Last Saturday, I was in Montreal for the Canada-U.S. hockey game in the 4 Nations Cup. I knew I needed to be there. A few nights later, I was at home in front of our TV for the final game, which Canada won 3–2 in overtime. I watched every moment, from before the game began to after it ended. I almost never do that. Those games, I knew, were going to say something—about Canadian players, about Canadian fans, about Canada. Maybe something about the United States too. I didn’t know what.

Sports can tell big stories. I was one of two goalies for Canada in the Canada–Soviet Union series in 1972, the first international best-against-best hockey series. Until that moment, professional players from the NHL were not eligible to compete in the amateurs-only Olympic Games or World Championships. Canada was where hockey originated, where all of the best players in the world were born and developed. To the total annoyance of Canadians, year after year the Soviet Union, not Canada, became known as “World Champions.”

The 1972 showdown was eight games: four in Canada, four in Moscow. Everyone—the Canadian players and fans, even the Soviet players and fans and the experts from both countries—knew that Canada would win decisively, likely all eight games and by big scores.

In Game 1 in Montreal, the Soviets won, 7–3. Imagine the reaction all across Canada. Then multiply that by 10.

Instantly, the stakes changed. Something deeper than hockey pride was on the line. We were the best in the world when it came to hockey; the rest of the world didn’t think about Canada that way when it came to many other things. Now we had lost. What did that say about us? About Canada? About Canadians? The next seven games would decide. These were the stakes.

We left Canada trailing two games to one, with one game tied. We lost the first game in Moscow. The series was all but over. Then we won the next two games, leaving it to one final game. In 1972, not many North Americans traveled to Europe; almost none went to Moscow. Three thousand Canadians were in that arena. They were there because, somehow, they knew they had to be there. For the last game, on a Thursday, played entirely during work and school hours all across the country, 16 million out of Canada’s population of 22 million people watched. Behind two goals to start the third period, we tied the game, then won it, and the series, with 34 seconds remaining. I felt immense excitement. I felt even more immense relief. In that series, Canadians discovered a depth of feeling for their country that they hadn’t known was there.

In 1980, I was the other person in the Olympics booth in Lake Placid, New York, when the U.S. beat the Soviets and won the gold medal. (When Al Michaels said, “Do you believe in miracles? Yes!,” I said, “Unbelievable.”) At the beginning of the Olympics, for the U.S., there were no stakes. The team was made up almost entirely of college kids. The Soviets, at the time, were the best team in the world. Even after the U.S. team won some early games, their players seemed on a roll to enjoy, not to be taken seriously. Then they beat the Soviets and two days later defeated Finland to win the gold.

This was not a good time for the U.S. in the world. Among other problems and conflicts, Iran was holding 52 Americans hostage in Tehran. Weeks passed. The U.S. seemed powerless to get them back. Unbeknownst to all but a few, six of the hostages—all American diplomats—had escaped and were being hidden in the Canadian Embassy. The Canadians sheltered the diplomats for months, and eventually helped them escape. The news that the diplomats had made it safely out of Iran came just before the Lake Placid games began. Everywhere I went around the village, Americans came up to me and said, “Thank you, Canada,” as if they were otherwise friendless in the world.

In 1980, hockey was not a major sport in the U.S., and so Americans had no expectation or even hope of winning against the Soviets. What they did have at stake in 1980 was the Cold War. That they had to win. The hockey team’s victory in Lake Placid felt like part of this bigger fight. It fit the story Americans wanted to tell about themselves. And although hockey was a fairly minor sport, 45 years later, for many Americans, the “Miracle on Ice” remains their favorite patriotic sports moment.

Now to today. Now to the 4 Nations Cup. Being Canadian these past few months hasn’t been a lot of fun. The threat and now the coming reality of high tariffs on Canadian goods exported to the U.S.—and the disruptions and dislocations, known and unknown, that these tariffs will cause—is never out of mind. Even more difficult in the day-to-day is Donald Trump’s relentless and insulting commentary.  

Canada as the U.S.’s “51st state”; Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as “Governor Trudeau”; the U.S. using “economic force” to annex Canada, its nearest ally and inescapable geographical fact of life. It’s the kind of trolling that Trump does to everyone, to every country, whenever he wants to, because as president of the most powerful nation on Earth, he knows he can. He loves to watch the weak wobble and cringe, and those who think they’re strong discover they’re not.

