Zack Beauchamp writes:

Canada’s Liberals just pulled off one of the greatest upsets in modern democratic history: going from a predicted wipeout in December to victory on Monday night. To understand why, you need to look at the signs on the sidewalk.

I don’t mean the ones advertising Prime Minister Mark Carney’s triumphant party, though there were plenty of those. Rather, I’m referring to the ones outside many businesses, containing long lists of the Canadian-made products on offer.

The signs are part of a grassroots boycott of American-made goods, a movement launched in direct response to President Donald Trump’s proposed tariffs and threats of annexation. A recent poll found that 61 percent of Canadians are currently boycotting American-made goods.

Trump has single-handedly created the greatest surge of nationalist anti-Americanism in Canada’s history as an independent country. And the Liberal Party, which campaigned as the party best positioned to fight Trump, just rode it to victory.

Politically, this is a massive own-goal on Trump’s part. Carney’s rival, Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre, is a populist right-winger who attacked the media and embraced conspiracy theories — basically as close to MAGA as you can get in mainstream Canadian politics.

Had Trump never uttered the phrase “51st state,” he’d be getting a friend in Ottawa. Instead, he has Carney — a longtime critic of America’s global economic dominance who campaigned on the idea that “the old relationship we had with the United States…is over.” [Continue reading…]