Late-night host Seth Meyers took “A Closer Look” at U.S. President Donald Trump’s latest tariff threats against Canada on Wednesday night’s episode of “Late Night with Seth Meyers,” joking that Trump was directing his wrath at one of his “more nefarious enemies.”
On Monday, Trump ordered new 50 per cent tariffs on a range of Canadian goods imported to the U.S., further escalating the trade spat that the White House blames on Canadian policies targeting American autos, dairy and alcohol.
On Tuesday, Prime Minister Mark Carney said that he and the U.S. President spoke and agreed to “intensify” trade negotiations in the coming weeks, but that Canada is considering “all options” to respond to the new tariffs set to come into force next month. Trump doubled down on the newly announced levies, saying that Canada “need us to survive.”
Meyers dove into Trump’s latest range of announcements on tariffs to elections in the “A Closer Look” segment, saying the president “lashed out at Canada for no apparent reason but gave China a pass” after recently claiming the country interfered in the 2020 election.
“Trump decided to take it easy on China, that’s because he’s got bigger fish to fry and more nefarious enemies like Russia or Saudi Arabia or, hold on I’m getting a bad feeling about the next word I’m about to read, Canada,” Meyers joked.
He questioned the list of products that Trump is targeting with new tariffs, which range from alcohol and dairy to cement and hockey sticks.
“Hockey sticks? So you’re just a total d — ck.,” Meyers said. “You might as well slap a tariff on Molson, maple syrup and the concept of apologizing.”
Meyers mocked the inclusion of hockey sticks on the list, calling it “an insult to Canada.”
“It’s like Canada imposing a tariff on something that’s quintessentially American, like I don’t know, gambling or crypto, or gambling on crypto,” he joked.
The Trump administration announced the new tariffs on Monday under an obscure section of the U.S. Tariff Act of 1930, arguing that they were necessary because of “Canada’s discriminatory treatment of American products,” like alcohol and autos, since Trump initiated the trade dispute last year.
Nearly one in six of the goods announced in the latest tariff spree are not exported by Canada into the U.S., Canadian officials recently told Ottawa’s economic advisory council.
“Seriously, where is this animosity toward one of our closest allies and neighbours coming from?” Meyers asked.
Playing clips of Trump telling Canada to stop the ongoing wildfires from “coming in and poising our air,” Meyers quipped “sometimes I forget, he doesn’t know how anything works.”
Trump and other Republican lawmakers previously threatened to impose tariffs on Canada after smoke from Canadian fires triggered air quality warnings in multiple U.S. states.
“You’re mad about the wildfire smoke, that’s climate change, which actually you could do something about if you weren’t so obsessed with an election you lost six years ago,” Meyers said.
