Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent's hubris never wanes. During a CNBC interview when the topic shifted to Canada, he mocked our neighbors for pulling out of their trade talks and laughed at their military capabilities.
Canada rejected parts of the proposed trade agreement over Trump's hatred of any language other than English as the Guardian reports.
An apparent pending deal between Washington and Ottawa aimed at avoiding damaging tit-for-tat tariffs broke down at the last minute, with Canada’s prime minister, Mark Carney, claiming his country had come “under attack” from the US.
Among the multiple and complex points of disagreement was a Canadian accusation that US negotiators had pressed for a weakening of legal protections for the French language, which is most heavily spoken in the province of Quebec.
In a lengthy interview the CNBC host finally got around to Canada.
CNBC: And finally, are you meeting with your Canadian counterpart here? Because I guess Mark is wondering if we're now in a tit-for-tat trade war with Canada.
BESSENT: Well, I don't think you can be in a tit-for-tat with someone who's 13 times larger than you are.
CNBC: They say they're doing okay.
BESSENT: What else are they going to say? You know, look, I think this is very unfortunate that Prime Minister Carney has turned this into a political shouting match.
Trump has been incessantly attacking Canada, and trolling them about becoming our 51st state, so it's not Carney that's turned the relationship into a political shouting match. Then Bessent purposefully misrepresented Carney's words.
"I mean, we're not at war with Canada. How are we going to be at war with Canada?" he said. " What, are they going to take their two submarines from the Edmonton Mall and sic them on us?"
Canada is part of NATO and are a non-aggressive nation. Why would they need a massive military?
Oh, Carney hates Trump like the rest of the world.
Then, as usual, Bessent lied about Carney's campaign and politics.
BESSENT: That he came to power on an anti-American, anti-Trump agenda. He was 20 points behind in the poll. And then he started this, and it's unfortunate that he's not doing what's best for the Canadian people.
He's doing what is best for the Liberal Party, what's best for Mark Carney.
And in the long run, the Canadian people are going to see through that. And I will say that they were offered the best trade deal of any country on the globe. And he chose to walk away from it at the last minute.
Carney was never 20 points behind Pierre Poilievre because he wasn't the leader of the party yet. The Liberals were behind until Trump started attacking Canada, so Carney saw an opening and took control.
There's nothing untoward about that.
The Canadian people voted him in and the Liberal party built a huge lead afterwards.
That's called smart politicking.
What Bessent does is lie all the time.
That's why Republicans are drowning in red ink heading to the midterms.
