Trudeau’s Liberal Gov’t Tears Itself Apart As It Scrambles To Address Trump’s Tariff Threats

From the Daily Caller News Foundation

A top official within Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s cabinet abruptly resigned, citing growing policy disagreements on how the country should respond to tariff threats posed by President-elect Donald Trump and his “America First” economic agenda.

Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland officially resigned from Trudeau’s cabinet on Monday, according to a letter she posted publicly and delivered to the prime minister. Freeland’s letter — which came just hours before she was supposed to deliver an address on border security with the U.S. — marks the latest turmoil to beset Trudeau’s government as he deals with a more adversarial partner in the incoming Trump administration and his Liberal Party remains beleaguered with poor poll numbers.

“On Friday, you told me you no longer want me to serve as your Finance Minister and offered me another position in the cabinet,” Freeland wrote to Trudeau. “Upon reflection, I have concluded that the only honest and viable path is for me to resign from the cabinet.”

The finance minister said the two had found themselves “at odds” in the past few weeks over how to find the best path forward for the country. However, she appeared to take particular umbrage with how to approach the “aggressive economic nationalism” presented by President-elect Donald Trump, who has threatened Canada and Mexico with sweeping tariffs unless both countries do more to stop the flow of illegal immigration and illicit drugs.

The U.S.-Canada border, while never experiencing the level of activity seen annually at the southern border, has witnessed an uptick in activity in recent time. There were more than 23,000 encounters by made Border Patrol agents in fiscal year 2024, more than doubling the 10,000 encounters experienced the previous fiscal year, according to Customs and Border Protection data.

“Our country today faces a grave challenge,” Freeland wrote. “The incoming administration in the United States is pursuing a policy of aggressive economic nationalism, including a threat of 25 per cent tariffs.”

“We need to take that threat extremely seriously,” she continued. “That means keeping our fiscal powder dry today, so we have the reserves we may need for a coming tariff war.”

Trump, fresh off his electoral landslide victory over Vice President Kamala Harris earlier in November, declared on social media that he would be imposing 25% tariffs on Mexico and Canada unless their governments met his demands on illegal immigration and other issues. The threat has since set off a series of reactions from both Canadian and Mexican governments.

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum issued a public letter that gave her government credit for the drop in migrant encounters along the southern border and blamed the U.S. for the number of guns in Mexico. Sheinbaum also notably warned that the Mexican government would have a “response in kind” if Trump moves forward with his threat to slap a 25% tariff on all of her country’s goods.

In what has been a more diplomatic approach so far, Trudeau reached out to Trump to discuss the situation, and later said he “had a good call” with the president-elect. The Liberal Party leader soon afterward visited Trump at his Mar-a-Largo residence and detailed what more the Canadian government is doing to bolster border security.

The Mexican government has already been dealing with the fallout of the tariff threats, with a slate of major international businesses suggesting that they would cease investments in the country until more clarity is given on the situation. Freeland’s resignation appears to show that the tariff threats are also wreaking havoc north of the border, with top officials disagreeing on how to respond.

“That means pushing back against ‘America First’ economic nationalism with a determined effort to fight for capital and investment and the jobs they bring,” Freeland said, speaking on how Canada should deal with Washington, D.C. “That means working in good faith and humility with the Premiers of the provinces and territories of our great and diverse country, and building a true Team Canada response.”

Trudeau, who has served as prime minister of Canada since November 2015, may not be the country’s leader following elections next year. Recent surveys indicate his Liberal Party will face a beating at the voting booth in October 2025 against the Conservative Party, led by Member of Parliament Pierre Poilievre. The Conservative Party leader is also viewed by Canadians as better equipped to work with Trump, according to a new Ipsos poll.

In response to the threat of tariffs from the incoming Trump administration, Poilievre has called for the Canadian government to beef up border security and tighten visa rules on legal immigration.

“What we are seeing is the government of Canada itself is spiraling out of control, right before our eyes and at the very worst time,” Poilievre said during a press conference Monday in reaction to the news, in which he detailed the country’s dire economic situation and political instability of the Trudeau government. “Out of control immigration has led to refugee camps opening in suburban Canada and then we have 500,000 in the country illegally, according to government estimates.”

