A ‘Putin’s Puppet’ President? Obama’s Truly Shocking Record

posted by M. Walter at American Thinker 

We hear a lot of talk about how Trump has “upset norms,” and “abandoned our allies” to “side with a dictator,” but so far as I can tell, while Trump is “siding” with Putin, nobody has ever accused him of “wooing” Putin. “Wooing” isn’t even my word. It’s the Washington Post’s and it’s not about Trump. It’s about Obama. In May 2012, having watched Obama debase himself for the better part of four years, the Post had had enough and called it “wooing”. Trump’s been accused of pretty much everything as it relates to Putin, but never “wooing.”

In fact, a very good argument could be made that Obama’s 2008-2012 first term “wooing” softened the ground for Putin’s geopolitical adventurism ever since.

When one reviews Obama’s table-setting rhetorical blunders and truly shocking betrayals of allies, stripped of the whipped cream of the legacy media, it makes it painfully easy to see who was, in reality, “aligned with Putin” and was, in fact, his “puppet.”

It starts a month before the 2008 general election. In the final, October presidential debate, Obama makes his intentions clear: ‘We simply cannot return to a “Cold War posture“ with Russia.(edited for clarity).

Weeks later, having won the White House and before even assuming office, Obama tells his transition team to get busy with a reset.

Next, Obama (via Secretary of State Hillary Clinton) makes his intentions tangible with a gift. A literal reset button. Except… oops. Turns out “peregruzka,” the word they had printed on the button, means “overloaded” or “overcharged.”

Summer comes to the first year of Obama’s new presidency and he travels to Moscow. Surely his young Ivy League mob of over-educated White House aides have done voluminous research in advance of the trip so the likelihood of him having another “pregruzka” moment is small.

Oops:

[Obama speaking in Moscow] Good afternoon. Dobryy den’. (Applause.) It is a great privilege to join all of you today... Russia and the U.S. first established diplomatic relations more than 200 years ago…(and) along the way you gave us a pretty good deal on Alaska. Thank you.

A little humor is always good, right?

Wrong:

Czar Alexander II’s sale of Alaska to the United States in 1867 for $7.2 million in gold, around 1.9 cents per acre, was regarded by Russians as a national disgrace...

Oops. Ouch. Ok…

What’s Obama’s next move? Further appeasement, this time by angering our ally Poland. He reneges on America’s promise to provide them with a missile shield. Russia will love that (seeing it, as they do, as provocative).

“How could [he] choose such a day?” That was the anguished outburst of a senior Polish officer… when asked what he thought… The announcement came on Sept. 17, the 70th anniversary of the Soviet invasion of Poland.

Oops. Double-ouch. Okay, well, that was worse than planned.

2010 brings with it the hope of a Russian Silicon Valley, Skolkovo. Obama is “convinced that the U.S.-Russia economic potential is great,” but it turns out, ultimately, to be “pitiful”—except for Russia.

Reports were rife not long after Skolkovo got up and running that pretty much any Western tech operation foolish enough to set up shop there was immediately spied on and ripped off. As The National Review described it, “It’s unlikely Putin could believe his good fortune: The project was like an espionage operation in broad daylight, openly enhancing Russia’s military and cyber capabilities.”

Oops.

2011 comes and—shockingly <sarc>—Obama still hasn’t earned Putin’s respect, so what’s he do? Harm another ally. As unbelievable as it seems, Obama decides that giving up some classified intel might warm Putin’s heart. Secrets are always good currency, especially when they’re not really yours to tell:

Information about every Trident missile the US supplies to Britain will be given to Russia as part of an arms control deal... The fact that the Americans used British nuclear secrets as a bargaining chip also sheds new light on the so-called ‘special relationship’, which is shown often to be a one-sided affair…

Surely, Obama must think, now that he’s left Poland vulnerable and dropped England’s nuclear pants, Putin will be favorably impressed.

Not so much. Months later, during a televised meeting with supporters, Putin openly threatens nuclear war against America and Obama whom he derides as the self-styled “master of the planet.”

“We are the largest nuclear power,” Putin said.

A crafty old KGB agent doesn’t say “my nuke pile is bigger than your nuke pile” unless he means it as a threat.

