Subsidiarity Economics 2026. The Times more or less locally, Part 9, 25th Amendment Watch, 23d Edition. The Canadian Harvard and Oxford doctor in economics vs. the Wharton playboy. The Trade War with Canada edition.

By Self-created photograph by Jonathunder - Own work, GFDL, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=64543672

If this is a match of intellects, and it likely is, Canada has already won the trade war. 

Carney is undoubtedly a genius and the only international leader currently in office, maybe ever in office, to have run the economies of two different countries.  Trump is increasingly obvious of rather low intellect and a real estate developer with a very narrow understanding of the economy, who is in turn heavily influenced by Peter Navarro, a 77 year old economic theorist who uniquely champions tariffs.  To make matters worse, Trump is suffering a rapid dementia related mental decline.

The US right now is destroying its own economy.

August 26, 2026

Canada imposed retaliatory tariffs on U.S. steel, aluminum, furniture and clothing (50%),  cheese, appliances and some seafood, (25%) and on electronics and tools (15%), effective September 8.

It also pledged aid to Canadian workers.

It was a dollar per dollar match on US tariffs, which it basically offsets.

As a side effect of this, the price of household paper products, toilet paper and paper towels, is climbing.

Thanks Don.

On the contest of intellects, the petulant baby in the Oval Office threatened to rename Lake Ontario the Lake of America or something.  Trump actually thinks he renamed the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America, even though it remains the Gulf of Mexico in reality.  The Lake Ontario thing is incredibly stupid.  Nobody reacted positively to it, although I'm sure that administration flunkies will pretend it's a great idea.  Curtis Hertel Jr., chairman of the Michigan Democratic Party, stated:

Donald Trump has been America first in name only his entire presidency. He promised lower prices, higher wages, and no foreign wars … all of that is bull shit.  Renaming th fourth best Great Lake isn’t going to change that.

Americans aren't impressed with the latest Trump stupidity.

Trump shitposts fail to win support for Canadian trade war

On Trump dumping American cattlemen, John Barrasso, Senator from Trump, oh, um, Senator allegedly from Wyoming, posted this on Twitter:

Americans want US beef on the table – not foreign imports. Wyoming ranchers produce the highest quality beef in the world. Our ranchers don't ask for special treatment. They simply want a fair marketplace. It needs to be easier – not harder – for Wyoming ranchers to feed America. I will continue to fight for policies that strengthen Wyoming beef producers and invest in the American cattle herd.

Barrasso is a Trump suck up and hasn't really done much for Wyoming in years.  During election cycles he's for whatever he thinks Wyomingites are for and is otherwise a rank cowards pretending he thinks Trump is brilliant when he knows that he's not.  Last time he ran he became worried about gadfly candidate Reid Rasner and accordingly pulled to the hard right.

Barrasso must regard the Wyoming livestock industry as sufficiently powerful enough to actually hurt the GOP, or this an issue near enough to the hearts of Wyomingites, that he needs to speak up.  He didn't do that when public lands were on the table.  It's interesting in part because the Wyoming range cattle industry in particular, and agriculture in general, have been so pro Trump and pro GOP that it's quite literally actually stupid.  We posted on this the other day.

The GOP's useful idiots in agriculture.

Neither Hageman or Lummis have said anything.

Hageman, of course, has incentive not to.  She's a Trump endorsee and is now running against James Byrd tof Lummis' seat.  This makes her exposed on this issue.  If she speaks up, and she's going to have to, it puts her between somebody that supports here that she probably thinks is a heaping bowl of stupid in reality, but then exposing her to voters who she probably figures are more heaping bowls of stupid.  Byrd is perfectly suited to exploit this as Hageman comes from a farm/ranch and can't stay silent before she looks like a traitor.

Lummis, of course, comes from a ranch too, but as she's nto running, she doesn't have to say anything.  She seems to be bucking for a Trump cabinet post, anticipating that people will jump the Trump ship post election.

Anyhow, on Dr. John:

Beefing over foreign beef plan, Barrasso breaks with Trump administration

Closer to home, businesses have been closing right and left in Casper.