Na na na na na. It sets a tone. It lets everyone know who’s boss. It’s what he’d done all his life in business. And although at a boardroom table he wasn’t always the guy with the deepest pockets, in the Oval Office of the United States of America, he knows he is. Being Donald Trump got him elected, but being president is what allows him to be Donald Trump. On November 5, nobody had as much at stake in the election’s result as he did. He needed to win to hold the world’s highest office, to avoid lawsuits and prison time. He needed to win to be him.

It's been amazing to watch world leaders of proud, historically significant countries, kings in their own domain, suck up to Donald Trump, to see billionaires and business titans, who know how the game is played—cater to political authority in public, play hardball in private—who reside proudly and smugly above and beyond politics, fold like a cheap suit. And later, when they do respond, because prime ministers, presidents, and CEOs eventually have to say something, their words sound so lame. “There’s not a snowball’s chance in hell that Canada would become part of the United States,” Trudeau said. By answering at all, you end up making any slur sound slightly, disturbingly legitimate, and you make yourself look weak.

How would Americans react if a president or prime minister of another country said the same about their president? That he’s crooked, crazy, a lunatic, a loser? That he’s the worst president in the history of the world? That their country is just another failed empire in its final death throes? That both president and country are a disgrace and everyone knows it? Probably not well.

But what do you do? What do the decision makers in other countries do? What do average Canadians, average Panamanians and Danes, what do ordinary people anywhere do? That’s why I needed to be at that game in Montreal.

Thirty years earlier, in 1995, on the weekend before Quebec’s second referendum on independence, my family and I went to Montreal to wander the city, to try to sense what Quebeckers were feeling, but mostly just to be there. On a Saturday night, we went to a Montreal Canadiens game. We wanted to be there for the singing of “O Canada.” The next day, a reporter for an English-language newspaper wrote that it was the loudest he had ever heard the anthem sung at a game. What he didn’t notice was that 10,000 people sang their hearts out, and 10,000 people were silent.

Last Saturday in Montreal, the arena was filled with fans in red-and-white Canada jerseys. The NHL and the NHL Players Association, which had organized the event, did what organizers do. They asked the fans to be respectful of both teams during the anthems. The fans decided not to be managed. They booed “The Star-Spangled Banner” loudly. They were not booing the American players. They were booing Donald Trump. Why shouldn’t he know how they felt? Why shouldn’t Americans know? How else would they know?

Five nights later in Boston, at the final game, the fans booed “O Canada,” but not very loudly.

The game was a classic. The two best teams in the world: Canada, the heart and soul, conscience and bedrock of the game; the U.S., in its development and growth, the great story in hockey in the past 30 years. Both teams played as well as they’d ever played. Their great stars played like great stars; some other players discovered in themselves something even they didn’t know was there. The U.S. could’ve won. The team was good enough to win. Canada won because of Connor McDavid, Nathan MacKinnon, and Sidney Crosby—and for the same reason Canada won against the Soviets in 1972.

Everybody, every country, has something inside them that is fundamental. That matters so much that it’s not negotiable. That’s deeply, deeply personal. Something that, if threatened, you’d do anything to protect, and keep on doing it until it’s done, even if it seems to others to make no sense. Even if it seems stupid. This is how wars start.

For Panama, some things are fundamental. For Denmark, China, Russia, Germany, Ukraine, Canada—for everyone—it’s the same. And when you get pushed too much, too far, you rediscover what that fundamental is. Poke the bear and you find out there’s more in the bear than you know, than even the bear knows.

For Canada and these other countries, you don’t poke back against Donald Trump. You don’t troll a troll. You look into yourselves and find again what makes you special, why you matter, to yourselves, to the world, and knowing that, knowing that that is you, with that as your pride and backbone, you fight back.

The U.S. has its own fights. It faces these same questions. What is fundamental to America? “Greatness”? Maybe. But greatness depends on the needs of a country and the needs of the world at a particular moment and time, and being great in the ways that are needed. These next four years will not be easy for anyone—and they will be perhaps especially difficult for the United States.

As for the 51st state crap, knock it off. It’s beneath you.

For Donald Trump, everything is a transaction. You look to make a deal, you push and shove, scratch and claw—you do whatever it takes. And if that doesn’t work, you do some more, until at some point you walk away and make another deal. It’s just business.

