In short, as Canadian conservatives suspected, Mark Carney lied about everything!

U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) Jamieson Greer appeared on CNBC this morning to discuss the trade agreement between the U.S. and Canada and what caused the final breakdown at the last minute.  Greer notes the Canadian team appeared to be negotiating at the end from the position of politics as the Canadian team were aligning themselves with a domestic effort.

Greer draws attention to the friction points being very small. The U.S. tariffs were on less than 5% of overall Canadian exports and less than .06% of U.S. imports.  The U.S. made several offers to present Canada with the best trade terms in the world; however, Canada wanted more.  Canada wanted to retain all their market barriers, retain all quotas, retain all tariffs and restrictions against U.S. goods and services, but remove all the tariffs against them.

This is a really solid interview to watch because USTR Greer doesn’t need to pretend anything.  The terms offered were direct and consistent with benefit to both America and Canada.  On the language issue, Greer completely refutes the claims by Mark Carney about the U.S. seeking to change the language of Quebec and starts laughing at the premise. The issue relates to Canada demanding that five percent of all tech income be given to Canadian tech companies they compete against. That demand is ridiculous.  WATCH:

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Every time he has the opportunity, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney reminds the world he views Canada as a part of Europe.  As the trade conflict between the USA and Canada deepens, Mark Carney looks toward Europe for a financial and security lifeline.

During remarks earlier today Commonwealth Prime Minister Carney noted his intention to join with Europe this fall for increased economic and national security.  This is an alignment the former Bank of England head has been operating since his installation. [X Link]

🇨🇦🇪🇺 I will condense my many tweets on the subject here:
– Europe’s financial and banking system is about to collapse due to insufficient collateral.
– The war in Ukraine was meant to collapse Russia and take its resources for the needed collateral.
– The war in Ukraine failed,…

— Northern Sceptic (@NSceptic11501) August 24, 2026

From my perspective this is Commonwealth banker Carney’s financial hedge against the looming USMCA termination.

Carney will be counting on U.K and EU financial support when the Canadian dollar declines quickly.  You might remember the Bank of Canada warning about this.

May 2026: – […] A cascading series of events could cause a sharp loss of investor confidence and lead to a spike in demand for liquidity or rapid asset sales. Funding markets could come under pressure, and stress could spread more broadly.

To be clear, the FSR is not about what we expect will happen. It is an assessment of how existing vulnerabilities—or pockets of stress—could amplify shocks and ultimately spread across the financial system.” (more)

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Secretary Bessent notes in his prepared remarks that President Trump has called the nations who are engaged with Iran to request them to cease and desist.  That means Trump likely called Chairman Xi (China), President Putin (Russia), President Erdogan (Turkey) and President Asif Ali Zardari of Pakistan.

The video and transcript of Secretary Bessent’s remarks are below. Media questions begin at 7:50 of video. WATCH:

[TRANSCRIPT] – Good afternoon.

Today, at President Trump’s direction, the United States Treasury has begun Operation Economic Outcast – an unprecedented campaign against the Islamic Republic of Iran and its enablers.

In the Second World War, D-Day marked the historic beginning of a campaign with our allies to target and drive the enemy from its positions, including those in third countries.

Today, in that same spirit, we are launching an economic onslaught against Iran’s financial connections around the globe. Our objective is to sever every economic lifeline that sustains this tyrannical regime until Tehran stands alone.

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Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent gets it.  When asked about the Strait of Hormuz, Bessent notes that yes, things will likely never return to the way they were before; however, there is a distinction that must be applied.

Even if Iran completely acquiesced to all of the most stringent terms and conditions requested by President Trump, they will never again recapture the position they held with the Strait of Hormuz as a chokepoint.