This brings us to 2012.

Springtime is in the air in Washington and, once again, our young president’s fancy turns to thoughts of sharing more classified information with Vladimir Putin. Obama decides on a little “I’ll show you mine, but you don’t have to show me yours.” From Reuters:

The Obama administration disclosed on Tuesday that it is considering sharing some (more) classified U.S. data (with Russia)…

One might think the president’s puppy-dog entreaties to Putin might finally, at long last, be tempered, that Obama might remember himself and have a bit more dignity, but nooooo… Just three short weeks later, the infamous hot mic incident took place.

I’ll have more flexibility after the November election.

Just two months later, Obama invites Putin for an honored visit at the G-8 Summit at Camp David.

What’d Putin do?

Blows him off.

Aaaaand that’s when Obama lost The Washington Post, which had seen quite enough. “Obama’s Misguided Wooing of an Uninterested Putin”:

...A rude rebuff. Obama had tailored the conclave to Putin... (and had) dispatched (an administration official) to Moscow to hand Putin what a Russian official described... (a) message... ‘that Obama is ready to cooperate with Putin.’ Putin’s response was... to skip Camp David...

Four solid years of rhetoric and importantly, choices, actions, which, had Trump chosen them, any one of them, would have branded him—rightly—a puppet of Putin’s. But, because The One did them, well, his heart is pure and his intentions were good so for him, it was just diplomacy…or something.

Victor Davis Hanson: Why Won’t Europe Help ‘Rockstar’ Zelenskyy?

Europe treats Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy like a superstar, yet still expects the United States to fund Ukraine’s war against Russia. Is this fair? “ Of all the players in this drama, it's Europe who should be in the driver's seat. They have 500 million people,” says Victor Davis Hanson on this episode of “Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words.” “We have 500 million people in Europe and they're very upset that 330 million people across the ocean will not help 40 million people fighting 140 million people in Russia. In other words, of all the players in this drama, it's Europe who should be in the driver's seat. They have 500 million people. And yet, when we look at their expenditures, nine countries out of the 32, 11 years later, have not increased their NATO contributions to 2%. That's all we're asking for.”

X22, And we Know, and more- March 12

 

Friction, the Fog of War and Trump 2.0

posted by Kurt Schlichter at Townhall 

Things are getting wild and woolly in the second Trump administration. After a slam-bang six weeks of nonstop wins, things feel like they are starting to slow down just a hair. The enemy has thrown everything it has at Trump, from bogus lawsuits to crying government flunkies lamenting that their make-work jobs are going away. That hasn’t worked. None of it worked. They thought they had him with the huge fuss out of that ill-mannered little corruptocrat from Ukraine getting booted out of the White House until he came crawling to The Donald on his belly like a reptile. Combine that with the stock market dropping a bit – even 2000 points isn’t what it used to be when the markets in the 40,000s – as well as with the Epstein records fiasco, and there’s a sense that things are bogging down.

Well, things were always going to slow down. Don’t be surprised. That is the way of all things.

In war, we call it “friction,” the accumulated obstacles, tangents, problems, and challenges that draw away your attention and focus, and, if not managed, will eventually make your campaign grind to a halt. Along with friction is something known as the fog of war. You can’t know everything that’s going on. That’s just impossible. So, you are always operating in a kind of haze, trying to know as much as you can but never having a perfect picture of the battlefield. That’s what’s facing the Trump administration right now, both friction and the fog of war. But that doesn’t mean we’re doomed.

After all, these phenomena are affecting our opponents, too.

The Trump administration has been doing a very, very good job of dealing with these inevitable realities. It came in with a very strong plan and a very aggressive focus. They bulldozed right through a bunch of the friction early on. Do you remember every regime media outlet was screaming about how Trump is a fascist, or about the poor government workers, or about how Elon Musk was going to steal your Social Security number? We ignored it. We bashed right through it, laughing and pointing and not allowing it to slow us down. The lawsuits were another attempt at friction, but we were ready for those. The pleadings that I’ve seen responding to the outrageous and bizarre leftist legal initiatives have been outstanding. The Trump administration has long been thinking about these fights, and it has, in fact, picked some of them. It’s turned friction into an advantage. By the time Trump is done with all these lawsuits, you’re not going see district courts with the ability to do national injunctions on minor issues, nor will they be able to micromanage the executive in the way they’ve been trying to. But, in the short term, it will be a hassle. They will stop us from doing some of the things we want to do, at least for a little while. And that’s OK. Again, friction is part of the fight. It’s not something that can be just waved away or dispensed with. There’s no magical formula for keeping the enemy from getting a vote and trying to stop you from doing what you need to do. The only way through is through. You have to fight every day.

