Ottawa will now charge duty every time the name crosses the border.
Canada has answered American tariffs with a 50 percent levy on the name Trump, charged every time it crosses the border. Cable news is rationing mentions and the President responded by posting his own name repeatedly. Canadians have already found a duty-free nickname.
Canada put a 50 percent tariff on the name Trump on Tuesday. Not on steel. Not on softwood. On a name. A proper noun now clears customs like a shipment of drywall.
Ottawa is calling it the Nominal Goods Levy. Any mention of the name that crosses the border owes duty on arrival. Say it on a Buffalo radio station that reaches Fort Erie and you owe the Crown money.
"The name is an American product," said Marguerite Tétreault, Canada's new Deputy Minister for Retaliatory Nouns. "It enters our airspace by the millions every day, unrefined and at industrial volume. We will tax it like any other raw material."
Let that sink in. A foreign government just monetized the First Amendment. Our founders did not cross the Delaware so a country with a king on its money could charge us by the syllable.
Media stocks slid on the news, some by 5 percent. Cable news cannot afford its main word. One network memo capped anchors at fourteen mentions per hour. After that they must say "the gentleman in question," which is somehow worse.
The move lands on top of Canada's dollar-for-dollar retaliatory tariffs, which economists warn American consumers will end up paying. Wonderful. Now we pay at the register and at the sentence.
The President responded the only way a free man can. He posted his own name to Truth Social over and over, an act his supporters are calling the largest untaxed shipment of Trumps in American history. Canadian customs says the post is being held at the border pending appraisal.
Chip Vandergrift of the Free Nouns Coalition sees the endgame. "Today it is one man's name," he told SnarkWire. "Tomorrow it is 'bald eagle.' The day after, they come for 'football,' which frankly they have already ruined once."
Ask yourself who benefits. Ottawa insists the levy is temporary. So was the income tax.
Canadians, meanwhile, have already found a duty-free workaround. They now refer to the President as "the fellow downstairs" and pay nothing. That is not trade policy. That is smuggling.
By my count, this column owes Ottawa duty on two mentions. SnarkWire syndicates in Toronto. Accounting has asked me to stop typing.
