Todd Welsh

“Got to kick at the darkness 'til it bleeds daylight.” ~ Bruce Cockburn

[James Melville 🚜 @JamesMelville]

The Tartan Army are a credit to Scotland. Here they are in full voice singing ‘Loch Lomond’ in Boston Stadium last night for the World Cup match between Scotland and Haiti. Absolutely glorious.

[Ben Perrin @profbenperrin]

This review of (lack) of police accountability is desperately needed

Spurred by multiple shocking cases in Alberta where independent investigators recommended charges against police officers, but none were laid

https://t.co/neRgyphRns

[Claire Kraatz @Claire_Kraatz]

Response needed from @CBCNews @CTVNews @globeandmail

Perhaps #cdnmedia should start doing segments on the rise of the far-right, #propaganda, #disinformation. Cdns deserve to know how the fossil fuel industry & their enablers (Alberta’s UCP Gov’t) are dismantling #democracy.

[Acyn @Acyn]

Q. Have you ever socialized with Donald Trump in the presence of females under the age of 18?

Epstein: Though l'd like to answer that question, at least today l'm going to have to assert my Fifth, Sixth, and 14th Amendment rights.

[Frank Graves @VoiceOfFranky]

What’s Happening Is Not Normal. America Needs an Uprising That Is Not Normal. https://t.co/ylaEAQ94CE

[Shay Boloor @StockSavvyShay]

MY OPEN LETTER TO PRESIDENT TRUMP

The frustrating part is that I was on board for a reset. Truly. I’ve said it publicly. I’ve written about it in this very feed. I understood the need for a detox. For decades, the U.S. economy played the part of the rich guy at the table -- picking up the check for a global order that no longer worked in our favor. We hollowed out our industrial base. We enabled unfair trade imbalances under the illusion of diplomacy. We subsidized demand for cheap imports while outsourcing the hard questions about how our domestic workforce would adapt.

Eventually, that had to stop. It was unsustainable -- financially, politically, and morally. We couldn’t keep pretending that a consumption-led economy held together by zero-interest rates and global fragility was a long-term solution. I wanted a rebalancing. I welcomed the idea of a harder, smarter America-first policy that pushed for fair treatment, reciprocal agreements, and a real industrial strategy rooted in technological superiority, national security, and capital formation. That would’ve been leadership.

But that’s not what this is.

What you’ve rolled out isn’t detox -- it’s whiplash. This isn’t strategic decoupling. It’s scattershot retaliation dressed up as reform. There’s no roadmap. No operational playbook. No clear articulation of where this ends or what the metrics of success even are. It’s not an attempt to responsibly unwind America’s role as the global shock absorber -- it’s a brute-force attempt to disorder the existing system with no viable alternative in place.

You can’t replace a fragile supply chain with chaos and call it resilience. You can’t build American industry by torching the scaffolding that underpins capital flows, labor mobility, and global coordination -- especially when the U.S. itself no longer has the domestic capacity to meet its own industrial needs. You talk about bringing jobs home, but the U.S. doesn’t have the labor force, permitting structure, or wage flexibility to stand up full-scale manufacturing at speed. And now -- after years of deportation policies and underinvestment in vocational training -- you’ve made the labor gap even wider.

Capital isn’t going to rush to fill that void just because you raised tariffs. It’s going to wait. It’s going to sit on the sidelines and preserve optionality. Because right now, no CEO can confidently model a five-year capex plan. No board can greenlight supply chain onshoring when they don’t know whether a tariff rate will double next quarter based on your Twitter account or some arbitrary trade deficit formula.

That’s the issue. This wasn’t rolled out as part of a comprehensive American renewal strategy. It wasn’t coordinated with the Fed. It wasn’t communicated clearly to Treasury. It wasn’t backed by a labor reskilling program or any form of public-private manufacturing incentive beyond empty slogans. It was dropped like a bomb -- seemingly designed more to shock than to build.

And in the absence of credible structure, capital is retreating -- not realigning.

I was ready to endure the pain of a thoughtful, structured reset. Most long-term investors were. We’ve lived through tightening cycles. We understood that globalization, as it stood, had reached a breaking point. But this isn’t a correction of imbalances. This is a rupture without scaffolding.

What you’ve created isn’t reindustrialization. It’s an intentional sabotage of capital planning. No executive is going to build a factory with four-year political horizon risk, a floating tariff regime, and no labor certainty. No investor is going to fund expansion in a market where the basic cost of imports can change weekly based on what country has a current account surplus that week. The system you’ve launched isn’t designed for certainty. It’s designed for control.