The Trump administration has done a very good job of that, particularly with the DOGE people who leverage technology to open the roof and let the sunshine in. Understand what’s happening here. We have a 20th-century establishment attempting to resist a 21st-century assault. When I say 20th-century establishment, what I mean is the processes, procedures, and technology that the deep state uses to obscure its actions and retain power are all old. The Deep State is designed for a time when, if you wanted to find something out, you physically had to walk into a basement, hunt down the right banker box, and go through 5000 paper documents to maybe find the truth. Of course, that made the truth easy to hide. That made everything opaque. It was just too tough to figure out exactly what was happening, which was a huge advantage to the bureaucrats. Moreover, even if you did find something, under the 20th-century model, the regime media would simply refused to cover it. You had no way of publicizing anything outrageous you managed to uncover. It was a pretty good system – for them. It worked pretty well to hide things during the last century.

But this is a new century. This is a new day, and the same rules don’t apply. The problem for the 20th-century bureaucracy is that it can’t hide from 21st-century algorithms. Modern data analysis techniques uncover and reveal the truth that the bureaucrats used to be able to keep hidden, usually are the chokepoint of the payment system. Now, even regular citizens can go online and uncover Ecuadorian transgender mine troop funding. That kind of ridiculous spending is impossible to defend, but the Democrats have to defend it. Under the 20th-century model, they used to be able to ignore it. No one would find out about it, or if they did, it wouldn’t go anywhere. But now, the regime media is not the only media. We have our own media. Sure, there are scams all over social media, but everybody knows about them. They can’t hide their pinko agenda anymore. Don’t underestimate how devastating this change is to our opponents.

Understand that the regime media can only focus on one thing at a time, and last weekend it was focusing on Donald Trump being insufficiently willing to spend American money in blood on some internecine Slavic slugfest. Putting aside that our elite very much misunderstands where Americans come out on subsidizing arrogant foreign deadbeats, the regime media only has the bandwidth for one Trumpian outrage at a time. This outrage isn’t that outrageous to normal people, but even as it’s happening, there are all sorts of other things going on in the background that they cannot cover. Lawsuits are getting beaten. New America First officials are getting put into place. Bureaucrats are getting fired. Leftist funding spigots are getting turned off. A lot is happening outside the spotlight.

They thought, for whatever reason, they were winning because of this fight over Ukraine. Whether they are or not isn’t the issue – the issue is that there are a whole bunch of other things going on that they don’t even know about. Yes, our enemies are victims of the fog of war as well. They aren’t seeing the entire picture. For every one place they believe they’re having success, there were a dozen places where they’re losing ground.

We have a tough fight ahead of us. Luckily, we anticipated it. We understood there was always going to be friction. We understood it would inevitably slow us down, but the question isn’t whether we’re being slowed down but whether we’re allowing it to stop us. We’re not. We’re trying to maintain awareness through the fog of war, even as our opponents forget that the fog of war exists.

They are old and decrepit and trying desperately to salvage an obsolete reality. We’re fresh and new and focused. My money is on us.

When the Word 'Insurrectionist' Should Be Used

posted by Tim Graham at Townhall 

It would have been a dangerous drinking game during the Biden presidency to chug every time the media broadly described Jan. 6 protesters as "insurrectionists." It didn't matter whether the protesters were violent or vocally supported overthrowing the government. That was the automatic journalistic assumption for every protester on the scene.

So it's remarkable when you consider the case of radical leftist Mahmoud Khalil and the group he led, Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD). On March 10, the network evening news shows didn't find an "insurrectionist." They came rushing to his defense.

The Trump administration pulled Khalil's green card for his support for Hamas terrorism. Everything President Donald Trump does is reflexively opposed as unjust.