“We cannot accept this kind of chaos, division, weakness while we’re staring down the barrel of 25% tariff from our biggest trading partner and closest ally, which by the way is headed by a newly elected president with a strong and fresh mandate, a man who can spot weakness from a mile away,” he continued.

Related Topics:#DailyCaller #JasonHopkins CanadaUSRelations TrudeauFreeland TrumpTariffs USReactionToFreelandResignation

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US Halts Construction of Five Offshore Wind Projects Due To National Security

Published on December 29, 2025

Todayville

From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By David Blackmon

Interior Secretary Doug Burgum leveled the Trump administration’s latest broadside at the struggling U.S. offshore wind industry on Monday, ordering an immediate suspension of activities at the five big wind projects currently in development.

“Today we’re sending notifications to the five large offshore wind projects that are under construction that their leases will be suspended due to national security concerns,” Burgum told Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo. “During this time of suspension, we’ll work with the companies to try to find a mitigation. But we completed the work that President Trump has asked us to do. The Department of War has come back conclusively that the issues related to these large offshore wind programs have created radar interference that creates a genuine risk for the U.S.”

Predictably, reaction to Burgum’s order was immediate, with opponents of offshore wind praising the move, and industry supporters slamming it. In Semafor’s energy-related newsletter on Tuesday, energy and climate editor Tim McDowell quotes an unnamed ex-Energy Department official as claiming, “the Pentagon and intelligence services, which are normally sensitive to even extremely low-probability risks, never flagged this as a concern previously.” (RELATED: Trump Admin Orders Offshore Wind Farm Pauses Over ‘National Security Risks’)

Yet, a simple 30-second Google search finds a wealth of articles going back to as early as October 2014 discussing ways to mitigate the long-ago identified issue of interference with air defense radars by these enormous windmills, some of which are taller than the Eiffel Tower. It is a simple fact that the issue was repeatedly raised during the Biden Administration’s mad rush to speed these giant windmill operations into the construction phase by cutting corners in the permitting process.

In May, 2024, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management’s (BOEM) own analysis related to the Atlantic Shores South project contains a detailed discussion of the potential impacts and suggests multiple ways to mitigate for them. An Oct. 29, 2024 memo of understanding between BOEM and the Biden Department of Defense calls for increased collaboration between the two departments as a response to concerns from members of Congress and others related to these very long-known potential impacts.

The Georgia Tech Research Institute published a study dated June 6, 2022 detailing “Radar Impacts, Potential Mitigation, from Offshore Wind Turbines.” That study was in fact commissioned by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM), a private non-profit that functions as an advisory group to the federal government.

Oh.

A report published in February 2024 by International Defense Security & Technology, Inc. describes the known issues thusly:

“Wind turbines can create clutter on radar screens in a number of ways. First, the metal towers and blades of wind turbines can reflect radar signals. This can create false returns on radar screens, which can make it difficult to detect and track real targets.

“Second, the rotating blades of wind turbines can create a Doppler effect on radar signals. This can cause real targets to appear to be moving at different speeds than they actually are. This can also make it difficult to track real targets.”

The simple Google search I conducted returns hundreds of articles dating all the way back to 2006 related to this long-known yet unresolved issue that could present a very real threat to national security. The fact that the Biden administration, in its religious zeal to speed these enormous offshore industrial projects into the construction phase, chose to downplay and ignore this threat in no way obligates his successor in office to commit the same dereliction of duty.

Some wind proponents are cynically raising concerns that a future Democratic administration could use this example as justification for cancelling oil and gas projects. It’s as if they’ve all forgotten about the previous four years of the Autopen presidency, which featured Joe Biden’s Day 1 order cancelling the 80% completed Keystone XL pipeline, a year-long moratorium on LNG export permitting, an attempt to set aside more than 200 million acres of the U.S. offshore from future leasing, and too many other destructive moves to detail here.

