He Swore He’d Lower Your Prices. Today He Taxed Canada 50%.

Trump just slapped a 50% tariff on Canadian wine, cheese, milk, cement–and, I promise I’m not making this up, hockey sticks. To do it, he reached back to a law from 1930. You know the one. It helped c

He Swore He’d Lower Your Prices. Today He Taxed Canada 50%.

Trump just slapped a 50% tariff on Canadian wine, cheese, milk, cement–and, I promise I’m not making this up, hockey sticks. To do it, he reached back to a law from 1930. You know the one. It helped cause the Great Depression.

The Jack Hopkins Now Newsletter #976: Monday, July 20th, 2026.

Let me say the quiet part out loud, because nobody in a red hat wants to hear it.

A tariff is a tax. On you.

Not on Canada. Not on some faceless foreign villain. On the American…who buys the thing. When Trump puts a 50% tariff on a bottle of Canadian wine…Ottawa doesn’t cut a check to Washington.

The importer pays it…the store pays it…and then you pay it at the register.

That’s not my opinion. That’s how tariffs work…and nearly every economist alive will tell you the same thing. The foreign country doesn’t eat the cost. You do.

So…today…the man who won an election…swearing up and down he’d bring prices DOWN….signed three proclamations to drive a whole category of prices UP. On purpose. With a pen and a smile.

Let’s walk through the stupidity…because there’s a lot of it…and it deserves the full tour.

What he actually did

On Monday, Trump signed three proclamations imposing an additional 50% tariff on a range of Canadian goods.

The White House says it’s punishment for Canada “discriminating” against American cars, booze, and dairy. The covered list runs…in the administration’s own words…from “wine to hockey sticks to cement.” Milk. Cream. Hockey equipment. Building materials.

The tariffs kick in 30 days from now. And…here’s a detail that matters: they hit Canadian goods that were supposed to be protected under USMCA…the free-trade deal Trump himself signed in his first term and called one of the best in history. More on that in a minute…because it’s a beauty.

Now, the tour.

Stupid #1: He’s taxing Americans and calling it toughness

Say you own a bar in Detroit. Or a construction firm in Buffalo. Or you just like a Canadian beer and a wheel of good cheese.

Congratulations…you just got a 50% price hike…and the guy who did it is on TV telling you he did it FOR you.

This is the shell game at the center of the whole tariff religion. They dress up a consumer tax…as a punch in Canada’s nose. But the fist…lands on your wallet. Every “tough on trade” headline is really a “your groceries cost more now” headline wearing a costume.

And remember the pitch. Prices down. Day one. He said it a hundred times. This is the opposite of that. This is prices up…by design, signed into being while he tells you it’s a win.

Stupid #2: He dusted off the law that made the Depression worse

Here’s the part that should make your jaw hit the floor.

The authority he used is Section 338 of the Tariff Act of 1930. And the Tariff Act of 1930 has another…more famous name: Smoot-Hawley.

Yes…that Smoot-Hawley. The tariff law that economists have spent nearly a century blaming for choking off global trade…and deepening the Great Depression. The one they teach as a cautionary tale. The one…that triggered a wave of foreign retaliation …and helped turn a bad downturn…into a catastrophe.

Of all the dusty tools in the drawer…he reached for the one with “worsened the Great Depression” stamped on the handle.

It’s like treating a headache by reaching for the bottle marked POISON…because you liked the shape of it. If you set out to design a policy that broadcasts “I have learned nothing from history,” you could not do better than this.

Stupid #3: He’s torching his own trade deal

Follow the timeline, because it’s a masterpiece of self-sabotage.

First term: Trump rips up NAFTA, negotiates USMCA…and spikes the football. Greatest deal ever, he says. Signs it. Takes the credit.

Now: he lets that same deal lapse without renewal…blows a hole in what’s left of it… and slaps 50% tariffs on goods the deal was supposed to shield. The negotiations he’s kicked off could drag on for a decade. So the “best trade deal in history”…his words…his signature…is now roadkill under his own tires.

You cannot simultaneously claim you’re the greatest dealmaker who ever lived…and keep detonating your own deals. Pick one. The evidence has picked for him.

Stupid #4: Canada hits back, and both sides bleed

Trade wars have a rhythm, and it’s always the same:

You hit, they hit back…everyone loses…nobody wins…and the bill lands on ordinary people in both countries.

Canada already retaliated against his earlier rounds…pulling American liquor off store shelves across most of the country…putting duties on U.S. vehicles.

Now…Ontario’s premier is calling for Canada to answer this one “tariff for tariff, dollar for dollar.”

That’s not a bluff. Canada sends roughly three-quarters of its exports to the U.S….and is deeply woven into our auto and metals supply chains. When you yank on a thread that tangled…you don’t hurt one sweater. You unravel both.

And here’s the kicker on the target: Canada is our friend. Our ally. The quiet…polite neighbor who’s stood next to us in every foreign fight that mattered. Trump keeps swinging at the one country least likely to deserve it…while calling them the 51st state…like it’s a joke everyone’s in on. They are not laughing.

Stupid #5: He wants to tariff the weather

I saved this one because you’ll think I’ve lost it.

According to the reporting, Trump also asked his aides to look into slapping additional tariffs on Canada because Canadian wildfire smoke has been drifting south and hurting U.S. air quality.

Tariffs. On smoke.

Let that sit. You cannot tax a weather pattern into submission. Wildfires do not read proclamations. Smoke does not clear customs. This is a man…so in love with the tariff hammer that he’s now eyeing the sky…wondering…if he can bill the clouds. It would be hilarious if he didn’t have the pen to actually try it.

Stupid #6: Hockey sticks, cement, and the worst possible timing

Step back and look at the target list one more time.

Hockey sticks. In a fight with Canada. It’s almost performance art. If a sitcom writer pitched “the president launches a trade war and the first casualty is hockey equipment,” the room would say it’s too on-the-nose.

Cement, milk, wine…these aren’t luxuries for the rich. They’re the stuff of building… eating…living. You’re taxing the middle of the economy and the middle of the country.

And the timing. This lands months before the November midterms. Self-inflicted inflation…right when voters are deciding whether the people in charge have any idea what they’re doing. He’s handing his opponents the receipt and asking them to mail it to every kitchen table in America.

Don’t let them call it strength

Here’s what I want you to hold onto.

They will package this as backbone. As fighting for the American worker. As finally getting tough. And…it is none of those things.

It’s a tax on you, justified by a Depression-era law…aimed at a friend…in defiance of a deal he signed…at the worst possible moment…with a side order of trying to tariff smoke.

That’s not strength. That’s a man swinging a hammer at his own house…and charging you for the broken windows.

He told you he’d bring prices down. Watch what he does instead. Write it down. And when someone insists this is genius…this is leadership…this is the art of the deal…

Don’t give in.

#HoldFast

Back soon.

-Jack

Jack Hopkins