NBC's Emilie Ikeda was vague: "Khalil recently finished a masters at Columbia and helped lead pro-Palestinian protests on campus."

ABC's Aaron Katersky also said: "As a Columbia University graduate student, Khalil helped lead pro-Palestinian protests and organized encampments that took over the campus for weeks last spring." Reporters pointed out his new American wife was pregnant, so Trump seems meaner.

CBS reporter Lilia Luciano editorialized: "You could feel the chill in the air which really matched the chill in terms of freedom of expression." CBS never found anything "chilling" in prosecuting nonviolent grandmas for "parading" in the Capitol.

"PBS News Hour" correspondent William Brangham read from a Trump message on Truth Social that Khalil is "a radical foreign pro-Hamas student" who "engaged in 'pro-terrorist, anti-Semitic, anti-American activity.' Now, as I said, the administration has not provided any details alleging that he has said or done any of those things. We simply at this point do not know." They played dumb.

The New York Times on March 11 turned to Khalil's friends, who were "describing him as kind, expressive and gentle." That's dramatically at odds with the Times reporting on CUAD on Oct. 9, 2024. They reported CUAD issued a statement calling the Oct. 7, 2023, massacre of innocent civilians a "moral, military and political victory" and quoting Ismail Haniyeh, the assassinated former political leader of Hamas.

"The Palestinian resistance is moving their struggle to a new phase of escalation and it is our duty to meet them there," the group wrote on Oct. 7 on Telegram. Earth to Media: They're pro-Hamas.

The Times noted CUAD rescinded an apology it made after one of its members said the school was lucky he wasn't out killing Zionists. "We support liberation by any means necessary, including armed resistance," they said.

Khalil has been routinely described as the "lead negotiator" for CUAD, but the "no evidence" gang at PBS somehow thinks you can't connect the dots between Khalil and CUAD. We can guess PBS reads and respects The New York Times, so they can't call this story "disinformation."

PBS pretends you can't find anything "anti-American" in CUAD's output. So it's embarrassing to note CUAD posted on social media, "We are Westerners fighting for the total eradication of Western civilization." They suggest oppressed territories of the world including Hawaii, Guam, and Puerto Rico.

The New York Post reported Khalil was caught on camera at last week's hostile takeover of the Milstein Library at Barnard College: "Videos and photographs posted on X depict him holding a bullhorn near the library entrance and engaged in discussion with school administrators."

Reasonable people can debate whether it is fair and reasonable to pull Khalil's green card and send him packing. But reasonable people should admit the reality that Khalil is an "insurrectionist." He is a "radical" and an "extremist." He embraces the murder of innocent civilians in the pursuit of "liberation." He's not a kinder, gentler protester.

Trump Buries Schumer for Pro-Terrorism Stance

 Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office on Wednesday, President Donald Trump responded to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer's defense of Mahmoud Khalil, a Green Card holding Columbia University student the administration plans to deport for alleged ties to Islamic terrorism and visa application fraud. 

"Schumer is a Palestinian as far as I'm concerned. He's become a Palestinian. He used to be Jewish. He's not Jewish anymore. He's a Palestinian," Trump said. 

Schumer and Senate Democrats are defending Khalil, a Syrian national, for the sake of opposing Trump. 

"While he may well be in violation of various campus rules regarding how the protests were conducted last year, that is a matter for the university to pursue, and I have encouraged them to be much more robust in how they combat antisemitism and maintain a harassment-free campus that protects the safety and security of Jewish and other students," Schumer post on X. 

They're conveniently lying about why he is being deported and that the law is on the side of the Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

Recommended

Watch Veterans Secretary Doug Collins Make a Reporter Sweat Over Her Fake News ReportingMatt Vespa

Meanwhile unlike Senate Democrats, Republicans on Capitol Hill are publishing the facts surrounding Khalil's arrest. 