And the irony is -- we’re not even punishing bad actors. We’re punishing everyone. Allies. Poor countries. Longstanding partners. Israel gets slapped with 17% tariffs while dismantling their own to support American imports. Vietnam gets hit with 46% because it’s become too productive. Lesotho, one of the poorest countries on Earth, faces a 50% tariff because it doesn’t buy enough U.S. goods -- as if that were a sign of unfairness rather than poverty. It’s incoherent. It’s cruel. And it undermines any claim to moral high ground.

You say this is about protecting American workers. But no worker is helped by policy so erratic that no employer wants to hire. No consumer is helped when import costs rise and domestic capacity doesn’t exist to replace them. No investor is helped when the cost of capital spikes in the face of weaponized uncertainty.

This is not a plan to make America stronger. It’s a gamble that markets and allies will blink first. It’s brinkmanship with no floor.

And the most maddening part? There was a path. A real one. A version of this policy that could’ve worked -- not in headlines or soundbites, but in practice. A path that applied pressure with purpose, that aligned economic force with long-term national interest, that sent a clear message to adversaries and partners alike without destabilizing global commerce or blindsiding capital allocators.

You could’ve gone after China -- hard -- and had the backing of nearly every serious investor and strategist on the Street. Not just because of trade deficits or currency suppression, but because China has been actively undermining our economy and our people. I would’ve supported a four-year plan to end all dependence on Chinese manufacturing unless they stopped stealing American IP (DeepSeek). No more games. Make it explicit: if they don’t comply, we’ll back Taiwanese independence and bring the entire global semiconductor economy with us. No ambiguity. No half-threats. As I see it, China is at war with us -- and our policy should reflect that.

With the EU, you could’ve played it clean. Match auto tariffs percent-for-percent. That’s fair. And then leave the rest alone -- especially goods and services. We run a huge surplus on services with the EU. It props up some of our biggest competitive advantages -- enterprise software, consulting, cloud, defense tech, streaming, media IP. Tariffing the EU outside of autos would be like shooting your own foot for balance. We’re not in a trade war with Europe. We're in a competition for global enterprise dominance -- and right now, the U.S. is winning.

That’s what real strength would’ve looked like. That’s what an America-first trade doctrine could’ve achieved. You’d be rebuilding the system from the inside out -- not just throwing bricks through the windows and calling it a redesign.

Investors would’ve backed it. CEOs would’ve planned around it. Global partners would’ve respected it -- even if they didn’t like it. And capital would’ve flowed toward American resilience instead of retreating from American unpredictability.

But instead of that, you went with chaos. And now, confidence is shattered. Not because the numbers are bad -- but because no one knows what the numbers mean anymore.

That’s the cost of burning down the rules without building new ones.

So no, this is not the detox we needed. It’s not strategic decoupling. It’s not a path to renewal. It’s a slow, loud dismantling of the very foundation that has allowed American capital, innovation, and enterprise to dominate for decades. And it didn’t have to be this way.

But now we’re here. And the market is reacting accordingly -- not to the fundamentals, but to the sense that the future may no longer be modelable. That’s not a trade. That’s an exit.

I don’t want this post to be hyper-political. This isn’t about red or blue. It’s not about the 2024 election cycle. It’s not about ideology. It’s about strategy. It’s about execution.

It’s about understanding that when you're the United States -- when you sit at the helm of the global economic engine -- every policy you roll out reverberates through capital markets, supply chains, boardrooms, and governments. Words become signals. Signals become pricing. Pricing becomes pain -- or progress.

And I hope -- for the sake of the markets, for the sake of businesses trying to plan, and for the future we’re all investing into -- that it’s not too late to recalibrate.

Because we don’t need more noise.

We need a plan.

[James Tate @JamesTate121]

Someone asked "Why do some British people not like Donald Trump?"

Nate White, an articulate and witty writer from England, wrote this magnificent response:

"A few things spring to mind.

Trump lacks certain qualities which the British traditionally esteem.

For instance, he has no class, no charm, no coolness, no credibility, no compassion, no wit, no warmth, no wisdom, no subtlety, no sensitivity, no self-awareness, no humility, no honour and no grace - all qualities, funnily enough, with which his predecessor Mr. Obama was generously blessed.

So for us, the stark contrast does rather throw Trump’s limitations into embarrassingly sharp relief.

Plus, we like a laugh. And while Trump may be laughable, he has never once said anything wry, witty or even faintly amusing - not once, ever.

I don’t say that rhetorically, I mean it quite literally: not once, not ever. And that fact is particularly disturbing to the British sensibility - for us, to lack humour is almost inhuman.

