Canada Asks U.S. to Stop Making Memes
On September 1, 2026, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said trade talks with the United States could resume “when the Americans stop doing memes, stop throwing shade, stop trying to be tough, and start being serious.” He was addressing the U.S. government: the White House had renamed Lake Ontario “Lake America” on August 27, the President posted an AI video of Canada geese wearing his hair on August 29, and the Secretary of War added a Canadian-flag post on September 1. Trade talks collapsed August 21; U.S. tariffs of 50% are in force on roughly $20 billion of Canadian goods, and Canada’s retaliation, 15 to 50% on nearly $20 billion of American goods, takes effect September 8. Two-way trade in 2025 was $872.3 billion, second only to Mexico, and Canada is the largest buyer of American exports on earth.
The American public’s answer to the Prime Minister arrived within hours and was, in a word, no. That is the part worth noticing. Ten years ago, in the run-up to 2016, Russia’s Internet Research Agency was impersonating Americans online to start exactly these fights, a finding documented by the Senate Intelligence Committee, which also found no evidence that votes were altered. The pushback was real: U.S. Cyber Command took the IRA offline on Election Day 2018, and by 2024 the Director of National Intelligence was naming Russia, Iran and China as the actors still trying. Foreign interference has not gone away. But the Carney meme war is Americans and Canadians arguing with each other, in their own languages, about a real trade dispute worth close to $900 billion a year. It is juvenile. It is also ours. The question for September 8 is whether the two governments can be as direct with each other as their citizens already are.
Eric Garland is an intelligence analyst personally sanctioned by the Russian Federation in May 2022 for his work on Russian intelligence operations. He is the author of the 2016 “Game Theory” thread, named by The New York Times as one of the 25 most important tweets in history.
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SOURCES
Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, U.S.-Canada trade summary, 2025 figures.
U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, “Russian Active Measures Campaigns and Interference in the 2016 U.S. Election, Volume 2: Russia’s Use of Social Media,” 2019.
Office of the Director of National Intelligence, foreign threats to U.S. elections, 2024 assessments and updates.
The Washington Post, “U.S. Cyber Command operation disrupted Internet access of Russian troll factory on day of 2018 midterms,” February 27, 2019.
The White House, executive order renaming Lake Ontario, August 27, 2026; Truth Social posts of August 29 and September 1–2, 2026.
CNBC, “Canada’s Carney slaps Trump admin for ‘doing memes … throwing shade,'” September 1, 2026; and Treasury Secretary Bessent interview, August 31, 2026.
Associated Press, “‘Stop trying to be tough’: Carney fires back at Trump as US-Canada trade fight escalates,” September 1, 2026.
