Trump's Canada tariff fight reaches critical point as House GOP summons trade chief

Fifty percent tariffs on our closest trading partner, and House Republicans felt the need to haul the trade rep in for a talk. That tells you something. When members of your own party start summoning your negotiators to explain themselves, the pressure isn't coming from Democrats or the press. It's coming from farmers, manufacturers, and small business owners back home who are the ones actually eating the cost.

Nobody on our side disputes that Canada has played games on dairy, on lumber, on all sorts of things over the years. Fighting for better terms is fine. But there's a difference between using tariffs as leverage to get a deal and using them as a permanent state of siege against a country that buys more American goods than China, Japan, and the UK combined. Fifty percent isn't a negotiating chip anymore. It's a wall.

Jamieson Greer is in an impossible spot here, and it's worth having some sympathy for that. He's the guy who has to walk into a room full of Republicans from farm states and border states and explain a policy that's squeezing their own constituents. If the plan is working, say how and when it ends. If it's not, admit it before more people lose contracts and jobs waiting for a resolution that keeps getting pushed back.

What should worry Republicans isn't that this fight is happening in public. It's that their own members are the ones forcing it into the open. When your caucus needs answers more than the opposition does, that's not a talking point problem. That's a policy problem.