Worth reading - Why Trump's tariff war on Canada is bigger than Canada
Trump just hit Canada with an extra 50% tariff, and the detail that matters isn’t the number. It’s that these tariffs apply even to goods fully compliant with USMCA, the very trade deal Trump renegotiated and signed himself. The escape hatch that shielded most Canadian trade through 2025 just got welded shut. Justin Wolfers, the Australian-American economist behind Platypus Economics, walks through how the White House got there: a 1930 statute barely used since Herbert Hoover was president, deployed to justify a 50% duty on everything from wine to hockey sticks, tied to disputes that have nothing to do with the goods actually being taxed.