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2025/03/12/trump-buries-schumer-for-pro-terrorism-stance-n2653702

🎭 𝐖𝟑𝐏 𝓓𝓐𝓘𝓛𝓨 𝓗𝓾𝓶𝓸𝓻, 𝓜𝓾𝓼𝓲𝓬, 𝓐𝓻𝓽, 𝓞𝓟𝓔𝓝 𝓣𝓗𝓡𝓔𝓐𝓓

 

Welcome to 

The 𝐖𝟑𝐏 𝓓𝓐𝓘𝓛𝓨 𝓗𝓾𝓶𝓸𝓻, 𝓜𝓾𝓼𝓲𝓬, 𝓐𝓻𝓽, 𝓞𝓟𝓔𝓝 𝓣𝓗𝓡𝓔𝓐𝓓 

Here’s a place to share cartoons, jokes, music, art, nature, 

man-made wonders, and whatever else you can think of. 

No politics or divisive posts on this thread. 

This feature will appear every day at 1pm mountain time. 

Liberals Defeat Nazis By Painting Swastikas Everywhere And Torching Immigrant Businesses

Libs Defeat Nazis By Painting Swastikas Everywhere, Torching Immigrant Businesses

World·Mar 12, 2025 · BabylonBee.com

WORLD — Liberals across the world have defeated Naziism by painting swastikas on everything and setting fire to immigrant-owned storefronts.

With hope seemingly lost after Nazis seized America and threatened to take over the globe, progressives courageously fought back by committing widespread arson against immigrant businesses and spray-painting Nazi symbols on cars and buildings.

"We did it! We beat the Nazis," shouted activist Jean LePenne, lighting another car dealership on fire. "It took us painting thousands of swastikas on things, including on our own bodies, but we did it. I literally had to get several swastikas tattooed on my face, but it was all worth it to defeat Hitler's second coming."

With the inexorable rise of the Fourth Reich seeming destined to take over the world, liberals began to turn the tide against Nazis by goose stepping through the streets, covering themselves in swastikas, and shouting "Heil Hitler." The Nazis were left severely weakened as progressives paraded large floats through the streets which displayed messages such as "Death To The President" and "Time For Violence." Leftists then began unleashing violent assaults against immigrant-owned businesses, defeating Naziism once and for all.

At publishing time, liberals had celebrated their victory over the Nazis by burning all the opposition leaders in effigy along with all of their books.

Did COVID Nearly Start a Revolution?

posted by J.B. Shurk at American Thinker 

Let’s revisit the tumultuous second half of 2021.  Dementia-addled President Joe Biden executed a disastrous retreat from Afghanistan in August that resulted in the killing of thirteen servicemembers.  Having spectacularly failed America’s warfighters, he transitioned quickly to the ongoing “fight against COVID.”  

No cost was too great or burden too onerous in the federal government’s war against microscopic organisms.  Billions were funneled to pharmaceutical companies (aka Democrat Party donors) to pay for witch doctors’ experimental elixirs.  Billions more were funneled to “news” platforms and “non-governmental” organizations (all on the USAID dole) to push the White House’s preferred COVID narratives and censor dissent.  In-class learning remained strictly limited.  School desks were transformed into walled enclosures discouraging human contact.  Masking requirements became only more elaborate and superstitious with time.  Any restaurants or small businesses that wished to avoid bankruptcy were forced to comply with ever-changing COVID edicts.  Members of the military were sacrificed as gene-therapy guinea pigs for Big Pharma.  The Occupational Safety and Health Administration threatened to prevent un-“vaccinated” workers from making a living.  Crazy Joe Biden promised a “winter of severe illness and death” for any American refusing to be a biochemical test subject.

It was twenty-first-century totalitarianism disguised as health policy.  It was the unholy alliance of State and corporate power (what’s that called again? — oh, right, fascism!).  It was persecution in the name of “Science.”  It was total insanity.

And just as the whole thing looked as if it were going to spiral out of control — when it seemed likely that “just-following-orders” medical doctors and troupes of dancing nurses would goose-step across the country with poison-dripping needles in their hands in search of the “noncompliant” — the COVID police state began crumbling.  One moment Biden’s Antifa shock troops were doxxing dissenting scientists and terrorizing their families online, and the next moment the loony-leftist brownshirts all time-traveled back to Nazi Germany.  One moment Democrats were erecting COVID concentration camps and threatening to separate un-“vaccinated” parents from their children, and the next moment the tyrants-in-training shelved those plans for a later date.  One moment the Department of Labor was forcing Americans to choose between medical experimentation and unemployment, and the next moment the Biden administration was pretending that it would never bully Americans into becoming pharmaceutical pincushions against their will.  It was as if the COVID clowns packed up their crazy circus and skedaddled out of town in the dead of night.

