Evidently not. After Ford and other Canadian officials made noises about Canada shutting off the flow of oil to the United States, Danielle Smith had to step in and show them the map of where all the pipelines are.

Why does that mean that they aren't aware of where most of their oil goes? I mean, by definition if they're talking about shutting of the flow of oil to the United States, they know that they're sending a ton of oil to the United States. It's a threat. They know we need that oil. We have massive amounts of refinery infrastructure that depends on those oil supplies as feedstock. Tons of jobs, tons of economic activity - to say nothing of the impact on gasoline prices and the global economy.

If by "Canada" you mean "Canada's liberal party", who is putting their political interests ahead of what's best for actual Canada and broader North America, I agree.

Nope. I mean "Canada," the country. Trump has continually torn up his prior trade agreements with Canada, over and over again, in an effort to keep making the deal worse for them. It's 100% the right strategy for them to refuse to accept that anymore. To "tune up" the bully who won't honor his prior agreements and keeps trying to use his size and strength to punish the other party. When dealing with someone who negotiates like Trump does, at you have to be willing to say "no deal" and walk away from the table. It's exactly the right negotiating strategy, as Trump has indicated that he will not honor prior commitments and will retrade anything the moment he thinks he can painlessly get away with it.

With respect, I would suggest that you go look closer at what Lutnick and the others are saying about the deal. This deal is about North American supply chain provenance.

No, it's not. The proximate causes of the deal blowing up are the U.S. insisting that medium and heavy trucks not be included in the tariff agreement and the U.S. insisting that Canada adopt the same steel tariff regime that it imposes. Canada said that medium and heavy trucks were always part of the automotive aspect of the deal, and the U.S. kept trying to retrade that out. And Canada simply will not agree that they have to adopt the same tariff structure on steel imports that the U.S. does. Steel is an important input for manufacturing, and they don't want to make their manfuacturing sector less competitive by tariffing that import the way the U.S. does. Canada First, and all that. The same reason that we're perfectly happy to import tons of oil. We're super excited about the prospect of paying Venezuela for the privilege of making North America more dependent on foreign imports and worsening our balance of trade! It just shows the incoherence of Trump's mercantilistic attitudes - at least with oil, he's capable of recognizing that imports can actually improve your economy. Canada is insisting that they should be able to do the same for important inputs like steel.

Trump's been threatening and/or levying tariffs against Canada for any reason that crosses his Twitter feed. Fentanyl, illegal migrants, wildfire smoke, being pissed that the Prime Minister criticizes our foreign policy....it changes by the week. He just wants to impose tariffs on Canada, because they run a trade surplus with the U.S. The Administration is trying to convince their base that there's some deeper strategic reason for it as they throw anything against the wall, but the truth is that it's just in service of Trump's belief that the balance of trade current account is a reflection of a nation's economic strength, and his inability to internalize the broader lesson of what he sees with Venezuelan oil into other aspects of the economy.