Category: International News

“With respect to the so-called trade deficit,” Wildeboer said, “If you take out cheap oil, which US refineries refine and make a ton of money, the US actually has a trade surplus.”

Moreover, the exchange in auto parts between the two countries, Wildeboer explained, is pretty much even, give or take a few million dollars.

“Canada is the largest purchaser of US goods,” Wildeboer continued. “We’re a big customer. At the end of the day, I think you’d want to keep a customer.”

‘It’s gonna hurt anyhow’

Sultan Egebesci, originally from Turkey, has lived in Canada for four years and has worked at Martinrea for three. She considers the company her “second family.”

“Of course, I’m worried,” Egebesci told CNN when asked about the looming possibility of a trade war with the United States. But she said was trying not to stress out too much.

“I know when we do everything together, everything gonna be fixed,” Egebesci said of Canadians. “Everything can be fixed.”

Egebesci is encouraged by the movement to “Buy Canadian,” and told CNN that when she shops, she first looks for a “Made in Canada” label before making a purchase.

“I feel confident,” said Pisey Lim, another Martinrea employee. “I really trust the company.” Her friends at other companies nearby, however, “feel a little bit nervous.”

“They’re scared they might lose their job,” Lim said. “They see in their work, it’s quite less work. Some people stay home.”

Naitik Jariwalla, who’s worked at Martinrea for three years, said he was worried about the possibility of losing his job, but thought Canada was “taking the right steps.”

“The government has been prepared for almost a month now,” Jariwalla said. “I have hope for Martinrea.”

However, Jariwalla predicted that the issue wouldn’t go away anytime soon. It’s time, he said, to dig in. Canada should stand up to the United States “even if it hurts a bit.”

“It may take one or two years to settle down,” Jariwalla told CNN. “But this is a good time for Canada to support their legs and stop relying on another country. I think it’s going to be good for Canada. I think Canada can grow.”

“It’s gonna hurt anyhow,” Jariwalla continued. “Either you deal with it right now, or in the future.”

A ‘big deal’ in the States

Despite the Canadian flags hanging on the factory walls, Martinrea is in some ways an American company, too. Wildeboer points out that the company employs twice as many people in the US as in Canada, particularly in Michigan, where Trump won a slim majority in 2024.

“We’re a big deal locally,” Wildeboer said. “We take care of a lot of people. I would say that a lot of those people like President Trump and they like his message: lower inflation, more jobs, strong economy. But with the tariffs and so forth, you’re getting higher inflation, less jobs, weaker economy.”

The executive guessed that those employees might change their mind on the president’s agenda come midterm elections in two years. That said, apart from his position on tariffs, Wildeboer admitted he understands much of Trump’s message about Canada.

“A lot of what President Trump or the Americans have said to Canadians has a lot of merit,” Wildeboer said.

In response, Trudeau has agreed to appoint a “Fentanyl Czar” to deal with the issue. The prime minister even said that Canada would follow the US in declaring cartels as terrorist organizations, though Mexico’s president said she considers the US designation unhelpful.

“In the context of fixing our border, dealing with fentanyl or immigration, I think that the vast majority of Canadians agree,” Wildeboer said. “I think most Canadians would agree that we should spend more on our military. We should defend our Arctic. We have Chinese planes and Russian planes flying over our land. At the end of the day, that’s our land. We should protect it. We should protect it with the United States.”

Israeli troops have withdrawn from the Netzarim Corridor – a military zone cutting off the north of the Gaza Strip from the south.

Hundreds of Palestinians in cars and on carts laden with mattresses and other goods began returning to northern Gaza following the pull-out – often to scenes of utter destruction.

The Israeli withdrawal is in line with the Israel-Hamas ceasefire agreement of 19 January under which 16 Israeli hostages and 566 Palestinian prisoners have so far been freed.

By the end of the first stage of the ceasefire in three weeks’ time, 33 hostages and 1,900 prisoners are expected to have been freed. Israel says eight of the 33 are dead.

Hamas seized 251 hostages and killed about 1,200 people when it attacked Israel on 7 October 2023, triggering the Gaza war.

At least 48,189 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s offensive, according to Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry. About two-thirds of Gaza’s buildings have been damaged or destroyed by Israel’s attacks, the UN says.

On Sunday, crowds of Palestinians were seen traversing the Netzarim Corridor – mostly moving north to see what had happened to their abandoned homes.

“What we saw was a catastrophe, horrific destruction. The [Israeli] occupation destroyed all the homes, shops, farms, mosques, universities and the courthouse,” Osama Abu Kamil, a resident of al-Maghraqa just north of Netzarim, told the AFP news agency.

The 57-year-old, who had been forced to live for more than a year in the southern Gazan city of Khan Yunis, said he now planned to “set up a tent for me and my family next to the rubble of our house”.

