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

From the Daily Caller News Foundation
By Jason Hopkins
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.
Business
Will Trump’s ‘Liberation Day’ Tariffs End In Disaster Or Prosperity?

From the Daily Caller News Foundation
By J.D. Foster
“Liberation Day” has come. So what does it mean? Beats the hell out of me.
What we know is that President Trump’s avalanche of tariffs was to hit a peak on April 2; not end, mind you; not necessarily “the” peak, as more could be on the way; but a peak.
No Trump policy more completely breaks with America’s past than his “beautiful” tariffs on just about everything coming into the United States from just about anywhere.
Will this new policy liberate American manufacturing from foreign shackles? Will it usher in a new era of prosperity, keeping in mind the United States had for many years the consistently best-performing economy in the industrialized world, even overcoming the many inane obstacles erected by the Biden-Harris Administration?
Or will it leave the United States isolated, friendless, and weakened?
The correct answer at this point is no one knows, not even the bloviating talking heads on TV confidently predicting demise or Shangri-la.
Think of it this way. Suppose you’re a restaurant chef and a woman hands you a new recipe. Her father turns 75 soon and they want to have a party at the restaurant. The recipe is for the father’s favorite dish, one her mother made for years.
The recipe looks old, with odd ingredients and processes you’ve not seen before. Now judge it as a chef.
You can’t. Even as you start chopping and dicing, mixing ingredients as instructed, you’re not too sure how this is going to turn out. You have to wait until the dish is on the plate and taste it.
That’s the case with Trump’s tariffs. How will this all turn out? It’s too soon to tell.
The stock market sure doesn’t like it, but why should it? The investor class doesn’t understand this any better than you do. What they do understand is this new policy has upended assumptions and created enormous new uncertainties. We know that dish as those ingredients are always good for a big pullback.
Much of the confusion arises because we don’t know the underlying policy and likely this uncertainty is intentional. Trump likes keeping his counterparts, in this case our trading partners, guessing. If it means Americans are confused for a bit, Trump’s cool with that. Breaking eggs to make an omelette. It will pass and America will be great again afterward. Bon appetite.
If the core policy is to erect massive and mostly permanent tariff walls behind which American firms can hide, then we know how this will turn out: America, meet the dustbin of history.
If the core policy is to force our trading partners to deal with America fairly by reducing their trade barriers after which Trump will remove his tariffs, then this could turn out very well. Tariffs (and non-tariff barriers) in the U.S. and those of our trading partners would fall, reinvigorating the free trade that has energized prosperity for decades.
Which is it? Walls and doom or freedom and prosperity? Again, too early to tell.
Whatever else Trump does in his second term, these tariffs will define his presidency, akin in consequence to Ronald Reagan’s pro-growth tax cuts and Joe Biden’s inflation.
Trump in his second term clearly lives by the saying, “go bold or go home.” He’s got “bold” down pat. We will see over the next year or so whether he and the Republicans go home. Has he liberated Democrats from any fear of Republicans in the mid-terms or in 2028, or he’s liberated America from any fear of Democratic socialism and wokism returning in our lifetimes. The chips are all-in. Soon we will see the cards. Uncertainty, indeed.
JD Foster is the former chief economist at the Office of Management and Budget and former chief economist and senior vice president at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. He now resides in relative freedom in the hills of Idaho.
Business
‘Time To Make The Patient Better’: JD Vance Says ‘Big Transition’ Coming To American Economic Policy

JD Vance on “Rob Schmitt Tonight” discussing tariff results
From the Daily Caller News Foundation
By Hailey Gomez
Vice President JD Vance said Thursday on Newsmax that he believes Americans will “reap the benefits” of the economy as the Trump administration makes a “big transition” on tariffs.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 1,679.39 points on Thursday, just a day after President Donald Trump announced reciprocal tariffs against nations charging imports from the U.S. On “Rob Schmitt Tonight,” Schmitt asked Vance about the stock market hit, asking how the White House felt about the “Liberation Day” move.
“We’re feeling good. Look, I frankly thought in some ways it could be worse in the markets, because this is a big transition. You saw what the President said earlier today. It’s like a patient who was very sick,” Vance said. “We did the operation, and now it’s time to make the patient better. That’s exactly what we’re doing. We have to remember that for 40 years, we’ve been doing this for 40 years.”
“American economic policy has rewarded people who ship jobs overseas. It’s taxed our workers. It’s made our supply chains more brittle, and it’s made our country less prosperous, less free and less secure,” Vance added.
Vance recalled that one of his children had been sick and needed antibiotics that were not made in the United States. The Vice President called it a “ridiculous thing” that some medicines invented in the country are no longer manufactured domestically.
“That’s fundamentally what this is about. The national security of manufacturing and making the things that we need, from steel to pharmaceuticals, antibiotics, and so forth, but also the good jobs that come along when you have economic policies that reward investing in America, rather than investing in foreign countries,” Vance said.
WATCH:
With a baseline 10% tariff placed on an estimated 60 countries, higher tariffs were applied to nations like China and Israel. For example, China, which has a 67% tariff on U.S. goods, will now face a 34% tariff from the U.S., while Israel, which has a 33% tariff, will face a 17% U.S. tariff.
“One bad day in the stock market, compared to what President Trump said earlier today, and I think he’s right about this. We’re going to have a booming stock market for a long time because we’re reinvesting in the United States of America. More importantly than that, of course, the people in Wall Street have done well,” Vance said.
“We want them to do well. But we care the most about American workers and about American small businesses, and they’re the ones who are really going to benefit from these policies,” Vance said.
The number of factories in the U.S., Vance said, has declined, adding that “millions of workers” have lost their jobs.
“My town [Middletown, Ohio], where you had 10,000 great American steel workers, and my town was one of the lucky ones, now probably has 1,500 steel workers in that factory because you had economic policies that rewarded shipping our jobs to China instead of investing in American workers,” Vance said. “President Trump ran on changing it. He promised he would change it, and now he has. I think Americans are going to reap the benefits.”
-
2025 Federal Election1 day ago
Canada Continues to Miss LNG Opportunities: Why the World Needs Our LNG – and We’re Not Ready
-
International7 hours ago
Germany launches first permanent foreign troop deployment since WW2
-
COVID-192 days ago
Trump’s new NIH head fires top Fauci allies and COVID shot promoters, including Fauci’s wife
-
2025 Federal Election1 day ago
Mainstream Media Election Coverage: If the Election Was a NHL Game, the Ice Would be Constantly Tilted Up and to the Left
-
2025 Federal Election11 hours ago
Poilievre To Create ‘Canada First’ National Energy Corridor
-
Business2 days ago
‘Time To Make The Patient Better’: JD Vance Says ‘Big Transition’ Coming To American Economic Policy
-
2025 Federal Election2 days ago
Poilievre promises to drop ‘radical political ideologies’ in universities
-
2025 Federal Election2 days ago
Will Four More Years Of Liberals Prove The West’s Tipping Point?