Only some things aren’t business. Every so often, Canadians are defiantly not-American. They will need to be much more than that in the next four years. Canadians will need to be defiantly Canadian. Canada won in 1972 and again last week because winning was about more than business. It was personal.

Some presidents spend their first few weeks in office trying to make good on their central campaign promise; Donald Trump has instead done everything he can to avoid having to follow through on his. A controversial campaign pledge to enact big, universal tariffs that would transform the global-trade system and usher in American prosperity has been whittled down to a set of hollow threats designed to extract mostly symbolic concessions from America’s neighbors. Trump is behaving like a man who has lost the appetite for aggressive tariffs—if he ever had it in the first place.

Throughout the 2024 campaign, Trump vowed to enact the most sweeping trade restrictions since the Great Depression: a 10 to 20 percent tariff on all goods coming from foreign countries, plus a special 60 percent tariff on goods from China. Trump and his key trade advisers argued that the plan would revive American manufacturing, enrich the U.S. government, and keep America’s economy ahead of China’s.

Following Trump’s victory in November, however, some of his economic advisers began offering a pared-down proposal in an effort to assuage business leaders and investors who worried about tariffs’ inflationary consequences. Tariffs, they argued, were really a negotiating tool that would allow Trump to win economic and geopolitical concessions from America’s trading partners. Howard Lutnick, who is now Trump’s secretary of commerce, claimed that the mere threat of tariffs could be used as leverage to rewrite the rules of the international trading system in America’s favor. “We’ll make a bunch of money on the tariffs, but mostly everybody else is going to negotiate with us,” he said on CNBC. Scott Bessent, now Trump’s treasury secretary, argued that tariffs could have noneconomic benefits as well; they would, he said, be “a useful tool for achieving the president’s foreign-policy objectives.”

[Rogé Karma: Reaganomics is on its last legs]

Upon taking office, Trump narrowed the logic of his proposed trade restrictions even further. The economic rationale disappeared entirely, and even the political goals tied to his tariff threats appeared oddly small-bore. In the first two weeks of his presidency, Trump threatened tariffs against Colombia for refusing to take in flights carrying deported migrants, against the EU for running trade surpluses with the U.S., and against Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa (collectively referred to as the “BRICS”) for considering the creation of a new reserve currency. Then, this past Friday, Trump announced his first official round of tariffs: a 10 percent levy on all goods from China and 25 percent on nearly all goods from Mexico and Canada. According to a document announcing the tariffs, their purpose would be to “hold Mexico, Canada, and China accountable to their promises of halting illegal immigration and stopping poisonous fentanyl and other drugs from flowing into our country.” “WILL THERE BE SOME PAIN?” Trump posted on Sunday on Truth Social. “YES, MAYBE (AND MAYBE NOT!).”

Then, almost as fast as Trump announced the tariffs, he reversed course. Yesterday morning, he decided to pause the tariffs on Mexico after its president, Claudia Sheinbaum, announced that she would deploy 10,000 troops to the border to curb immigration and drug trafficking. Later that afternoon, the tariffs on Canada were also paused following two phone calls between Trump and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who agreed to implement a $1.3 billion plan to reinforce America’s northern border, appoint a “Fentanyl Czar,” and launch a $200 million “intelligence directive” to crack down on organized crime and fentanyl. Trump took the opportunity to declare victory. “I am very pleased with this initial outcome,” he wrote in a post on Truth Social. “FAIRNESS FOR ALL!”

In reality, Trump’s tariff threats accomplished next to nothing beyond political theater. Canada’s $1.3 billion border plan sounds like a big concession—but it had already been announced before Trump took office. Moreover, last year, just 1.5 percent of illegal border crossings took place and just 0.2 percent of the fentanyl seized by U.S. border authorities was found at the Canadian border. Crossings at the southern border, meanwhile, have been plummeting since March and, by the end of last year, had reached a lower point than when Trump left office the first time. Fentanyl entering into the U.S. from Mexico remains a problem, but sending more Mexican troops to the border is unlikely to fix it; Mexico already sent 15,000 troops to the border in response to Trump’s tariff threats in 2019, and the scale of trafficking has only increased.