To be sure, the circus left a trail of destruction in its wake.  Grocery store floors were still painted with arrows meant to direct human-cattle along the most antiseptic paths.  Government buildings still proudly displayed signs cautioning visitors to stand six feet apart while simultaneously assuring everyone, “We’re all in this together.”  Big Pharma radio and television commercials continue to sell fear to this day.  Even in more liberated Republican-leaning areas of the country, it’s not unusual to run into stray hypochondriacs hurling insults at strangers for refusing to cover their faces with thin paper masks.  The COVID Nazis mass-produced crazy, and the most delusional among us made sure to stock up for decades.  Still, 2022 marked the beginning of the end of COVID’s relentless pressure campaign.  

The “Reign of COVID Terror” did not come to an end because high-ranking members of the Biden administration saw the error of their ways.  The pandemic-loving sadists did not wake up one morning, look at the COVID police state that they had constructed with a toxic mixture of threats and censorship, and conclude, “Wow, we really are some evil fascists.”  Some observers have argued that Democrats began to pull back on their COVID authoritarianism because they were fearful of the prospect of huge midterm election losses later in the year, but that explanation doesn’t quite pass muster.  COVID fearmongering, after all, was the electoral gift that allowed Democrat operatives to flood the 2020 election with fraudulent mail-in ballots.  There’s no reason to think that they had become skittish about rigging future elections with never-ending health “emergencies.”  

What seems most probable to me is that an unreported phenomenon emerged in the winter of ’21-’22.  I think that public resistance to the government’s COVID tyranny was quietly reaching a fever pitch, and those in power were becoming increasingly worried about losing control.  The first reports of “vaccine”-related injuries were making it past the Biden regime’s censorship protocols, and Americans had begun to learn that — contrary to public health officials’ slurry of lies — the mRNA injections were neither safe nor effective.  The propaganda press was struggling to cover-up stories of young, healthy athletes having heart attacks on playing fields because thousands of horrified viewers were witnessing the tragedies in person.  As the Biden administration was gearing up to mandate these experimental injections on children, parents had begun to suspect that the much vaunted “vaccines” might not be the “medical miracles” that the government had long claimed.  Social consciousness regarding both COVID and the government’s response to the virus rapidly changed during this short interval.

Remember, the National Security Agency and similar espionage organizations around the world monitor all of our electronic communications.  Every phone call, text message, email, and social media post that we create is collected, stored, and analyzed.  The CIA, FBI, and NSA pretend that they don’t spy on Americans, and the Supreme Court pretends that the federal government isn’t violating Americans’ Fourth Amendment rights every minute of the day, but the national security surveillance state tracks everything we say.  As appalling as that reality is, it is a statistical goldmine for predicting human behavior.  The ongoing aggregation of trillions of data points reflecting the moods and concerns of the human population in real time must provide a kind of crystal ball for those empowered to spy on the world.  With that kind of insight, predicting trends in the stock market would be relatively easy.  No wonder central banks and spy agencies seem to employ so many of the same people.

I’ve always wondered exactly what that data was saying at the beginning of 2022.  What was the NSA reading in Americans’ private emails and digitized phone conversations that persuaded the Intelligence Community to temper its strategic exploitation of COVID fanaticism?  I have a feeling that public opinion was shifting so quickly against COVID authoritarianism that there were predictive indicators for mass rebellion in the United States and elsewhere.  

Interestingly, this was also the time period when “Freedom Convoy” truckers began forcefully protesting COVID mandates in Canada.  By successfully closing down trade routes between Canada and the U.S., organizers forced tyrant Justin Trudeau to take the extraordinary step of invoking the Emergencies Act, a type of martial law action that Canada’s COVID authoritarians used to seize protesters’ bank accounts and other assets.  The government response was such an over-the-top assault against free speech and political dissent that many politicians in Europe and America denounced Trudeau’s actions as deeply undemocratic.  Although Canadian leftists succeeded in dispersing the “Freedom Convoy,” they provided a glaring example of thuggish government behavior during the “Reign of COVID Terror.”  

