Trade war that started with tariffs on lobster escalates to threat of banning an entire aircraft maker

…(cont) By August 26th the Maine Lobstermen's Association had read the schedule and told The Hill they expected to become collateral damage in a fight they didn't start. The next day, Canada's Fisheries Minister pulled seafood off the list — "select adjustments," the Department of Finance called it, after what it termed feedback from the industry. The lobstermen got a reprieve. The steel, furniture, clothing, and electronics sectors did not; those tariffs, 15 to 50 percent, stayed exactly on schedule.

In between, on August 30th, the president told reporters Canada's leadership was the "worst" of any country he'd dealt with. On September 1st, the U.S. Trade Representative confirmed there were no negotiations happening at all — "more their emergency than ours," he said. On September 2nd, this paper's own conservative page called the 50 percent tariff a serious strategic mistake that had knocked the administration's China policy sideways too. Nobody at the table disputes the arithmetic; they dispute whose fault the arithmetic is.

Then, Sunday, the president moved from tariffs to an outright ban: Bombardier, the aircraft maker, should no longer be allowed to sell planes in the United States at all, he posted. Not a tax. Not a duty. A ban, on a company, over lobster.

So here is the reconciliation: a $20 billion retaliatory tariff schedule, one seafood carve-out, one company threatened with total exclusion from the American market, and zero — not low, zero — negotiating sessions scheduled between the two governments as of this writing. When the column that should hold "talks resume" instead holds a jet-ban threat, hon, that's not escalation. That's the only entry left to make.