Maybe political theater was the point all along. The appeal of tariffs has as much to do with the signal they send as with their concrete benefits. In fact, a widely discussed economics paper published last year found that although Trump’s 2018–19 trade war with China failed to boost employment in areas that had been most undercut by Chinese exports, it still boosted vote share for Trump and other Republicans in those places. Trump seems to have intuited this dynamic on his own. By proposing a set of tariffs that he likely had no intention of following through on, Trump could appear tough on trade, declare a victory, and claim to have fulfilled a key campaign promise—all without having to risk political backlash over the higher prices that come with  actual high tariffs. Of course, whether voters will view Trump’s actions in this way, rather than as a transparent charade, remains to be seen.

[Read: A handbook for dealing with Trump threats]

What is clear is that the averted tariffs had essentially nothing to do with economics. For years, Trump’s intellectual supporters, notably his former trade representative Robert Lighthizer and his current senior trade adviser, Peter Navarro, have promoted a heterodox economic theory in support of major tariffs. Enacting such restrictions, they argue, would turn America into a manufacturing powerhouse, ensure its lead in the crucial technologies of the future, and deliver prosperity to Middle America. Perhaps the most striking thing about the tariffs that Trump has threatened to impose so far is that they don’t even pretend to further that vision. Trump voters were promised a manufacturing revival, and what they got was a Canadian fentanyl czar.

The partial exception is the 10 percent tariff on China that went into effect this morning and, as of this writing, remains intact. There, the economic and geopolitical case for restrictions is far more coherent: Liberalized trade relations with China has been empirically linked to the decline of America’s manufacturing base, and depending on a great-power rival for crucial technologies poses national-security risks. Yet, even here, Trump has not justified the tariff in those terms—and he implemented it at a level far below the 60 percent that he promised on the campaign trail.

Trump’s second term is still in its infancy. Perhaps trade restrictions on the scale promised on the campaign trail remain in the offing. The available evidence, however, suggests that Trump favors steep tariffs only so long as they are theoretical. Most experts have argued that Trump’s tariff plan would inflict severe economic pain domestically. The president’s most recent moves suggest that he has come to believe them.

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So you’re a world leader and you’ve been threatened by the American president. What now? First, take some consolation: You’re not alone. The first two weeks of the second Trump administration have seen the White House trying to wring policy concessions from allies and adversaries both near and far.

Now to come up with a response. Simply ignoring Donald Trump is not an option. The United States wields so much power that even if you think the president is irrational or bluffing, you have to reply. Any leader must calibrate a response that will speak not only to Trump but also to their own domestic audience. This may be Diplomacy 101, but Trump will nonetheless expect your answer to be fully focused on him. “Trump doesn’t seem to have any concept that maybe other people have publics to which they’re accountable,” John Bolton, who served as national security adviser in his first term, recently told me.

As heads of state scramble for the best response, we’ve seen several different approaches. Each has clear upsides—but also some pitfalls.

Fight Fire With Fire

Example: Colombia. On January 26, President Gustavo Petro posted on X announcing that he’d turned back two American military planes full of deportees. “We will receive our citizens in civilian airplanes, without them being treated as delinquents,” he wrote. “Colombia must be respected.” Trump promptly threatened huge tariffs; Petro fired back, threatening tariffs of his own and saying, “You will never dominate us.” In the end, Petro agreed to accept military flights but also got assurances from the U.S. that Colombians would not be handcuffed or photographed, and would be escorted by Department of Homeland Security staff, not troops.

Why it might work: Trump doesn’t actually like conflict, so he might blink. (While the presidents sniped at each other, their respective aides were hammering out an agreement.) He also sometimes respects a bold, brassy response—just ask his good pal Kim Jong Un of North Korea.

Why it might not: If Trump had gone through with 25 or 50 percent tariffs, Colombia’s economy would have been devastated. It’s a high-risk play.

***

Make a Deal

Examples: Mexico, Panama, Denmark. These countries aren’t powerful enough to fight Trump outright, so they’re looking for a way to compromise. This weekend, the White House announced large tariffs on Mexican and Canadian goods, but this morning, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo announced that she had struck a deal with Trump to avoid tariffs. “Mexico will reinforce the northern border with 10,000 members of the National Guard immediately, to stop drug trafficking from Mexico to the United States, in particular fentanyl,” she posted on X. “The United States commits to work to stop the trafficking of high-powered weapons to Mexico.” That’s a concrete commitment from Mexico and a rather vague one from the U.S., but it allows Mexico to escape tariffs and save some face. Elsewhere, Panama is promising to not renew an infrastructure agreement with China after Trump threatened to seize the Panama Canal. And Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen is offering the U.S. a chance to expand its presence on Greenland, even as she says the island is absolutely not for sale. “If this is about securing our part of the world, we can find a way forward,” she said.