Capital markets respond to risk in the medium and long term; risks are always mitigated.  With the Strait now identified as a strategic risk, the emphasis will be on forever neutralizing that risk and avoiding the issue in the future.  As a consequence, Iran’s strongest point of leverage is disappearing now and will continue to disappear.  WATCH (prompted):

As further explained by James Thorne on X: “By repeatedly signaling its willingness to disrupt the Strait of Hormuz, Tehran hasn’t strengthened its hand, it has accelerated the market’s exit. Capital does not tolerate chokepoints; it routes around them.

Saudi Arabia is expanding its East-West pipeline. The UAE has already built out Fujairah as a bypass. Iraq is revisiting overland export corridors. Every marginal dollar now flows toward redundancy, not reliance. What was once a geopolitical lever is being engineered into irrelevance. Bessent gets it: markets don’t absorb coercion; they arbitrage it away.

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Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent continues on two domestic financial approaches to block banking services for illegal aliens and simultaneously target use of the financial system by those engaged in fraud of the U.S. government.

Secretary Bessent has extended the Geographic Targeting Order (GTO) within Minnesota that covers two counties, Hennepin and Ramsey.

All financial transactions over a $3,000 limit are subject to increased reporting requirements and scrutiny from the U.S. treasury.  {citation}

The measure is intended to identify any person who attempts to transfer funds obtained by fraud who operate in the region to take advantage of HHS funding programs. “Treasury promised to follow the money, and that is exactly what we are doing,” said Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent. “We will continue to give law enforcement critical tools to trace criminal networks that siphon taxpayer dollars and move them overseas.  The Trump Administration will not allow criminals to profit from programs intended to help vulnerable Americans.”

Additionally, the Treasury Department has now concluded the 90-day assessment laid out in an executive order titled “Restoring Integrity to America’s Financial System,” on May 19 and directed the Treasury Department, Federal Reserve, Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, FDIC, National Credit Union Administration and Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to strengthen customer identification and due-diligence rules and to reassess how banks weigh credit risk for borrowers without work authorization. 

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Promethean Action PAC puts together another video drawing attention to the connection between pressure on both Hezbollah (Lebanon) and Hamas (Gaza) that is forcing the terrorist networks within both conflict zones to suddenly discuss disarming and a pathway to peace.

Kokinda notes Secretary Bessent’s sanctions and money intercepts against all of the various Iranian financial systems are creating problems for the networks they support.  That is leading to unexpected pressure on the terror networks.

“From Camp David, President Trump framed a reported Hamas disarmament agreement as a breakthrough enabled by pressure on Iran, arguing the regional strategic terrain has shifted. The episode highlights two developments presented as unprecedented: Hamas agreeing to disarm and Israel and Lebanon resuming talks after three decades, both attributed to cutting off Iranian funding for proxies like Hamas and Hezbollah.

Kokinda claims the decisive “weapon” was Treasury action under Secretary Scott Bessent—sanctions, OFAC tools, anti–money laundering measures—described as “economic fury,” including designating over 1,000 Iranian-linked individuals, ships, and companies and disrupting routes through shipping, insurance, and offshore finance. The script also points to the February 19, 2026 launch of the multinational “Board of Peace,” tasked with rebuilding Gaza, as a preplanned institutional blueprint that helped secure the Hamas agreement.”

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Comrade citizens, following the successful targeting and assassination of an insurance company executive, the newly installed Komisar of New York City has published the names and addresses of affluent New Yorkers for wealth targeting and taxation.  However, many of the activist citizens who advocated for Mamdani are not terribly pleased to find their personal information published by the new Democrat Socialist city leadership.

Affluent podcaster Scott Galloway, an advocate for the targeting approach, is flummoxed to discover his name, address and identifying information has been uploaded by the city to the ‘too wealthy’ target list. [First two minutes]

Fear not Comrade Galloway, all good citizens of the New York DSA will happily pay the necessary pied-à-terre tax. It even sounds collectively fabulous.  There is no reason to worry about being on a list of 950,000 wealthy citizens who have too much.  After all, sharing is caring.