Casper’s Outback Steakhouse closes permanently after nearly three decades of business

Little Shop of Burgers announces closure at end of month

Two locally owned Casper small businesses closing permanently

And, good riddance:

Enough! Evanston Man Says He's Leaving The State Over Property Rights Fight

On other economic fronts, the US came out with its "Economic D-Day" against Iran, which are really sanctions against Iranian trading partners, but not really.  It delayed the imposition of them to January 1, 2027, which means they won't happen at all.

August 27, 2026

Will Trump's latest beef plan make your hamburger cheaper? Not much, experts say

Of course it won't.  It's not enough of an addition to the supply chain to matter.

But it could impact other things, depending upon where the beef is sourced.

August 28, 2026

INVOKE THE 25TH AMENDMENT YOU COWARDLY BASTARDS

Seriously, we have a fool ordering that Lake Ontario be called Lake America.

The GOP is a complete fucking joke.  Trump is the worst President in the American history and is destroying the country.

Headline in the CST:

Officials issue inflation warnings

This is at the big economic summit in Jackson Hole.

I wish they'd have this in Scranton or the Bronx.  Jackson is already full of rich carpetbaggers as it is.

400 Southwest Wyoming Trona Mining Jobs On Hold As China Floods Soda Ash Market

August 31, 2026

The US has entered into some sort of deal with Venezuela that has a 25 year life span which supplies the US with oil.

This is frankly naked, rank, colonialism.  My predication is that the deal will be voided as soon as this horrific administration is out.

September 1, 2026

Cattle imports from Mexico resumed.

They've been shut down for fifteen months.

Mexico normally imports 1,000,000 head of cattle into the US every year.

This is actually the resumption of importation that had been occurring until the screwworm outbreak.  The Trump administration blamed that on the Biden administration, like it does everything else.  

Closer to home, yet another Casper restaurant is biting the dust.

House of Sushi in downtown Casper permanently closes

There's been a real rash of these recently. Something is going on.  An article in Oil City notes that the list includes Little Shop of Burgers, Benny Montanaro’s Pizza (which I'd never even heard of), and Outback Steakhouse.

GiGi’s consignment store in Casper is also closing.

Next to House of Sushi it appears an entity called Jae's Place is opening in the old Wonder Bar space.

I don't really understand Jae's Place, but apparently its a wester wear store that supports a charitable mental health foundation.  That's admirable but frankly opening in that location is desecrating a Casper landmark. The space had been the Wonder Bar more or less continually since 1937, having originally been located in another space.  It became a steakhouse under the name C85 a decade or more ago that sold out to Wyoming Rib and Chop which became, you guessed it, another Casper restaurant that closed.

I understand that Jae's Place is a charity so I should not have a non charitable attitude about it, but there's a really old Western Wear store just a block away that I hope is not hurt by this multi state entity and for a long time Casperite seeing this converted into retail is disappointing.  Workmen have been busy for weeks molesting the interior so the damage will likely be permanent.

This is the sort of thing that happens when a place has no sense of itself.

The Wonder Bar

These photographs are of the "World Famous" Wonder Bar. The Wonder Bar has operated on Center Street for decades, although it has had short periods of time in recent years in which it operated under a different name (Tommy Knockers, Dillingers, and very briefly, "Sludge and Eddies"). Still, the bar has been around so long that even efforts to operate it under a different name do not deter the locals from continuing to refer to it as the Wonder Bar.

Downtown Casper once had a vast number of bars. This are of downtown had multiple bars on a single block. Only the Wonder Bar survives as a bar.

At some point in time, decades ago, Lee Riders paid to paint an advertisement on the side of the bar. The sign is still there, although an effort to paint over it was made at some point. This reflects the stockman heritage of central Wyoming, and indeed at one time quite a few cowboys and sheepherders spent time in the Wonder Bar.

As an aside, it's hard to see how a town that has a microbrewery every other door can't keep a legendary bar open.

September 2, 2026

The House passed another stopgap budget bill to keep the government running.

Data centers are becoming a big topic in Wyoming.

Pitching 940-acre data center, Prometheus Hyperscale asks Natrona County to bypass state review

Frankly, I"m not a big fan, meaning not a fan at all, of the big expansion of data centers and I'm absolutely opposed to them being constructed on vacant agricultural land.

