Canada and Iran Have Found Trump’s Achilles’ Heel

At the GOP mid-term "convention" in Dallas the Felon promisedthe  Iran war would be over immediately after the mid-term elections.  He also promised $5,000 checks to American citizens if Republicans maintain control of both houses of Congress. The first promise ignores the reality that the Iranians have a say as to if and when the war ends. The only way an immediate end to the war could come about would be for the U.S. to basically unilaterally concede defeat and try to move on. The second promise is ridiculous on its face, but no doubt the most fervent Kool-Aid drinkers will believe it.  Indeed, the Felon's behavior also ignores the reality that both Canada and Iran seem to recognize the Felon's Achilles heel: in both the U.S./Canada trade war and in the Iran war all they need to do is keep the price of oil and gasoline high or rising even more and, in the case of Canada, target states crucial to the GOP effort to retain control of Congress.  This leaves the GOP stuck with fear mongering against Democrats and bragging about tax cuts for the super wealthy. As a piece in The New Republic lays out both Canada and Iran have ways to hit back and cause economic pain that could drive voters to abandon the GOP and its insane leader.  Here are article highlights:

Canadian officials aren’t being coy about it: The retaliatory tariffs imposed Tuesday against the United States were deliberately chosen to hurt vulnerable Republicans before the midterm elections. “We are picking products that will target states in the U.S.,” Mélanie Joly, Canada’s industry minister, said late last month while announcing the tariffs. “We’re being wise and strategic to put political pressure, and that’s why we think it’s ‌the right thing to do right now.” Canada, fed up with Donald Trump’s bullying since he returned to office last year, is hitting the president where he’s most vulnerable —namely the slim congressional majorities that have allowed him to govern with more or less total impunity.

The tariffs particularly focus on vehicles, fish, and dairy, and will hit states with key particularly hard in states with key elections, like Maine, Michigan, and Kansas. There are early indications that they’re working. Nearly two-thirds of voters in Maine and Michigan view the trade war negatively, according to a CNN poll released on Wednesday. . . . But they’re hardly surprising. Trump has repeatedly attacked the U.S.’s northern neighbor, a close ally and biggest trading partner, and even mused about making Canada the “51st state” (an odd riff, given it would almost certainly be a blue one).

These tit-for-tat tariffs are also just desserts, however. Trump has spent much of his second term flouting the longtime convention of U.S. administrations avoiding direct involvement in other countries’ elections. He has endorsed right-wing and far-right candidates and parties in Argentina, Hungary, Brazil, and, most recently, Germany. He has used sanctions against Brazil to try to help spring his his pal and former President Jair Bolsonaro from prison, and sent Cabinet officials to Hungary to aid Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s reelection  campaign. He has used tariffs to try to pressure voters to back his preferred candidates . . . Now, Republicans in tough races will face an even steeper climb—and they’ll have to deal with the kinds of headaches that Trump has tried to inflict on liberal candidates in other countries.

Canada is not the only foreign nation whose actions will affect the midterms. Although no Iranian official has made as explicit a comment as Joly’s, there has been speculation for months that many of the nation’s actions in the stop-start Iran war, particularly those that lead to spikes in already skyrocketing energy prices, are intended to damage GOP chances in the upcoming midterms. “The Iranians are not dumb,” longtime Republican strategist Karl Rove told Fox News in late June. “They know that the fall campaign starts in earnest on Labor Day. I would not be surprised to see them attempt to have an influence on the outcome by creating problems in mid-August and causing oil prices to rise and uncertainty to grow.”

That is exactly what has happened, with strikes resuming in recent weeks and Iran now looking to escalate further, according to The New York Times, which reported Wednesday that “Iran’s leadership believes that now may be the best moment to raise the stakes, ahead of the U.S. midterm elections in November when an unpopular war could hurt Mr. Trump and the Republican Party.”

Still, Canada marks the most pronounced and deliberate—and Trumpian—attempt to punish Trump by targeting the midterms. The Canadians, too, seem to know that the fall campaign starts in earnest on Labor Day. And vulnerable Republicans are already reeling. “This is not China we’re dealing with; it’s Canada—our best friend, a country with whom our economy is completely intertwined,” Maine’s incumbent Republican senator, Susan Collins, said last month. . . . it’s hard not to see the entire issue as the president shooting his party in the foot—an avoidable debacle, like the Iran war. Now it’s one that may very well sink his party.

The irony of all of this is that much of Trump’s attempts at interference failed. He went all-in backing his close allies in Brazil and Hungary, and both failed to accomplish what he wanted—Bolsonaro is still serving a 27-year sentence for election interference, and Orban was defeated, ending a 16-year stretch in power. But Trump’s greatest faceplant may have come in Canada. Shortly after he won the 2024 election, he began to attack the nation’s liberal government, first with “51st state” mockery and then with tariffs. It failed spectacularly. Canadian voters had appeared ready to elect a conservative government, but instead kept the liberals in power. That backlash swept Mark Carney into power as prime minister, and he has emerged as a persistent thorn in Trump’s side—a vocal critic who is attempting to rally America’s estranged allies to be less dependent on the U.S. Now, Carney seems to be on the verge of doing something Trump couldn’t: Help to install a more favorable government abroad.