Alexander Burns writes:

Doug Ford, the premier of Ontario, plans to rain economic punishment on Americans if President Donald Trump targets Canada in a trade war.

Ford has threatened to cut power transmission to U.S. homes and businesses and banish U.S. liquor from Ontario shelves. Wearing a MAGA-like hat reading “Canada Is Not For Sale,” Ford has pledged to target red states with dollar-for-dollar retaliation. In an interview Wednesday, he described himself matter-of-factly as a brawler with a reflex for combat.

“I’m a street fighter in politics,” Ford told me. “If someone throws a punch at me, I’m going to hit him back twice as hard.”

Also, Ford is pretty sure that he and Trump would get along.

“Absolutely,” he said. “One. Hundred. Percent.”

It is not difficult to imagine Ford, a 60-year-old smiling bulldozer of a man, enjoying the buffet at Mar-a-Lago or taking in a UFC match at Trump’s side. A right-of-center businessman-politician with a loyal working-class base, Ford has drawn casual comparisons with Trump for years. In our conversation, Ford cast his own blue-collar, anti-elite coalition as a precursor to Trump’s: “We have something up here called Ford Nation — well before Trump Nation.”

In another life, or maybe a few weeks from now, they might be friends and allies.

And that is what makes Ford important in this moment. For all his apparent kinship with Trump, he is pursuing not appeasement but confrontation. It is a revealing choice and the world should take note.

Standing apart from the servile menagerie of world leaders, billionaires and executives who are seeking Trump’s favor through flattery, Ford is making his own bet — that the American president will respect grit, bluntness and macho theatrics more than pleading gestures of submission.

It is a risky strategy, seemingly anchored in Ford’s confidence that he understands Trump on a deeper level than his colleagues in the governing class. If Ford is wrong in his assessment of Trump, his peace-through-strength strategy could inadvertently accelerate a trade war that Ford views as irrational. He is emphatic that he does not want to carry out any of the threats he’s leveled at Washington.

“That’s the last thing I want to do. I want to work with President Trump,” Ford said. He stressed: “There’s no one that loves the U.S. up here in Canada more than I do.”

Ford is, in a way, a one-man illustration of how much politics has changed since Trump’s first term. Eight years ago, the Trump counterweight in Canada was Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, with his gauzy progressivism, People magazine looks and Davos-compliant worldview. He became, overnight, every American Democrat’s anti-populist boyfriend in Canada.

Trudeau is still prime minister, barely. He is a shrunken figure serving his final weeks in office, cast off by his party as voters rebelled over the cost of living. And now it is a MAGA-conversant Ontario premier who looks like the king in the north. [Continue reading…]