Opinion

Canada as a national security threat to the United States

President Trump says that Canada poses a national security threat to the United States. He has therefore imposed tariffs of 25 percent on imported Canadian steel products and 10 percent on Canadian aluminum products.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau reacted by pointing out that “our soldiers who had fought and died together on the beaches of World War II and the mountains of Afghanistan, and have stood shoulder to shoulder in some of the most difficult places in the world, that are always there for each other, somehow — this is insulting to them” — but his recollection of all that is of no consequence. Neither is the prime minister’s puzzlement that “the idea that the Canadian steel that’s in military — military — vehicles in the United States, the Canadian aluminum that makes your, your fighter jets, is somehow now a threat.”

If President Trump says Canada is a threat, it must be true, because he says so.