NEW YORK – Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s administration has published a searchable database of Big Apple properties that could fall under the state’s new pied-à-terre tax, effectively doxxing thousands of wealthy New Yorkers.

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Well, well, well.  There it is. Even if it is clouded in Reuters News doublespeak and coded language, the answer to the big question about why Zelenskyy fired the most effective military leader is right there.  The key words are, “military procurement system”; or in common language “military spending.”

It never made sense; the 35-year-old Defense Minister, Mykhailo Fedorov, was heralded as turning the tide of the war in favor of Ukraine through his adaption of technology, specifically drones, and his very close relationship to Alex Karp of Palantir, a military contractor.  Fedorov was young, smart, strategic and exceptionally capable.  Yet, Zelenskyy fired him.

Now the real motive for dispatching Mykhailo Fedorov surfaces in his interview with Reuters.  Fedorov had taken control of how the military funding was being spent, and as a result, all of those Ukraine government officials and military generals who were pocketing money, redirecting funds, giving indulgences to their families and stealing resources were blocked.

The corruption is so widespread, Zelenskyy had no choice except to eliminate the guy taking control of the payments, Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov.

(July 29 – Reuters) – Former Ukrainian Defence Minister Mykhailo Fedorov, in an interview published on Wednesday, said his efforts to overhaul the military’s procurement system were the main reason behind his dismissal this ​month in a military and political shake-up.

Fedorov, a technical expert seen by many ‌as an agent for change in the nearly 4-1/2-year-old war against Russia, told the media outlet Ukrainska Pravda that the proposed changes met resistance from officials inside and around the ministry.

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In his most recent outline, Promethean Action PAC’s Mike Steger puts the U.S-Canada trade conflict into an accurate context where China is really the enterprise to gain or fail.  This is a very well presented segment worth watching.

CTH readers will note our long track of this dynamic.  In short, as NAFTA predictably evolved, and as the U.S. manufacturing base was deconstructed, suddenly things shifted.  Canada and Mexico became important as entry doors into the U.S. consumer market for the products outsourced by the destruction of the American manufacturing base.

Steger appropriately uses the auto-sector as an example because it is the easiest sector to quantify damage.  By playing the long game, China has thoroughly compromised the EU and U.K auto market. In 2025 China exported 1.2 million vehicles into Europe. Europe only exported 200,000 vehicles into China; a net trade deficit of 1 million vehicles in Beijing’s favor.

Chinese cars now represent over ten percent of all EU vehicles on the road, and this is only the beginning stage of the collapse of the EU industrial base that Germany and Brussels have only recently started to grasp.  The pace is irreversible at this point for Europe, and now China has turned their attention toward Canada.   This is why the U.S-Canada trade conflict matters!

Canada is the entryway to do in North America what China has done in Europe. WATCH:

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In the graph below, look at how fast things move once the foothold is established by policy.  This is stunning.

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Essentially this notice can be summarized as follows: If you really end the Marshall Plan, credit rating agencies will have to lower their credit rating for all of Europe due to increased financial risk.

Now, tell me again how Europe is not living on the back of America.

LONDON, July 13 (Reuters) – Progressive U.S. disengagement from European security ​affairs is negative for ‌Europe’s sovereign credit ratings, Moody’s said on Monday, due the ​increased defence costs ​the region’s governments will now ⁠face.

A summit of the ​North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO)) ​in Turkey last week saw its 32 member countries agree to ​shift the balance ​of responsibility for Europe’s defence to ‌the ⁠alliance’s European members, and away from the United States.

“The (U.S.) disengagement is credit negative ​for ​European ⁠sovereigns,” a report by two of Moody’s ​top rating analysts ​said. ⁠It said the “credit effect” would depend on how the ⁠shift ​was managed ​in the coming years. (SOURCE)

When it comes to irony, Emmanuel Macron has, quite possibly, the world’s worst timing.

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