Fading Canada

A Painful Visit For Canada's New Prime Minister

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney couldn't have been encouraged by President Trump's comments ahead of their meeting on Tuesday. As ZeroHedge reported: 

Update (1130ET): Ahead of his meeting with freshly elected Canadian PM Mark Carney, President Trump has made his feelings clear about the relationship with USA's northern neighbor.In a post on his social media platform Truth Social, President Trump"I look forward to meeting the new Prime Minister of Canada, Mark Carney. I very much want to work with him, but cannot understand one simple TRUTH - Why is America subsidizing Canada by $200 Billion Dollars a year, in addition to giving them FREE Military Protection, and many other things?" Trump then went further:"We don’t need their Cars, we don’t need their Energy, we don’t need their Lumber, we don’t need ANYTHING they have, other than their friendship, which hopefully we will always maintain. They, on the other hand, need EVERYTHING from us! The Prime Minister will be arriving shortly and that will be, most likely, my only question of consequence.

Things didn't get better for Carney once he got to the White House. A reporter asked Trump if there was anything Carney could so in their meeting that would prompt Trump to lift his tariffs. Trump said no. Asked why, he said, "That's just the way it is." 

So, once again, it looks like the Trump tariffs are set to continue. 

The Trump Tariffs Continue

As we've mentioned before, the $64 trillion question is whether Trump’s tariffs are intended to balance trade (in which case, they’re sticking around) or a negotiating tactic (in which case, they’ll be rolled back).

On Sunday, we got two more indications that they’re meant to balance trade. The first was in a WSJ op/ed by Treasury Secretary Bessent, in which he wrote, “Tariffs are an effective tool for balancing international commerce.” (counterpoint: today Bessent suggested there could be trade deals as soon as this week). The second was a new tariff announced by President Trump, a 100% tariff on foreign movies.

Angle On: Canada

One country where a lot of movies shown in America are at least partially filmed is Canada. Coincidentally, Portfolio Armor Substack subscriber Zach asked over the weekend if we would be placing more bearish trades on Canadian names, as the prosect that the tariffs mostly won’t be rolled back doesn’t seem priced in yet. We noted that one of our trucking-related names last week was Canadian,

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