If Western governments intended to use COVID as an excuse to introduce mandatory digital passports and central bank digital currencies and to justify government-directed censorship of dangerous “disinformation,” those dystopian dreams suffered real setbacks at the beginning of ’22.  COVID propaganda was backfiring.  The World Economic Forum’s cabal of globalists was forced to find a new reason for Westerners to submit to its twenty-first-century brand of technocratic totalitarianism.  For those suspicious of coincidences, consider this small but curious data point: the “Freedom Convoy” ended on February 23, 2022.  The War in Ukraine started the very next day.

China and Canada Continue Trade War

 Effective March 20, 2025, China will place massive tariffs on Canadian goods. Aquatic products and pork will face a 25% tariff, while other items like rapeseed oil (canola), peas, and oil cakes will see a 100% tax. China is also implementing a 100% tariff on any imported electric vehicles and a 25%  tariff on Chinese aluminum and steel.

“Canada does not accept the premise of China’s investigation, nor its findings,” a statement from the Canadian government read. “China’s non-market policies and practices that artificially lower production costs and distort markets. Canada remains open to engaging in constructive dialogue with Chinese officials to address our respective trade concerns.”

Canada first slapped a 100% tariff on Chinese EVs in October 2024, as no one can compete with Chinese EV manufacturers. A few days later, Canada hit China with a 25% tariff on aluminum and steel. All of this happened around the same time that the European Union and the US also placed tariffs on Chinese goods as the West collectively felt that China had an unfair trade advantage due to cheap goods and labor, as well as government subsidies.

Canadian exports to China totaled $$31.1 billion in 2023, with exports from Canada coming in at $59.9 billion. Exports to China have increased by over 6% in the last five years. Gold, petroleum, and rapeseed are Canada’s main exports to China, while China primarily sends Canada cars, computers, and broadcasting equipment. Rapeseed is Canada’s second-largest acreage crop by acreage and China is the largest market for Canadian rapeseed.

The Canola Council of Canada believes canola seed oil and meal exports to China reached C$4.9 billion last year. Canola meal exports came in at 2 million metric tonnes, valued at C$920.9 million, while canola oil exports hit 15,351 metric tonnes with a C$20.6 million value. Pea exports to China reached C$303.6 million last year, fish and seafood came in at C$1.3 billion, and pork at C$486.6 million.

“With this announcement Canadian canola farmers are facing an unprecedented situation of trade uncertainty from our two largest export markets only weeks before planting begins,” says Rick White, Canadian Canola Growers Association (CCGA) President & CEO. “The impact of the federal government’s trade policy decisions is now playing out at the farmgate, making it imperative that government respond with a plan for financial compensation commensurate with the losses incurred.” Around 40,000 Canadian farmers work directly in the canola industry, generating C$43.7 billion annually.

There are various points of contention between the two nations. China recently warned Canada not to meddle in its One China policy after a Canadian frigate passed through the Taiwan Strait after a US military transit. China accused both China and the US of “deliberately causing disruptions and undermining peace and stability.”

China launched an anti-discrimination investigation into tariffs on Chinese EVs. China argues that the West’s near ban on Chinese EVs violates fair trade principles established under the World Trade Organization (WTO). China feels it has been unfairly excluded from the EV market under the guise of protectionism. The truth is that China has cutting edge technology paired with the ability to produce affordable EVs. The West knows it cannot compete with Chinese EVs and have nearly banned them through tariffs, excluding China from the entire EV trade sector.

Canada denies discriminating against Chinese EVs and insists the tariffs were to address China’s “non-market policies and practices that artificially lower production costs and distort markets.” Where is the outrage? Mark Carney demanded that Donald Trump show “respect” amid escalating trade tensions. Canadians began boycotting American made goods. Will we see that same level of aggression toward Xi and China? Of course, Trump did offend Canada by claiming it could become a US state which perhaps angered the people more so than the actual tariffs.

Consumers and businesses always lose amid trade wars. The tariff game has become tit-for-tat, with nations continually “retaliating” despite the reality that these measures are hurting their own economies.

https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/world-news/world-trade/china-and-canada-continue-trade-war/