President Donald Trump drew scorn from Canadians on Sunday after lashing out at the United States’ northern neighbor in an overnight social media rant, hours after trade talks between the two countries collapsed.

The “unprecedented breakdown” in negotiations saw Trump impose a 50% tariff on a range of Canadian goods using a 1930 law that has never before been invoked by a U.S. president.

“Canada wants the benefits of being a State, without being one!!!” Trump raged on his social media platform Truth Social at roughly 1 a.m. ET. “They have also charged our great farmers, for many years, massive amounts of Tariffs. No more!!!”

The rant took many Canadians by surprise, including prominent economist Marc Lévesque.

“Trump is so deeply entrenched in his protectionist mentality that he thinks wanting free trade – or, at least the freest trade possible – amounts to wanting the ‘benefits of being a state.’ Mind-boggling,” Lévesque wrote Sunday on X.

Roman Fisher, a Canadian medical physics researcher and political commentator, called Trump a “blubbering fool” in response to the overnight post, while Flavio Volpe, a prominent auto-industry executive, sounded off against Trump’s “disrespect” toward his home country.

“His unrelenting disrespect to Canada’s sovereignty has acted as the number one source of generational Canadian resilience in the face of conflict,” Volpe wrote on X.

The 50% tariffs, invoked under Section 338 of the Tariff Act of 1930, mark the first time any U.S. president has used the statute since it became law. The 1930 act is better known as Smoot-Hawley, the Great Depression-era law that raised U.S. import duties to some of their highest levels in history. They apply to billions of dollars’ worth of Canadian goods, including alcohol, hockey equipment, cement and dairy products, according to Axios.

The measures land on one of the world’s largest bilateral trading relationships, one that has been governed since 2020 by the U.S.–Mexico–Canada Agreement, the successor to NAFTA. Canada’s retaliatory tariffs, set to take effect Sept. 8, will target American sectors such as “steel, dairy, appliances, agricultural equipment, pulp and paper, and electronics,” according to NPR. With Trump’s tariffs in place and Ottawa’s countermeasures scheduled to begin that day, the next formal step in the dispute is already on the calendar.

His unrelenting disrespect to Canada’s sovereignty has acted as the number one source of generational Canadian resilience in the face of conflict. — Flavio Volpe, C.M. (@FlavioVolpe1) August 23, 2026