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Trump started the morning on social media saying: “The United States is giving serious consideration to changing the name of Lake Ontario to Lake America in that we don’t expect to [be] doing much business with Ontario any longer.” On X, the account of the Republicans pushed the idea of renaming the lake.
In contrast to MAGA’s performative nonsense, Canadian officials announced today that on September 8 they will begin to impose tariffs of up to 50% on about 700 products worth about $20 billion in retaliation for Trump’s tariffs on Canada. Those products include U.S. steel, aluminum, chain saws, appliances, processed cheese, and clams. Paul Vieira of the Wall Street Journal noted that the tariffs appear targeted toward plants in Republican-held congressional districts.
Canada will also invest about 7.5 billion in Canadian dollars ($5.4 billion U.S.) in Canadian firms and workers hit by the trade war.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s threat of yesterday that the U.S. intends to strangle Iran’s economy isn’t faring much better than Trump’s attempt to rename Lake Ontario.
As economist Paul Krugman pointed out in his newsletter today, China can supply much of what Iran needs and has incentive to do so as Trump’s “self-inflicted quagmire in Iran” saps U.S. strength and respect. Krugman warned that Bessent’s threat “reeks of desperation,” a scent China would surely smell.
Krugman concluded with a prediction: “I can safely predict that the Chinese will make sure that the Iranian regime survives, and that they will thoroughly enjoy watching Trump slowly twist in the wind over the Strait of Hormuz.”
Indeed, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lin Jian today rejected the administration’s call for isolating Iran economically. “Cooperation between China and Iran has always been conducted within the framework of international law and should not be interfered with or disrupted,” Lin said. “China has already stated many times that it firmly opposes illegal unilateral sanctions.… China will take all necessary measures to firmly safeguard its own rights and interests.”
As Krugman pointed out, the Iran war has forced the U.S. to abandon many of its Middle East bases—that’s why the USS Lincoln couldn’t be resupplied—and it has little prospect of reclaiming them now that Iran has been emboldened to attack the troops there. MS NOW national security analyst Barry R. McCaffrey, a retired Army general, posted Saturday: “In my judgement, the US Armed Forces have probably permanently lost access to 15 Persian Gulf bases. Iran now poised to control access [to] the Gulf States. US will have to negotiate new access in western Saudi Arabia, Israel, southern Europe.”
On Sunday, in The Atlantic, Robert Kagan noted that the Iran war has reconfigured the Middle East. For years, Iran was on the ropes, with the U.S. dominating the region alongside countries aligned with the U.S., including Israel, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. Now Iran has withstood six months of attacks from the U.S. and Israel. Its survival has reconfigured the power structure of the region, with Iran emerging as the area’s dominant power as it has demonstrated its ability to damage the oil and gas infrastructure of its neighbors.
It is plain, Kagan wrote, that “Washington fears escalation more than Iran does,” limiting what the U.S. can do as Iran not only exercises the right to collect tolls on vessels transiting the Strait of Hormuz but also decides who can use the strait. That control, Kagan notes, gives Iran “leverage every day, over dozens of countries.” It can “reward friends, punish enemies, extract revenue, force the loosening of sanctions, and make governments think twice before opposing Iranian policies…without firing a shot.”
The policy of Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to bring a “warrior” ethos to the Pentagon by putting it “on offense, not just on defense” using “maximum lethality, not tepid legality,” and having “violent effect, not politically correct,” has given the U.S. a tremendous loss in Iran.
And a report today from Megan Rose and Hannah Allam of ProPublica suggests that officers in U.S. Central Command recognized the dangers of Hegseth’s approach to warfare. Rose and Allam report that when Hegseth polled top commanders about cutting the Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response program instituted after civilian casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan hardened opposition to the U.S., they universally objected.
Current and former defense officials told the journalists that Hegseth apparently thought senior officers would agree with him that focusing on civilian security was “woke” and would hamper “maximum lethality.” Instead, they uniformly disagreed, warning that scaling back the effort to protect civilians would “result in decreased efficiency of U.S. lethal operations due to an increased risk of target misidentification and reduced battlespace awareness.” Hegseth gutted the program anyway, and U.S. strikes have killed hundreds of civilians. Now it appears the administration is considering rebuilding the program.
Social media this morning picked up that a U.S. Air Force transport aircraft that had taken off from Joint Base Andrews near Washington, D.C., landed in Moscow. Later reports said the U.S. official traveling to Moscow was the director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), John Ratcliffe. There’s been lots of speculation about the purpose of his trip to Moscow, but so far it’s all guesses.
Journalist Greg Sargent notes that Trump’s trade war with Canada will hit the Midwest right before the midterms. Josh Turek, the Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate from Iowa and a leading voice for a new prairie populism that works for farmers, told Sargent, “It’s a really dangerous time to be a farmer in the Midwest.” “You talk to farmers, and they’ll tell you it’s one gut punch after another,” Turek said. Iowans tell him they feel betrayed.
Michigan’s Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate, Abdul El-Sayed, said that “Trump is escalating a trade war with Canada for his own vanity” and that his Republican opponent, former representative Mike Rogers, is a “rubber stamp” for Trump’s plans.
Maine, too, will be hit by the trade war with Canada. Yesterday, Vice President J.D. Vance was in Maine campaigning for Senator Susan Collins, but while he praised her, she did not show up for the rally. Vance made it a point to call Collins “independent,” a descriptor that many former MAGA candidates in Maine are using in this election cycle.
Collin’s Democratic opponent, Troy Jackson, was a logger on the Canada border before pursuing a career in politics, giving him an authentic voice as he explains the cost of a fight with Canada for Mainers.
NBC News national political reporter Sahil Kapur noted today that Ralph Alvarado, who is running for the U.S. House from Kentucky’s sixth District, which Trump won in 2024 by 15 points, has scrubbed his website of references to Trump and has changed his slogan from “America First Fighter” to “Independent Leadership.”
Still, Trump appears to think his power is unchallenged and, in the midst of the fires all around him, continues to be focused on his renovations to Washington, D.C. A report today from Jonathan Edwards in the Washington Post showed that ticket sales and fundraising for the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts plummeted after Trump’s name was added to it, even though the board insisted his takeover was a financial rescue.
Today Trump’s lawyers suggested that the administration might have to demolish the Kennedy Center if the courts don’t allow the board to renovate it over the next two years and add Trump’s name to the facade. After the renovations, it would read: “The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts Restored and Renovated by President Donald J. Trump.”
As Gary Grumbach and Dareh Gregorian of NBC News reported, Justice Department attorney Brantley T. Mayers wrote: “Without those efforts, the Center will deteriorate further into an unsafe, decrepit structure that will be required to be taken down, with a determination to follow on what to build on the site, such as a large outdoor amphitheater overlooking the Potomac River that has been proposed, by some, for many years.”
Trump’s threat to destroy the Kennedy Center unless he gets to do what he wants to it seems to be a metaphor for the United States: “Nice country you got there. It would be a shame if something happened to it.”
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Notes:
https://www.cnn.com/2026/08/25/business/canada-us-tariffs-american-consumers
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/2026/08/iran-middle-east-power/688374/
https://newrepublic.com/article/214669/trump-canada-trade-war-backfiring
https://www.ms.now/news/vance-susan-collins-trump-maine-senate