America needs; remove that from the trade balance, and the US actually runs a trade surplus with Canada. Trump isn’t even smart enough to stick to one Big Lie; he keeps alternating between the three made-up excuses as if he’s trying to gauge which Big Lie will work best. > [@Welcome to the Canadoper Café, 2025!](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/welcome-to-the-canadoper-cafe-2025/1012410/514): > > Insightful article by Timothy Snyder, American historian and author. Just a couple of excerpts: When Trump announces an aggressive policy, he attaches to it a grotesque justification. The nonsensical fiction is supposed remain in our minds, as a button to be pushed, so that we accept violence. We will have trouble questioning lies later if we accept them when offered, because that would challenge our own sense of ourselves as not being idiots. … The demand for fentanyl is American, includin… --- _[View the full topic](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-united-states-declares-economic-war-on-canada/1013734)._