This was a hearing in front of the County Commissioners.  It looked like each of the current sitting commissioners made some sort of comment at the end, as the Oil City News reports:

In their closing comments, Nicolaysen and Chair Jim Milne said the board must balance community concerns with the rights of private landowners. Laird framed the current technology infrastructure race as an issue of national defense. He said that domestic computing facilities keep American technology out of foreign hands.

“[President Donald] Trump has said it too,” the commissioner said. “He says we have a war going on with China and Russia over who’s going to take over with this AI business. And that’s what this data center is all about. … Do you want China running your AI or Russia running your AI or do you want Natrona County commissioners and the state of Wyoming and America running AI?”

Commissioner Casey Coates cautioned against reacting with panic instead of focusing on tangible facts.

“When we ask for the protection of the government, we really ought to be careful because government at times can be overreaching and those protections that we ask for can be overly applied to ourselves,” Coates said. “Do we not like something because of what it is, or do we have real impacts? If we have real impacts, let’s address those.”

Commissioner Dave North said that state environmental regulators handle water rights and industrial pollution under state statutes.

“The state engineer is the one that takes care of the water,” he said. “That is not our responsibility. That’s not our job. That is up to the state. The DEQ takes care of a lot of stuff. That’s their job. That is not our job.”

Of the five sitting commissioners, only Laird is on the ballot this election.  Laird is correct on Donald Trump's position.  Trump basically called communities that don't want data centers stupid as life is all about money and he loves money and you should love money because Trump loves money and you should love Trump, and money, but Trump most of all.

This must be a nightmare of Chuck Gray, who has been trying to hate things Wyomingite's claim to hate, and they seem to hate data farms, but Trump, who Gray loves, loves them.

On something Trump and Gray presently hate, wind farms:

Scaled-Down Laramie Range Wind Project Gets Go Ahead After Intense 2-Day Hearing

Something else that's been a topic in the news.

Uinta County Ranch Family Builds USDA Meat Processing Plant From The Ground Up

The Donald Trump beef story gets worse:

Driskill Blasts Trump Meeting World's Largest Meatpacker Before Beef Import Deal

Driskill is in the legislature and has been consistently clear thinking.

Last edition:

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Labels: 2020s, 2026, Agriculture, Canada, Disaster, Donald Trump, Economics, Food, Government, Kyla Scanlon, Republican Party, Taxes, The Second Trump Administration, Wyoming's boom and bust economy

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Labels: 2026 Election, Agriculture, Cowards, Cynthia Lummis, Food, Harriet Hageman, Health, James Byrd, John Barrasso, Reid Rasner, restaurants and bars, The Second Trump Administration, Wyoming, Wyoming (Casper), Wyoming (Evanston)

The Truth About American Hegemony | The Ezra Klein Show

Prime Minister Mark Carney at Davos

Carney is an economist with a doctorate, as opposed to Donald Trump, who is an idiot.  His speech not only reflects reality, it marks the day American superpower status came to an end, murdered by Donald Trump.

Today, I'll talk about the rupture in the world order, the end of a nice story and the beginning of a brutal reality where geopolitics among the great powers is not subject to any constraints.

But I also submit to you that other countries, particularly middle powers like Canada, are not powerless. They have the capacity to build a new order that embodies our values, like respect for human rights, sustainable development, solidarity, sovereignty and territorial integrity of states.

The power of the less powerful begins with honesty.

It seems that every day we're reminded that we live in an era of great power rivalry. That the rules-based order is fading. That the strong can do what they can, and the weak must suffer what they must.

This aphorism of Thucydides is presented as inevitable — as the natural logic of international relations reasserting itself. And faced with this logic, there is a strong tendency for countries to go along to get along. To accommodate. To avoid trouble. To hope that compliance will buy safety.

It won't.

So, what are our options?

In 1978, the Czech dissident Václav Havel, later president, wrote an essay called The Power of the Powerless. And in it, he asked a simple question: How did the communist system sustain itself?

And his answer began with a greengrocer. Every morning, this shopkeeper places a sign in his window: "Workers of the world, unite!" He doesn't believe it. No one does. But he places the sign anyway to avoid trouble, to signal compliance, to get along. And because every shopkeeper on every street does the same, the system persists.

Not through violence alone, but through the participation of ordinary people in rituals they privately know to be false.

