By Jeffrey Blehar
Tuesday, August 25, 2026
I think my friend Erick Erickson summed
it up best: As you read this, there are 69 days remaining until the
November midterms. The economy and all that pertains to it — the rapidly
increasing cost of living, tariff-based inflation, and Trump’s seeming
indifference to all of this — is the No. 1 focus among voters. As a secondary
matter, voters are concerned about the Iran war — but again, mostly because of
its visible effects on the price at the pump.
And Donald Trump has decided to go back to banging the
drum about a trade war with Canada, again. According to the New York Times:
President Trump threatened on
Monday to increase tariffs on all cars, trucks, car parts and steel from Canada
to 50 percent, starting Jan. 1, as the relationship with America’s closest
traditional ally morphs into a full-blown trade war.
Writing on Truth Social, the
president said that Canada was “among the worst Nations in the World to deal
with” and that it “will be treated like a State no longer.”
“They feel entitled, and yet, WE
DON’T NEED CANADA, THEY NEED US!” he wrote.
Ho-hum, another threatened trade war. “Canada wants the
benefits of being a State, without being one!!!” Trump added later, just to
make sure nobody had forgotten about his threat back in 2025 to annex the
entire country. This all arises from the breakdown of trade talks between the
United States and its neighbor to the north; Canada is not feeling particularly
responsive toward Trump’s demands that it do things like eliminate
French-language labeling requirements or sacrifice national sovereignty to Trump’s
whims after being hit with 25 percent tariffs on most of their industrial
products (steel, aluminum, lumber, etc.) back in 2025.
Of course, Trump’s theory of “national sovereignty” needs
little elaboration at this point: In his opinion, it is something that belongs
solely to the United States, particularly when Trump is running it. Hence his
otherwise mystifying fixation on Canada’s status as a nation-state — he
dismisses it as puny in order to inflate his own ego. Meanwhile, prices will go
up as precious time is wasted in the remaining months before the election. (If
it’s any consolation, it’s probably already too late.)
Really, I just think Trump needs, on some
fundamental psychological level, to “master and dominate” situations and people
— look at the man’s hiring principles for confirmation of this theory — and
Canada offers him an alternate outlet to Iran for these impulses on the
international stage, at least a more satisfyingly responsive one. (It
remains to be seen whether they are equally intractable.)
America’s Ranchers Are Now Beefing with Trump
A brief note on futility. As the price of nearly
everything continues to rise during Trump’s second term, one item he has kept a
particular eye on is the price of beef. And for once this one is not really
Trump’s fault. The rising price of beef is due not to tariffs or trade wars,
but to the rules of supply and demand. Where’s the beef, you ask? Turns out we
just don’t have enough of it.
Prolonged drought conditions in America’s stock-breeding
states (e.g., the Great Plains and Texas) over the last several years have
quietly shrunk our nation’s cattle herds. Restoring them to a healthier size
will inevitably bring down the price of your hamburger — but not for a couple
of years, when those new steers have finally grown old enough to bring to
market.
In the meantime, Trump is willing to try anything in
order to lower the price before the election. And he has hit upon the idea of using the only tool he knows how to
wield — tariffs — in reverse: by temporarily offering relief from
preexisting tariffs to foreign beef producers, an anticipated 300,000 metric
tons of it.
Naturally, America’s farmers and ranchers are howling about this. They can stick
a sock in it as far as I’m concerned, because Trump’s suspending foreign beef
tariffs is like his extending the waiver of the Jones Act: a nice start, but
let’s abolish the whole thing entirely. Of course, Trump would never get rid of
something as beautiful as a tariff permanently — you might as well ask a
jeweler to flush his diamonds down the toilet.
Not that it will do any good in lowering prices. For all
his bravado and bluster, Trump sometimes reminds me of an incompetent version
of the little Dutch boy from the old Hans
Brinker story — desperately seeking to plug leaking holes in the economy
with his stubby fingers, facing increasing pressure from behind, and running
out of hands.
Harry and Meghan Are Finally Run Out of America on a
Rail
Finally (and because the Carnival of Fools has taken such
a dour turn as of late), I wanted to end on some redemptive, uplifting news:
England’s useless residual royal Prince Harry has officially decided to decamp from
America’s shores along with his socially climbing bride Meghan Markle, to
return in shame to Great Britain. It would be nice to tell you that Trump and
ICE were behind it — now that would have positively affected the
November midterms — but the simple truth is that they deported themselves,
because nobody wanted them around.
Harry and Meghan, who flamboyantly broke with the royal
family in a whiny public feud six years ago and moved to Santa Barbara, had
high hopes of leveraging America’s fascination with the British royals into an
easy jet-set lifestyle as West Coast celebrities. What they hadn’t counted on
was the unavoidable reality that (1) he’s a whimpering simpleton without a
single interesting quality, and (2) she has the charisma and personal warmth of
a dull but demanding pit viper. Together they made a great team. (Markle’s podcasting career has, curiously,
failed to take flight. Apparently, people just aren’t that interested in
listening to the co-star of Suits talk to various cosmetics CEOs about
their lives.)
It’s helpful to remember exactly why Harry and
Meghan left England in the first place: Harry claimed that the media coverage
of his marriage was intolerable and that his family had acted like racist
bullies toward his beloved bride. (Markle, at the time: “I just didn’t want to
be alive anymore.”) It looks like they have suddenly found the will to live!
Alas, a shame it had to come just at the moment England has been relegated to
the minor leagues as a global power.
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