Of allies and lies

Canada bad; Russia good. So said Donald Trump on his way to the G7 Summit of major industrial countries in Quebec. Perhaps because they are both cold and huge and have hockey, the President has confused America’s closest friend in the world, a robust democracy, with a destabilizing, repressive rival that wants nothing more than to weaken American alliances.

How else but a mix-up to explain Trump’s vicious attacks on Canada and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau about what should be civilly discussed trade matters — the U.S. and Canada have more two-way commerce than any pair of the nations in the world, and we each are the other’s biggest trading partners — while saying that Russia should be welcomed back to the G7 club?

Russia was expelled from the G7 unanimously in 2014 for a damn good reason: invading Ukraine and biting off Crimea. It should stay out, unless and until it changes its behavior.

And the last thing the U.S. needs is an escalating trade war with our closest neighbor.

We get that Trump is angry, again: this time, about high Canadian tariffs on American dairy products, designed to protect their farmers.

Trump, of course, has already imposed newsprint and steel and aluminum tariffs, comically asserting a national security rationale. So he has no principled free-trade ground on which to stand.

New third-party estimates say those steel tariffs will cost 400,000 American jobs. An internal analysis by the White House itself says tariffs will hurt economic growth.

No matter, with the President on the warpath. In a testy pre-summit call, he told Trudeau that Canada burned Washington in the War of 1812. That was the British. And during that war, the Americans invaded what would later become Canada in 1867.

Fake history, fake economics, real irrational fury.