It’s about greed. It’s about resources. It’s about the Oligarch’s thirst for control of water.
Mr. Trump and Mr. Trudeau spoke twice on Feb. 3, once in the morning and again in the afternoon, as part of discussions to stave off tariffs on Canadian exports.
But those early February calls were not just about tariffs.
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Mr. Trump also mentioned revisiting the sharing of lakes and rivers between the two nations, which is regulated by a number of treaties, a topic he’s expressed interest about in the past.
Canadian officials took Mr. Trump’s comments seriously, not least because he had already publicly said he wanted to bring Canada to its knees. In a news conference on Jan. 7, before being inaugurated, Mr. Trump, responding to a question by a New York Times reporter about whether he was planning to use military force to annex Canada, said he planned to use “economic force.”
The White House did not respond to a request for comment.
During the second Feb. 3 call, Mr. Trudeau secured a one-month postponement of those tariffs.
This week, the U.S. tariffs came into effect without a fresh reprieve on Tuesday. Canada, in return, imposed its own tariffs on U.S. exports, plunging the two nations into a trade war. (On Thursday, Mr. Trump granted Canada a monthlong suspension on most of the tariffs.)
Executive director of the Traverse City non-profit FLOW, Liz Kirkwood said the scope of agreements include the Boundary Waters Treaty, the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement and the Great Lakes Compact.
Kirkwood described the agreements as a “Great Lakes partnership between Canada and the U.S. and they are a global model to protect and steward 20% of the planet’s fresh surface water.”
Kirkwood said any attempt to break the agreements would be “bad for the health of our lakes and our communities and ultimately destructive of the U.S. relationship with a trusted neighbor.”
In addition to FLOW, Great Lakes Now sought comments from Illinois-based Alliance for the Great Lakes and Wisconsin-based Milwaukee Riverkeeper. Both were instrumental in promoting passage of the Great Lakes Compact that prevents large-scale diversions from the Great Lakes.
Don’t play politics
Alliance CEO Joel Brammeier said: “U.S. treaties and agreements with Canada, and similar agreements among the states and provinces, are the bedrock on which sustainable protection and restoration of our Great Lakes is built.”
“There is no space for the U.S. to step back from its shared obligation,”Brammeier said.
From Milwaukee, Riverkeeper Cheryl Nenn said: “we should not play politics with the Great Lakes.”
Nenn also noted that only 1% of the Great Lakes are replenished by rainfall and snowmelt.
“They are a one-time gift from the glaciers, and we need to protect them from abuse and over-consumption and that should supersede all politics,” Nenn said.
Great Lakes Now also sought comments from water policy experts who have held official governance positions.
Chicago’s Cameron Davis was a longtime Great Lakes advocate before moving to the U.S. EPA under President Obama where he advised the administrator on Great Lakes issues.
“Midwesterners see protecting the Great Lakes and its water as an act of patriotism,” Davis said. “And they’re smart enough to know Canada is our friend in that effort.”
There are too many problems to list with the Trump Administration, but a top one is that in the effort to surround himself with yes men, he’s closely advised by a lot of true nutcases.
One of the yessiest of yes men is Peter Navarro, and a background study of the guy shows that he’s very likely the main driver in the Administration of the recent tariffs and a lot of the crazier international stances Trump is taking:
https://www.yahoo.com/news/white-house-official-threatens-redraw-053000568.html
He’s also very popular within the Administration, and his proven loyalty to Trump has won him an unassailable position. Musk just yesterday picked a fight with him on X – and that will speed up Musk’s exit in government.
I’ll harp on Navarro and the tariffs again, but it’s really a BFD, which will have major effects on a great many things. It’s rumored the tariff formula was given to Trump by Navarro as one option that was also an easy way to comprehend the policy:
https://timesofsandiego.com/business/2025/04/05/trump-aide-peter-navarro-under-fire-for-tariff-formula-that-does-not-make-economic-sense/
Trump apparently didn’t make up his mind exactly how the tariffs would be formulated until just a few hours before his announcement. He had multiple tariff plans to choose from, including ones that had been much more carefully put together, but he went with the simplistic one. It’s beyond horrifying that this is how a U.S. economic plan with major global implications was enacted.
On renewables and energy, here’s the NYT today:
How Tariffs Could Upend the Transition to Cleaner Energy
The levies are expected to drive up costs for U.S. companies that rely on renewable energy technology from abroad and scramble supply chains worldwide
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/03/climate/trump-tariff-clean-energy-transition.html
“The president’s trade war is expected to drive up the costs of nearly every component of clean-energy production in the United States, from the steel in wind turbines to the batteries in electric vehicles.
Many of those building blocks are imported from the European Union, China and Southeast Asia, where some of the highest tariff rates were assigned.
How that affects the energy mix inside the United States is complicated, experts say. After all, rising costs for these and other materials won’t affect only renewable energy. Many of Mr. Trump’s trade policies, including tariffs on steel and aluminum, will also hit fossil fuels, making it more expensive to build natural-gas export terminals and drill oil wells, despite the president’s pledge to make oil and gas cheaper and more plentiful.”
Rachel Maddow had an explanation for Der Gropenfuhrer’s bizarre affinity for tariffs involving his son in law looking up book titles—yes, just titles—to satisfy dad’s rambling desires, finding 1 he liked, (something about dominating China) committing to the ideas of the guy who wrote it, and bringing in the author as an advisor, with one result being making him 1 of the most influential people in the world. Just to complete the utter absurdity, the guru the author kept quoting to justify everything he was claiming was a made-up person.
Yeah – the made-up person’s name is Ron Vara, an anagram of Navarro. He used Ron Vara as a source in 6 of his books. True story, really effed up.
best explanation I have seen so far
https://youtu.be/TfZqjsfZcks
I can’t even make a judgement of this other video about the “logic” of trump’s economics, but this is another video trying to explain who in his administration is pushing it and what outcome they want:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ts5wJ6OfzA
I really welcome any viewpoints from anyone who watches the whole video. Idealized economic classes in high school and freshman college is my extent, really nothing about real messy global economics.
The corruption, malice and idiocy in this Trump administration is fractal. Every time you look closer, there’s more CM&I popping out.
Yet again with the complete lack of understanding of simple physics, geology and geography
This is not the first time we down here have proposed draining the water from up there and the problem then is the problem today: same as stealing water from the Pacific Northwest it is geographically, geologically and physically impossible. Yes yes yes, water can be pumped uphill, across expanses, but at what expense? Not to mention it changes the equation: naturally, ‘at rest’ water settles to the lowest level, pushing it uphill is the application of an external force not ‘at rest’ upon the object at rest. Physics but not the good kind
There’s a good chapter on this in Ward Churchill’s (long banned in the US) “Struggle for the Land”, and a PBS documentary in the eighties I can’t recall the title but it might have been “Draining Hudson’s Bay” …
But as the north is above so the water can just flow down south by gravity feed. Same concept is often espoused in Oztrlia.