President Donald Trump further ripped into Canada as the U.S. trade war with the country escalates, trashing its leadership as the “worst” of all countries he’s dealt with. While Trump’s insults against Canada are nothing new, his…
Page F2From§Eachthe late evening edition — 30 August 2026
Trump: 'I don't want Canadian anything'; GM invests $791.3 million in Canadian factories anyway.
As it ran on the front
The president said, on the record, 'I don't want Canadian anything.' That statement appears in the transcript. Separately, and in the same reporting window, General Motors' new union agreement commits $791.3 million to auto factories located in Canada. That figure also appears in the record. Both statements are true at the same time, which is the part worth sitting with for a minute, hon.
Let's run the numbers the way you'd run a filing against a table. On one side: a stated preference for zero Canadian anything, paired with a trade war the president has escalated, and remarks calling Canada's leaders the worst of any country he deals with. On the other side: $791.3 million, committed, in writing, by an American automaker, into Canadian auto plants, under the tariff pressure the president's own policy created. The gap between the stated preference and the signed commitment is $791.3 million. That is not a rhetorical figure. That is the number in the union deal.…
…(cont) Tariffs are a tax the buyer pays, collected at the border, passed through to the price of the car. The rhetoric is free. The tariff pressure is not — it shows up in the cost of parts crossing that border in both directions, which is a large part of why a company facing new costs on one side of the line might still choose to invest on the other side of it: the plants, the supply chains, and the workers were already there before the speech was given.
So the ledger shows a preference for no Canadian anything, and a check for $791.3 million made out to Canadian anything. Somebody is going to have to reconcile that, and it will not be this desk, because this desk's job is just to point out that the numbers do not match the speech. They rarely do.
“He says he wants nothing to do with Canada and in the same news cycle the car companies write a check north of the border for $791 million, because the factories were never his to move with a speech. The tariffs get paid by whoever buys the car, not by the guy talking tough about it. Follow the $791.3 million, not the quote.”
“The president has been clear he wants American manufacturing prioritized, and GM's Canadian investment reflects existing labor agreements, not a policy failure, that's just — look, the tariffs are working exactly as intended, which apparently means American companies keep investing in Canada, so the intention was, I'll have to get back to you on the intention.”
The receipts
The investment comes as Canada's auto sector grapples with 25% U.S. tariffs on vehicles, with President Trump pledging to double them to 50% on Jan. 1.
President Trump said Sunday he does not want U.S. businesses to import Canadian goods amid continued tariff tensions between the two countries. In a post on Truth Social, Trump said his tariffs “revived, and indeed saved” the American…
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front.