Again, a simple web search reveals that experts all over the world believe this is a real problem. If so, it needs to be addressed as a matter of national security. Burgum is intent on doing that. All half-baked talking points aside, this really isn’t complicated.

David Blackmon is an energy writer and consultant based in Texas. He spent 40 years in the oil and gas business, where he specialized in public policy and communications.

Daily Caller

While Western Nations Cling to Energy Transition, Pragmatic Nations Produce Energy and Wealth

Published on December 29, 2025

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From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By Vijay Jayaraj

History will likely remember 2025 as the year energy corporatists finally stopped pretending there is a climate crisis. For a decade, a bizarre theater of the absurd played out as titans of the oil and gas industry apologized for their core business while pledging allegiance to a “green transition” that existed mostly in the imaginations of Western bureaucrats. But the curtain has seemingly fallen.

ExxonMobil, one of the world’s largest energy producers, has slashed $10 billion from its low-carbon investment commitments through 2030. Simultaneously, the company announced that it expects $25 billion in earnings growth from 2024 to 2030 to be powered primarily by increases in oil and gas production, which will push daily output to 5.5 million barrels of oil equivalent by the end of the decade.

This is not a company abandoning climate responsibility but rather at last recognizing what has long been obvious: The path prescribed by the climate industrial complex is economically destructive and operationally impossible – even with massive government subsidies.

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For years, the global energy strategy has been surreal. Companies that built the modern world on the back of energy-dense hydrocarbons indulged those celebrating the arrival of wind turbines and solar panels to power civilization. But reality, stubborn and unforgiving, has interrupted the psychedelic revelry.

ExxonMobil’s low-carbon investments will be paced to policy support and customer demand, says the company. That is corporate speak meaning that spending on green projects is paused unless the government – using our tax dollars – subsidizes the risk or until a market exists.

Megaprojects, once heralded as the future, are now in line for deferral. Why? Because without taxpayer handouts, the economics of trying to bury underground a plant food like carbon dioxide simply do not work – and defy common sense.

The energy sector is pivoting from a strategy of “grow clean at all costs” to “returns first, transition last.” “Green” projects are being relegated to a secondary capital bucket – a token for good PR instead of a core activity.

Europe’s Shell and Aker BP and Canada’s Enbridge have withdrawn from the Science Based Targets initiative to establish “science-based emissions reductions.” This was a retreat from what is described as a “credible, science-based net-zero framework” because there was neither credibility nor science. It was a political suicide pact. The energy giants looked at the cliff’s edge and refused to jump.

British multinational BP, having abandoned its promise to go “Beyond Petroleum,” has raised its oil and gas spending and softened its renewable targets.

ENEOS Holdings, a Japanese refiner, has discarded hydrogen production targets, with CEO Tomohide Miyata explaining that “the shift toward a carbon-neutral society appears to be slowing.”

These U-turns represent a renaissance in policy realism. Energy needs do not disappear because politicians make speeches at climate summits or corporations allocate funds to ESG programs or governments attempt to control consumption and choices of appliances and automobiles.

Second thoughts about an inevitably doomed “green” transition is a victory for the single mother in the U.S. trying to budget for winter heating and for the small business owner in the U.K. whose margins are crushed by one of the highest commercial electricity rates in the world. And for the billions of people in developing nations, this pivot could be salvation from generational poverty.

The question now is whether governments will recognize what corporations have made clear: that the energy transition was a fantasy infused with scientific language and draped in moralistic gingerbread. Or will they continue to increase subsidies and regulations?

Very likely, there will be a bifurcation: on the one hand, western bureaucracies, particularly in Europe, continuing an economic decline under mandates and taxes, and on the other, pragmatic governments, many of them in Asia, pursuing prosperity with fuels and technologies that work.

Vijay Jayaraj is a Science and Research Associate at the CO2 Coalition, Fairfax, Va. He holds an M.S. in environmental sciences from the University of East Anglia and a postgraduate degree in energy management from Robert Gordon University, both in the U.K., and a bachelor’s in engineering from Anna University, India. He served as a research associate with the Changing Oceans Research Unit at University of British Columbia, Canada.