A satirical takedown of U.S. tariffs on Canadian mushrooms, the latest absurd escalation after lumber, dairy, and steel. The speaker argues the justification is flimsy, the policy hurts American restaurants and grocers, and mushrooms are a fitting symbol for a trade war built on rot.
The United States just put tariffs on Canadian mushrooms. Mushrooms! We've done softwood lumber, we've done dairy, we've done steel, but we've now arrived, ladies and gentlemen, at the fungus aisle. At least this time the dipshits in charge of the circus down there don't think Canadian mushroom growers are a secret cartel, or that mushrooms are a national security threat, which I might remind you they think our raw steel is. No, the argument this time is that Canadian farms benefit from agricultural tax exemptions. That's it. Tax exemptions. That's what they're mad about now. The kind of tax exemptions that every farm in every country on earth gets, including American farms. Which means Trump, master negotiator, has just set a trap for his own country. If tax exemptions are now a valid weapon, then every other country can turn around and use the same logic against American agricultural exports. These numpty fucks just handed the entire world a loaded argument, pointed it at their own farmers, and called it trade policy. This is how you know that they are completely running out of out of tariff ideas. They've worked their way through the big ones: lumber, canola, potatoes, steel, aluminum, cars, and now they're standing in the produce section staring at a bin of oyster mushrooms from Chilliwack and thinking, "I got you fuckers now." I might also use this as an opportunity to remind people that when the US puts tariffs on another country's products, it's their own buyers who have to pay that tax. We don't. That just hurts their restaurants. Their grocery stores, their snack makers, compost producers, health supplement companies. Honestly, at some point up here, we Canadians stopped being angry and now we're just mostly embarrassed for them. The Americans voted into office a proxy government run by the Russians. I know not all of them did, but enough did. When you think about it, maybe mushrooms are the perfect product. They grow best when they're kept in the dark and fed bullshit. They're nature's decomposers. They break down dead things. In some ways, it's the most self-aware trade policy America's ever produced.
Ten times Canada helped the U.S. with its wildfires, instead of whining about the smoke. 
