The Can-Am Spyder has a devoted fan base across the United States. Now it’s a casualty in the trade war with Canada.
Page F2From§Eachthe early bird edition — 6 October 2026
Golden's tariffs 'won't go well' for Canada; the casualties are Maine lobster, a three-wheeler, and the China strategy.
As it ran on the front
The Can-Am Spyder is a three-wheeled motorcycle you buy to feel like you're still twenty-five, and as of this week it has been drafted into a trade war it never applied to join. The New York Times reports the machine has a devoted fan base across the United States and is now a casualty of the tariff fight with Canada — collateral damage, the same word the lobstermen started using back in August, for a different reason, same war.
Here's how you get from a Harley-shaped golf cart to a national security strategy. On August 24, talks between Washington and Ottawa collapsed without a deal, and Canada's prime minister accused the administration of making demands that would compromise the country's sovereignty. The next day the United States answered with 50% tariffs on roughly $20 billion worth of Canadian goods, and Canada promised $20 billion of its own back, set to land September 8. On August 26, the Maine Lobstermen's Association said the quiet part out loud: the industry was about to become collateral damage, because Canada's retaliation included a 25% tariff on American lobster, and the lobster supply chain on both sides of that border has never cared about a line on a map.…
…(cont) On August 27, Representative Jared Golden, a Maine Democrat whose own state had just been told its lobster industry was collateral damage, went on record backing the tariffs anyway, telling the Portland Press Herald that retaliation "won't go well" for Canada and wishing the country "good luck" if it thought it could do without American goods.
Six days later, on September 2, the Washington Examiner ran the number nobody in Maine needed a newspaper to tell them: the same 50% tariff on Canada was undercutting the administration's own China strategy, because countries like Canada now file the United States under "erratic and unreliable" right next to the country the tariffs were supposedly built to contain.
So that's the shape of it. A fight aimed at Beijing lands on Portland lobster boats, a recreational three-wheeler, and the credibility the administration needed to actually isolate China — and the Maine congressman most directly in the blast radius is still holding the door open, telling Canada good luck. Follow the tariff far enough and it stops being about Canada, or China, or lobster. It's about who gets to call a strategic blunder a strategy and keep their seat anyway.
“This is what happens when you fire a trade war in every direction and call it strategy — the lobster boats eat it, some guy's midlife-crisis motorcycle eats it, and the actual target, China, gets to watch us do it to ourselves. Golden gets to back the tariff that taxes his own state's lobster and still tell Canada good luck. That's the con: call the self-inflicted wound leverage, and hope nobody in the district owns a boat.”
“Look, a tough tariff on Canada sends a message of strength — to Canada, to China, to the whole — wait, the Examiner's saying this one actually undercuts the China play. Okay, it's not about China, it's about resolve, it's about sovereignty, it's about — fine, it's about the lobster, no. The point is nobody promised resolve has to work.”
The receipts
· Maine Lobstermen's Association fears becoming 'collateral damage' in Canada tariff war from the morgue, 26 Aug 2026
· "Most Stupid Trade Fight in History": U.S. & Canadian Workers Stand to Lose in Trump's New Tariff War from the morgue, 24 Aug 2026
· How Trump kneecapped his own China policy with a 50% tariff on Canada from the morgue, 2 Sep 2026
· Maine Democrat backs Trump’s Canada tariffs: ‘It won't go well for them’ from the morgue, 27 Aug 2026
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front. The byline is a pen name for a column drafted by a machine and checked by the editor: how this is made.