Havel called this "living within a lie." The system's power comes not from its truth but from everyone's willingness to perform as if it were true. And its fragility comes from the same source: when even one person stops performing — when the greengrocer removes his sign — the illusion begins to crack.

Friends, it is time for companies and countries to take their signs down.

For decades, countries like Canada prospered under what we called the rules-based international order. We joined its institutions, we praised its principles, we benefited from its predictability. And because of that we could pursue values-based foreign policies under its protection.

We knew the story of the international rules-based order was partially false. That the strongest would exempt themselves when convenient. That trade rules were enforced asymmetrically. And we knew that international law applied with varying rigour depending on the identity of the accused or the victim.

This fiction was useful. And American hegemony, in particular, helped provide public goods: open sea lanes, a stable financial system, collective security and support for frameworks for resolving disputes.

So, we placed the sign in the window. We participated in the rituals. And we largely avoided calling out the gaps between rhetoric and reality.

This bargain no longer works.

'A rupture, not a transition'

Let me be direct: We are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition.

Over the past two decades, a series of crises in finance, health, energy and geopolitics have laid bare the risks of extreme global integration.

But more recently, great powers have begun using economic integration as weapons. Tariffs as leverage. Financial infrastructure as coercion. Supply chains as vulnerabilities to be exploited.

You cannot "live within the lie" of mutual benefit through integration when integration becomes the source of your subordination.

The multilateral institutions on which middle powers have relied — the WTO, the UN, the COP — the very architecture of collective problem solving, are under threat.

And as a result, many countries are drawing the same conclusions — that they must develop greater strategic autonomy: in energy, food, critical minerals, in finance and supply chains.

And this impulse is understandable. A country that cannot feed itself, fuel itself or defend itself has few options. When the rules no longer protect you, you must protect yourself.

But let's be clear-eyed about where this leads. A world of fortresses will be poorer, more fragile and less sustainable.

And there's another truth: if great powers abandon even the pretense of rules and values for the unhindered pursuit of their power and interests, the gains from "transactionalism" will become harder to replicate. Hegemons cannot continually monetize their relationships.

Allies will diversify to hedge against uncertainty. They'll buy insurance, increase options in order to rebuild sovereignty — sovereignty that was once grounded in rules, but will be increasingly anchored in the ability to withstand pressure.

This room knows, this is classic risk management — risk management comes at a price. But that cost of strategic autonomy — of sovereignty — can also be shared. Collective investments in resilience are cheaper than everyone building their own fortresses. Shared standards reduce fragmentation. Complementarities are positive sum.

And the question for middle powers, like Canada, is not whether to adapt to the new reality — we must. The question is whether we adapt by simply building higher walls or whether we can do something more ambitious.

Canada was amongst the first to hear the wake-up call, leading us to fundamentally shift our strategic posture.

Canadians know that our old, comfortable assumptions — that our geography and alliance memberships automatically conferred prosperity and security — that assumption is no longer valid.

And our new approach rests on what Alexander Stubb has termed "values-based realism" — or, to put another way, we aim to be principled and pragmatic.

Principled in our commitment to fundamental values: sovereignty and territorial integrity, the prohibition of the use of force except when consistent with the UN Charter and respect for human rights.

And pragmatic in recognizing that progress is often incremental, that interests diverge, that not every partner will share our values. So we're engaging broadly, strategically, with open eyes. We actively take on the world as it is, not wait around for a world we wish to be.

We are calibrating our relationships so their depth reflects our values. And we're prioritizing broad engagement to maximize our influence, given the fluidity of the world order, the risks that this poses, and the stakes for what comes next.

And we are no longer relying on just the strength of our values, but also on the value of our strength.

We are building that strength at home.

Since my government took office, we have cut taxes on incomes, on capital gains and business investment. We have removed all federal barriers to interprovincial trade. We are fast-tracking a trillion dollars of investment in energy, AI, critical minerals, new trade corridors and beyond.

We are doubling our defence spending by the end of this decade and we're doing so in ways that build our domestic industries.

And we are rapidly diversifying abroad. We've agreed a comprehensive strategic partnership with the EU, including joining SAFE, the European defence procurement arrangements.

We have signed 12 other trade and security deals on four continents in six months.

