On the same day he’d blinked badly in an international game of chicken with the Trump administration, the premier of the province of Ontario sounded like one contrite Canadian.
In an interview with a New York City-based radio show Tuesday, Premier Doug Ford fell all over himself expressing regret for the country’s current trade trouble with President Donald Trump.
And the rest of the world should have been taking notes.
Ford was a guest on “Cats and Cosby,” a show hosted by business magnate and outspoken conservative John Catsimatidis and broadcast veteran and Newsmax personality Rita Cosby.
Ford had just withdrawn a threat to impose a 25 percent surcharge on electricity from Ontario to U.S. customers that he issued amid the Trump administration’s imposition of tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminum.
Ford backed down after President Donald Trump threatened to double the U.S. tariff from 25 percent to 50 percent. After Ford rescinded the energy tariff threat, Trump rescinded the additional 25 percent tariff threat. But the original 25 percent tariff went into effect Wednesday.
Not only did Ford back down, he all but groveled — as the New York Post reported the conversation.
“I want to apologize for going back and forth like this to the American people. I spent 20 years of my life in the U.S., in New Jersey, in Chicago,” Ford said during the podcast. “I love the American people. I absolutely love ’em.
“We’re going to get through this. We’re stronger together. United we stand, divided we fall. And we’ll always be united.”
Are you surprised that other nations treat the U.S. so much better under Trump?
The “I-love-you-guys!” and “can’t-we-all-get-along?” talk was so obviously aimed at saving face that it was comical — hilarious, even.
And it was a far cry from the same man’s message only a week ago, when Ford threatened to cut off all Ontario-produced energy to the United States — and be cheerful when he did it.
“If they want to try to annihilate Ontario, I will do everything — including cut off their energy with a smile on my face,” Ford told reporters in Ottawa on March 3, according to the Toronto Sun, a Canadian tabloid.
“They rely on our energy, they need to feel the pain. They want to come at us hard, we’re going to come back twice as hard.”
Yeah, about that. Ford apparently had second thoughts when the other side came back twice as hard yet again.
That’s the decision of a realist. It’s the same kind of decision Colombian President Gustavo Petro made in January, when he abruptly changed his tune about accepting the repatriation of Colombian nationals who’d entered the United States illegally. Petro quickly backed down on the question after Trump dropped the hammer of tariffs on Colombian exports into the U.S. — and threatened to double it.
It’s the same kind of decision Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy made when he decided to play nice with Trump after the live-television meltdown of a meeting at the White House resulted in him getting the boot from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
(Warm feelings from Europeans only go so far without anything to back them up.)
It’s the same kind of decision Trump is betting the rest of the world starts making over the next four years, as other countries fully process the idea that the days of Biden-era debasement of the United States as a foreign policy are over.
In the four years of his presidency, Joe Biden was a physically and mentally weak man who projected weakness on the global stage. (That doesn’t even get into the evident moral baseness Republicans were always pouncing on.)
The international crises Trump is dealing with now are a direct result of that projection: Biden essentially invited the Russian invasion of Ukraine. His coddling of the murderous mullahs of Iran arguably set the stage for the brutal attack by Iran’s proxy terrorist group Hamas on Israel that launched the Middle East’s current round of bloodshed. He did nothing to dissuade China from pursuing its goal of displacing the United States as the regional power in the Pacific or even the globe’s leader.
(Heck, he didn’t even dissuade it from launching spy balloons over the continental United States).
Granted, no matter how serious the current trade disputes with Canada and Mexico get, they’re never going to match the existential threat to the United States of nuclear powers like Russia and China.
But the fact that they’re taking place at all is proof to the world — if any were needed — that Trump is serious about using his presidential powers to realign international relations to the benefit of the United States.
His hardball tactics are not going unnoticed by their immediate recipients — like Colombia and Ontario — and they’re not going unnoticed in Beijing or Moscow or Tehran.
The current dust-up and tit-for-tat tariffs between the U.S., Canada, and Mexico are going to be resolved, just as resolution followed when Trump blew up the North American Free Trade Agreement in his first term.
And it will be resolved on terms Trump considers advantageous to the U.S.
But the broader message that has been sent from the White House since Day 1 of Trump’s second term is going to be reinforced for friend and foe alike to see — without room for error:
The Biden days are over. The Make America Great Again movement is in ascendance. Make decisions accordingly.
Or you’ll be sorry.
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