LOL. And what's the return strike if they did? Is Canada full of oil refineries? Where's their diesel fuel come from? How about Jet A for Toronto or Montreal's airports? It was always a lame bluff that was going to cost them a helluva lot more than us.

Just like it's a lame bluff that we would shut off their access to U.S. markets. Where is our oil going to come from to fuel our refineries? What happens to the world economy if we did that? Trump doesn't want to be the next Herbert Hoover, which means he can only escalate the trade war with Canada so far. He can't fully go up the escalation ladder - and the statements by Canadian leaders about turning off the pipelines are a fair warning of what might happen if Trump keeps ratcheting things up into the "de facto ending all trade" territory that we briefly landed in with China around Liberation Day.

If Carney wants to piledrive his economy - which is already the worst among most major nations - who am I to tell him no?

He doesn't want to piledrive his economy. That's what you're missing. Trump keeps trying to take more and more value away from Canada in the bilateral trade relationship, whenever the mood hits him. Canada imposes reciprocal consequences when he does. That's the smart thing for them to do. They don't want to do it - they want to maintain the status quo. But if the bully keeps trying to take your lunch money, at some point you have to stand up for yourself even if it means you might get a bloody nose. You don't want the bloody nose, but the alternative is worse.

Either way I don't much care, and Canada can pick: they can be our best friends and trading partners and take place in locking down the hemisphere or they can be China's besties. They don't get to have their cake and eat it, too.

Why do we get to insist that we won't be our best friends and trading partners unless they lock down the hemisphere? I mean, we have the power to do that. But it's not a very "best friends" approach to insist that they can't do what they think is best for their economy by accepting favorable deals on raw materials (like steel), but we get to go out and find another competing supplier of a raw material input (like crude) whenever we feel like it. And it's incredibly dumb to put to them this "only us or only China," take-it-or-leave-it kind of ultimatum at a time when Trump has been deliberately antagonizing them! You acknowledge that he's been needlessly belligerent and aggressive towards them. He's created a domestic political condition in Canada where it would literally be suicide for a political leaders to get closer to the United States - and then he insists that the only deal on offer is one where Canada increases its dependency on the U.S. under the guise of "Fortress North America."

We very much can and do care whether Canada is a close friend and ally or whether they're not. It's folly to do this - especially if you believe that the most important issue facing the United States in the future is rallying the world against a resurgent China.