In the past few days, we have concluded new strategic partnerships with China and Qatar.

We're negotiating free trade pacts with India, ASEAN, Thailand, Philippines and Mercosur.

We're doing something else. To help solve global problems, we are pursuing variable geometry — in other words, different coalitions for different issues based on common values and interests.

So on Ukraine, we're a core member of the coalition of the willing and one of the largest per-capita contributors to its defence and security.

On Arctic sovereignty, we stand firmly with Greenland and Denmark and fully support their unique right to determine Greenland's future.

Our commitment to Article 5 is unwavering.

So we're working with our NATO allies — including the Nordic-Baltic Eight — to further secure the alliance's northern and western flanks, including through Canada's unprecedented investments in over-the-horizon radar, in submarines, in aircraft and boots on the ground.

Canada strongly opposes tariffs over Greenland and calls for focused talks to achieve our shared objectives of security and prosperity in the Arctic.

On plurilateral trade, we're championing efforts to build a bridge between the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the European Union, which would create a new trading block of 1.5 billion people.

On critical minerals we're forming buyer's clubs anchored in the G7 so the world can diversify away from concentrated supply.

And on AI we're co-operating with like-minded democracies to ensure we won't ultimately be forced to choose between hegemons and hyperscalers.

This is not naive multilateralism. Nor is it relying on their institutions. It's building coalitions that work, issue by issue, with partners who share enough common ground to act together. In some cases, this will be the vast majority of nations.

What it's doing is creating a dense web of connections across trade, investment, culture on which we can draw for future challenges and opportunities.

'Middle powers must act together'

Middle powers must act together because if we're not at the table, we're on the menu.

But I'd also say that great powers can afford, for now, to go it alone. They have the market size, the military capacity and the leverage to dictate terms. Middle powers do not. But when we only negotiate bilaterally with a hegemon, we negotiate from weakness. We accept what's offered. We compete with each other to be the most accommodating.

This is not sovereignty. It's the performance of sovereignty while accepting subordination.

In a world of great power rivalry, the countries in between have a choice: compete with each other for favour or to combine to create a third path with impact.

We shouldn't allow the rise of hard power to blind us to the fact that the power of legitimacy, integrity and rules will remain strong — if we choose to wield them together.

Which brings me back to Havel.

What would it mean for middle powers to "live the truth"?

First it means naming reality. Stop invoking "rules-based international order" as though it still functions as advertised. Call it what it is: a system of intensifying great power rivalry where the most powerful pursue their interests using economic integration as a weapon of coercion.

It means acting consistently, applying the same standards to allies and rivals. When middle powers criticize economic intimidation from one direction but stay silent when it comes from another, we are keeping the sign in the window.

It means building what we claim to believe in. Rather than waiting for the old order to be restored, it means creating institutions and agreements that function as described.

And it means reducing the leverage that enables coercion. Building a strong domestic economy should always be every government's immediate priority. And diversification internationally is not just economic prudence — it is the material foundation for honest foreign policy. Because countries earn the right to principled stands by reducing their vulnerability to retaliation.

'Honesty about the world as it is'

So Canada has what the world wants. We are an energy superpower. We hold vast reserves of critical minerals. We have the most educated population in the world. Our pension funds are amongst the world's largest and most sophisticated investors. In other words, we have capital, talent, we also have a government with the immense fiscal capacity to act decisively.

And we have the values to which many others aspire.

Canada is a pluralistic society that works. Our public square is loud, diverse and free. Canadians remain committed to sustainability.

We are a stable and reliable partner in a world that is anything but. A partner that builds and values relationships for the long term.

And we have something else. We have a recognition of what's happening and a determination to act accordingly.

We understand that this rupture calls for more than adaptation. It calls for honesty about the world as it is.

We are taking the sign out of the window.

We know the old order is not coming back. We shouldn't mourn it. Nostalgia is not a strategy.

But we believe that from the fracture, we can build something better, stronger, more just.

This is the task of the middle powers. The countries that have the most to lose from a world of fortresses and the most to gain from genuine co-operation.

The powerful have their power. But we have something too — the capacity to stop pretending, to name reality, to build our strength at home and to act together.

That is Canada's path. We choose it openly and confidently.

And it is a path wide open to any country willing to take it with us.