But with Trump, it’s a fact. He doesn’t even seem to understand what a joke is - his idea of a joke is a crass comment, an illiterate insult, a casual act of cruelty.

Trump is a troll. And like all trolls, he is never funny and he never laughs; he only crows or jeers.

And scarily, he doesn’t just talk in crude, witless insults - he actually thinks in them. His mind is a simple bot-like algorithm of petty prejudices and knee-jerk nastiness.

There is never any under-layer of irony, complexity, nuance or depth. It’s all surface.

Some Americans might see this as refreshingly upfront.

Well, we don’t. We see it as having no inner world, no soul.

And in Britain we traditionally side with David, not Goliath. All our heroes are plucky underdogs: Robin Hood, Dick Whittington, Oliver Twist.

Trump is neither plucky, nor an underdog. He is the exact opposite of that.

He’s not even a spoiled rich-boy, or a greedy fat-cat.

He’s more a fat white slug. A Jabba the Hutt of privilege.

And worse, he is that most unforgivable of all things to the British: a bully.

That is, except when he is among bullies; then he suddenly transforms into a snivelling sidekick instead.

There are unspoken rules to this stuff - the Queensberry rules of basic decency - and he breaks them all. He punches downwards - which a gentleman should, would, could never do - and every blow he aims is below the belt. He particularly likes to kick the vulnerable or voiceless - and he kicks them when they are down.

So the fact that a significant minority - perhaps a third - of Americans look at what he does, listen to what he says, and then think 'Yeah, he seems like my kind of guy’ is a matter of some confusion and no little distress to British people, given that:
* Americans are supposed to be nicer than us, and mostly are.
* You don't need a particularly keen eye for detail to spot a few flaws in the man.

This last point is what especially confuses and dismays British people, and many other people too; his faults seem pretty bloody hard to miss.

After all, it’s impossible to read a single tweet, or hear him speak a sentence or two, without staring deep into the abyss. He turns being artless into an art form; he is a Picasso of pettiness; a Shakespeare of shit. His faults are fractal: even his flaws have flaws, and so on ad infinitum.

God knows there have always been stupid people in the world, and plenty of nasty people too. But rarely has stupidity been so nasty, or nastiness so stupid.

He makes Nixon look trustworthy and George W look smart.

In fact, if Frankenstein decided to make a monster assembled entirely from human flaws - he would make a Trump.

And a remorseful Doctor Frankenstein would clutch out big clumpfuls of hair and scream in anguish:

'My God… what… have… I… created?

If being a twat was a TV show, Trump would be the boxed set."

[Mark Carney @MarkJCarney]

Elbows up, Canada.

[Roman Sheremeta 🇺🇸🇺🇦 @rshereme]

A sobering message from a history teacher:

I’ve spent years teaching American and international government — from strong democracies like the UK to authoritarian regimes like russia and China.

But lately, the most alarming lesson comes from home.

1/n

[Jon Meddings @JMeddings]

Another excellent article.

Pertinent questions asked, and answers evaded by government. /1

Smith, LaGrange face more questions over AHS firings and procurement practices | https://t.co/aXyyDqzkKa https://t.co/w4jaxTVeyd

[Naheed Nenshi @nenshi]

Today, we learned the UCP government fired the entire AHS Board on the same day they were set to receive a report on shady contracts. Now, new allegations point to political interference, corruption, and kickbacks at the highest levels.

My response 🧵⬇️ /1

[The Breakdown @TheBreakdownAB]

So what’s the Cole’s notes of the corrupt care scandal?

Strap in!

Because there’s a lot!

/1

[Barry R McCaffrey @mccaffreyr3]

Canada. Our most loyal, important, and safe ally in the world. Vital to our integrated economies. Cooperative in every venue. A partner in war. Trump has a screw loose. Why are the Republicans remaining silent? We are savaging our own interests.

[Matina Stevis-Gridneff @MatinaStevis]

In view of public interest in this story please see a gift link here you can use to read all the reporting --> https://t.co/YYzonyiT4e

[MC Squared @mcsquared34]

Seen in London

[Paul Champ @PaulChampLaw]

Good news for people of downtown Ottawa. Ontario Court of Appeal dismissed Freedom Convoy appeal today, allowing class action to proceed. ONCA found claim has substantial merit and evidence showing serious harm. Freedom to protest must be balanced with rights of others. 1/2

[julie k. brown @jkbjournalist]

https://t.co/HYyZmR7LhL

[Duane Bratt🇨🇦 @DuaneBratt]

Alberta political web series temporarily shut down by court order https://t.co/Ce0Ob2k9lm