OCTOBER 26, 2026

Midterm Meddling

While U.S. President Donald Trump keeps warning about Canada “meddling” in the upcoming U.S. midterm elections, perhaps it’s voices closer to home he should be worrying about. Last week, former president BIll Clinton accused the White House of treating Canada “like dirt” while, over the weekend, former president Barack Obama, campaigning for Democrat candidates in Ohio, jokingly called Canada an “evil empire,” and asked why Trump is picking a fight with the “people who gave us maple syrup and Martin Short.” While Democrats hammer home their position that the trade war is hurting the U.S. economy, Republican candidates are feeling the pushback at the polls. Perhaps that’s why CTV reported Sunday that several sources are suggesting that talks toward a potential U.S.-Canada trade deal are “gaining steam.” This past weekend in Michigan, a border state that’s been hammered by the financial shock of tariffs, Trump signalled that a possible trade deal may be forthcoming, saying, “We’ll have that settled really soon.” Asked about this during his visit to Turkey, Prime Minister Mark Carney would only say that, “We’re ready to drop everything, sit down, and negotiate this afternoon.” But Carney, who has ridden the rollercoaster ride throughout this tariff war, stopped short of predicting that a deal was imminent, offering only a wry understatement that this U.S. administration is a “little hard to predict.”