Why Trump can’t stop talking about Canada

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Canada was clearly occupying a lot of real estate inside Donald Trump’s brain over the weekend. On Sunday alone, he posted seven times to Truth Social about our country, including posts insulting Canada, attacking our oil and auto industries, and hinting he might offer a refugee program for Canadian Jews.

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And, of course, he kept promoting his decision to rename Lake Ontario as Lake America.

That issue took on a secondary storyline on Sunday afternoon as websites belonging to various government agencies and departments displayed maps showing Lake America instead of Lake Ontario. It’s not that these organizations, or even the Liberal Party of Canada, support the name change, it’s a technical issue that will be fixed.

Still, given the emotional state of many Canadians, it was something many people online were fretting over.

They’d be better off paying attention to what Trump is actually saying about Canada. Not the bluster, but reading between the lines to understand what he is trying to achieve.

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It’s all political theatre

Let’s be blunt. As I’ve already written, Trump, as well as Prime Minister Mark Carney and Ontario Premier Doug Ford, are all using the political theatre around the collapse of the trade talks for their own political benefit. Carney and Ford get to rally the public to their cause for by-elections happening this week, while Trump gets to tell workers in Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania that he is standing up for their jobs ahead of the midterms.

In the middle of Sunday afternoon, Trump posted that plants in Detroit were going to close before he won the 2024 election. Now they are going non-stop, he claims.

“That’s because of what I’ve done with TARIFFS. One of the Worst Abusers is Canada. I don’t want Canadian cars, I don’t want Canadian parts, I don’t want Canadian anything. They’ve been ripping us off for decades, and it’s going to stop,” Trump posted.

There may have been fears of more plant closures, but the plants around Detroit were not shutting down. Still, since January 2025, when Trump was sworn in again as president, auto production is up by 12.9%, even if employment in the industry is flat.

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Forget the bluster and the insults Trump is sprinkling throughout his posts. He wants auto production to move south, he believes tariffs will help him do it, and he has some evidence to back up his claims.

The message is for Michigan

There is an old saying that all politics is local, and that is what is at issue here as Trump uses a fight with Canada to shore up votes in Michigan and elsewhere.

The bluster this weekend isn’t so much about us as it is the Senate race in Michigan between Republican Mike Rogers and Democrat Abdul El-Sayed, an actual member of the Democratic Socialists of America. Despite El-Sayed being a fairly radical candidate, he’s still leading Rogers, if only by a small margin. That’s something Trump needs to fix, and attacking Canada’s auto industry will help.

Despite the cross-border ties in the industry, groups like the United Auto Workers have long lobbied to shift production from Ontario to Michigan and, officially, the UAW backs the Democrats including El-Sayed.

When the show is over

A big question amid all this bluster from Trump, and to a lesser degree Ford and Carney, is whether, when it comes time to get back to the negotiating table, the relationship may be beyond repair.

Political theatre can be useful in the short term. It can boost poll numbers, fire up supporters and help win elections. But once the campaign-style rhetoric ends, somebody still has to sit across the table and make a deal.

The politics may be paying off today. The problem comes tomorrow, when the show is over and somebody actually has to make a deal.

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