President Donald Trump has unleashed economic warfare on two of America’s most closely aligned trading partners (and political allies): Mexico and Canada. On Tuesday, the Trump administration put into effect its long-threatened tariffs on consumer goods from both of those countries, with the President claiming that the tariffs were necessary to stem the tide of illegal immigrants flowing into the United States.
In response, those countries have instituted many of their own retaliatory tariffs and economic punishments on American products, including some targeted at Trump’s political partner, DOGE douchebag Elon Musk.
On Tuesday, Rob Ford, the premier of Ontario (Canada’s most populous province), announced the termination of a 100 million Canadian dollar (~$68 million American) contract with Musk’s satellite company, Starlink. “It’s done, it’s gone,” Ford said at a press conference, referencing the Starlink deal. “We won’t award contracts to people who enable and encourage economic attacks on our province and our country.”
Additionally, Ford said that American companies would be forbidden from bidding on the $30 billion worth of procurement contracts that are annually paid out by the province’s government. “U.S.-based businesses will now lose out on tens of billions of dollars in revenues,” Ford said. “They only have President Trump to blame.”
At the same time, a former high-ranking official has proposed instituting a blanket tariff on Musk’s car company, Tesla. “We are going to go after American stakeholders who matter to the White House. I have proposed a 100 percent tariff on all Teslas,” Chrystia Freeland, the former Deputy Prime Minister of Canada, recently announced. Freeland recently stepped down from her post to run for the slot of Canadian prime minister. “I am calling on all the countries that are affected by this tariff to join us, and our retaliation will target specific Trump constituencies,” Freeland added.
It’s the latest sign that a decent chunk of Canadians hate Musk. Some 230,000 Canadians also recently signed a petition aimed at revoking Musk’s Canadian citizenship (Musk has Canadian citizenship because his mother, Maye Musk, was born in Saskatchewan). The petition accused the billionaire of “attempting to erase Canadian sovereignty.” In response to the petition, Musk tweeted that Canada was “not a real country,” presumably inspiring more animosity against himself and his companies.
Musk is also hated by many Europeans (largely due to the billionaire’s meddling in EU nations’ politics), and by millions of Americans, and, presumably, by people from many other parts of the world. Recently released statistics showed that Tesla sales were plummeting across European nations, as well as in California—which had previously been the company’s stronghold. The EV maker’s sales in Australia are down 70 percent.
Additionally, Tesla has suffered a growing onslaught of vandalism ever since Musk became a prominent fixture of the Trump administration. Dealerships across the U.S. have been vandalized, shot up, and set on fire, and a growing protest movement is taking aim at the company’s bottom line.
English (US) ·