Donald Trump talks to reporters in the Oval Office
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‘Put on a show for the idiots’: Trump is slammed for predictable Canada tariff pause

Donald Trump’s tariffs were over before they began.

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Days after announcing the commencement of a 25% tariff on Canadian imports, the president decided to delay the controversial economic policy decision for a month. The president announced that he had changed his tune on tariffs after Canada pledged to take steps to combat the fentanyl trade at the United States’ northern border – just like he did when Mexico promised to do the same thing days before.

“And just like that, Trump’s reckless and pointless trade wars with Mexico and Canada have ended” wrote Republicans Against Trump on X. The Never Trumper group went on to lambast the president’s anti-drug trafficking deal with American’s NAFTA allies, saying that it would do little to change the state of the fentanyl trade – a trade that Trump and his team have largely exaggerated.

“Got to put on a show for the idiots” writes another user of Trump’s toothless trade deal.

Trump has spent months hurling criticisms at Canada, spreading outright falsehoods that Canada prevents U.S. goods and businesses from entering the country while trolling its Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as the “governor” of America’s “51st state.” The president has since upped the ante with economic threats, saying that he would annex Canada into the union through “economic force.” As users on Twitter have pointed out, Trump’s backpedaling from his tariff plan in the name of fentanyl carries an element of political pantomime. Canada is responsible for only 0.2% of all fentanyl that flows into the United States, and the idea that the president would stop a much touted trade policy with Canada in order to reduce that minuscule number suggests that Trump had an ulterior for delaying the tariff.

Trump has always been a man that exaggerates his victories. After winning the 2024 presidential election with a razor thin majority of the popular vote, Trump claimed that American had given him “an unprecedented and powerful mandate” and called his win a “landslide.” Trump’s decision to back off his tariff plan and call it a foreign policy victory is, as the internet suggests, similarly unearned political grandstanding.

Another user points out that Trump’s political decisions boil down to a simple equation: “create fake problem, fix fake problem, sheep applaud.”

Trump has spent his entire political career creating fake problems. The president is a prolific liar, and focuses his falsehoods on creating scapegoats for America’s problems in order to rally his political base against imagined threats. While campaigning for the 2024 election alone, Trump claimed that immigrants were eating house pets, children were getting gender affirming surgeries in school, and inflation was at its worst in history under Biden. All of these statements, and many more the president has made, are unequivocally false, and were all uttered in service of Trump’s anti-immigrant, anti-trans and anti-progressive political goals.

Like this user says, Trump’s first weeks in office have felt like an episode of The Apprentice that Americans can’t turn off. According to one Canadian politician, Trump’s current political reign feels more like an episode of South Park.

As this user suggests, Trump touted his tariffs as a foreign policy panacea for all of America’s economic problems. The president has told Americans time and again that other countries would pay the tariff, though economists begged to disagree. Why would Trump postpone his tariff plan? “He’s a liar” says Twitter.

The world wide stock market plunge that occurred just before Trump’s tariff plan went into effect may have had something to do with it. After all, Elon Musk’s assets took a hit too.


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Sarah Fimm
Sarah Fimm (they/them) is actually nine choirs of biblically accurate angels crammed into one pair of $10 overalls. They have been writing articles for nerds on the internet for less than a year now. They really like anime. Like... REALLY like it. Like you know those annoying little kids that will only eat hotdogs and chicken fingers? They're like that... but with anime. It's starting to get sad.