Why it might work: Trump is fundamentally transactional, and in each of these cases he’s getting a win without having to do anything besides issue a threat.

Why it might not: Trump is getting a win without having to do anything besides issue a threat. He might be satisfied for now, but he also might conclude that you can be easily bullied—so he might come back for more later. Giving in to Trump could offend your domestic audience and win only a temporary reprieve.

***

Try Targeted Threats

Example: Canada. Facing similar tariffs to Mexico, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau initially announced his own tariffs. Trudeau’s list included a few particular goods produced in red states that support Trump, including Kentucky bourbon and Florida orange juice. At a press conference Saturday, Trudeau spoke directly to Americans. “Tariffs against Canada will put your jobs at risk, potentially shutting down American auto assembly plants and other manufacturing facilities,” he said. “They will raise costs for you, including food at the grocery store and gas at the pump.” Late this afternoon, Trudeau announced that he and Trump had struck a deal in which Canada made hazy commitments to border security in exchange for Trump pausing tariffs.

Why it might work: This strategy is effective for countries like Canada, large enough trading partners that they can inflict real pain on the U.S. economy—which gives their threats some heft. Trudeau's tariffs were also cleverly tailored for maximum political impact in the U.S.

Why it might not: Trump backed down now, but Canada still stands to lose more than the U.S., and Trump knows that Trudeau is a lame duck.

***

Speak Softly and Carry a Big Stick

Example: China, the European Union. Trump has already imposed new tariffs on China and has threatened Europe as well. China’s government promised “necessary countermeasures to defend its legitimate rights and interests,” and French President Emmanuel Macron said today, “If our commercial interests are attacked, Europe, as a true power, will have to make itself respected and therefore react.” (Confidential to the Élysée: “True powers” don’t usually need to announce themselves as such.)

Why it might work: Trump doesn’t like conflict, has many reasons to work with American allies in Europe, and already lost a trade war with China in his first term. These vague threats are a sign of some strength, following Theodore Roosevelt’s maxim about foreign policy.

Why it might not: You think Trump’s going to be scared off by vague threats? This could just whet his appetite. Trump’s exchange with Petro suggests that threats work only if he thinks you really mean it.

Related:

What Trump’s finger-pointing reveals The price America will pay for Trump’s tariffs

Here are three new stories from The Atlantic:

Purging the government could backfire spectacularly. The Democrats show why they lost. The race-blind college-admissions era is off to a weird start.

Today’s News

Secretary of State Marco Rubio was appointed to be the acting administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development, which Trump wants to shut down, according to Elon Musk. Trump signed an executive order that sets up plans for a U.S. sovereign-wealth fund. The fund could be used to pay for infrastructure projects and other investments, including buying TikTok, according to Trump. The Treasury Department reportedly gave Musk and members of the Department of Government Efficiency access to the federal payment system, which contains sensitive information for millions of Americans.

Dispatches

The Wonder Reader: “To stay in or to go out, that is the question,” Stephanie Bai writes. The cost-benefit analysis of weekend plans never ends.

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Evening Read

Illustration by The Atlantic. Source: Getty.

The Illegal Drug at Every Corner Store

By Amogh Dimri

To judge by the shelves of America’s vice merchants, the nation is in the grips of a whipped-cream frenzy. Walk into any vape store or sex shop, and you’ll find canisters of nitrous oxide showcased in window displays—ostensibly to catch the eye of bakers and baristas, who use the gas to aerate creams and foams. At the bodega near my apartment, boxes of up to 100 mini-canisters are piled up to eye level, next to Baby Yoda bongs.

In fact, culinary professionals generally don’t shop for equipment at stores with names like Puff N Stuff or Condom Sense. The true clientele inhales the gas to get high.

Read the full article.

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Stephanie Bai contributed to this newsletter.

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Proposed U.S. tariffs on Canadian goods have been paused for 30 days, according to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. The pause comes after a similar delay on proposed tariffs on Mexican goods.

Read more...

As Justin Trudeau warns Canadians they could face "difficult days" ahead, here are four options for retaliation.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says he’s been left with no option but to respond by imposing 25% tariffs on US.