“We have no choice,” he added.

Mahmoud al-Sarhi, another displayed Palestinian, told AFP that for him “arriving at the Netzarim Corridor meant death until this morning”.

He said this was “the first time I saw our destroyed house”, referring to his home in the nearby Zeitun area.

“The entire area is in ruins. I cannot live here,” he added.

About 700,000 residents of northern Gaza fled to southern areas at the start of the war, when the Israeli military issued mass evacuation orders before launching a ground invasion of the Palestinian territory.

Many of those displaced were subsequently forced to move multiple times after Israeli forces pushed into southern Gaza, too.

They were also prevented from returning to their homes through the Netzarim Corridor, stretching from the Gaza-Israel border to the Mediterranean Sea.

Israeli forces partially withdrew from the west of the corridor last month and the first Palestinians – pedestrians – were allowed to walk along the coastal Rashid Street as they crossed into northern Gaza.

Those on vehicles have to use Salah al-Din Street and undergo screening for weapons by US and Egyptian security contractors.

The Israel Defense Forces have not officially commented on Sunday’s withdrawal from the eastern part of the corridor, which will leave it in control of Gaza’s borders, but not the road that had cut it in half.

The Haaretz newspaper says the Hamas-run Gaza interior ministry has been urging people to “exercise caution and adhere to the existing movement guidelines for their safety”.

The troop withdrawal comes as an Israeli delegation is expected to fly to Qatar which has been moderating talks between the two sides in the Gaza war.

The Israeli government has previously said the delegation will initially discuss “technical matters” regarding the first phase of the ceasefire deal, rather than the more challenging second phase which is meant to lead to a permanent ceasefire, the exchange of all remaining living hostages in Gaza for more Palestinian prisoners and a complete withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza.

That will require further direction from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who recently became the first foreign leader to meet US President Donald Trump since his return to the White House.

During the trip, in the most dramatic shift in US policy regarding Gaza in decades, Trump called for the removal of the territory’s entire civilian population and the development of what he called “The Riviera of the Middle East”.

Convening his first cabinet meeting since returning to Israel over the weekend, Netanyahu said Trump had come up with a “completely different vision, much better for the State of Israel”.

“A revolutionary, creative vision – and we are discussing it,” he was quoted as saying in an official readout of the meeting. “He [Trump] is very determined to carry it out. It also opens up many possibilities for us.”

Trump’s proposal, which would be a crime under international law, has been almost universally rejected, including by Arab states.

The Saudi foreign ministry said on Saturday that it would not accept “any infringement on the Palestinians’ unalienable rights, and any attempts at displacement,” accusing Israel of “ethnic cleansing”.

Egypt has also rejected any idea of the removal of the Palestinian population and has said it is calling an emergency summit of the Arab League on 27 February to discuss what it called “serious” Palestinian developments.

Last year, President Joe Biden passed up a chance to be interviewed on the highly rated Super Bowl pregame show. This year, not only is President Donald Trump being interviewed, he is coming here for the big game in person.

By becoming the first sitting president to attend a Super Bowl, Trump is turning the NFL’s biggest spectacle of the year into another episode of “The Trump Show.”

The show has been on seemingly 24/7 since the inauguration last month. It takes many forms: news conferences, contentious announcements, AI-generated memes and all-caps Truth Social posts. All of it makes Trump the proverbial main character.

“I’ve been so busy that it’s hard to believe,” he said at the National Prayer Breakfast on Thursday, prompting knowing laughter from the audience.

Every new president generates a lot of news, but something feels different this time. To the delight of his fans and dismay of his detractors, Trump has made so many pronouncements and held so many press Q&A’s that he has been all but impossible to avoid.

Think about it: A year ago you could go days without seeing or thinking about Biden. You’re lucky if you can go hours without thinking about Trump. And that’s just how he likes it.

White House aides have indicated the president’s ubiquity is partly a strategy to impress Republican voters and disorient Democratic opponents.

During White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt’s first briefing on January 28, she proudly brought along a headline about his omnipresence. “Politico summed it up best: ‘Trump is everywhere again.’ And that’s because President Trump has a great story to tell,” she said.

Trump’s long history of courting media attention suggests that it’s also partly about satiating his own ego.

In the new book about attention, “The Sirens’ Call,” MSNBC anchor Chris Hayes argued that Trump’s psychological needs are “so bottomless” that “he’ll take attention in whatever form he can get. He’ll take condemnation, rebuke, disgust, as long as you’re thinking about him.”

Conversely, Trump boosters often argue that liberals play right into his hands by obsessing over all things Trump.

A strongman technique?

History professor Ruth Ben-Ghiat, author of “Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present,” told CNN that Trump has a “personality cult” that views him as both a man of the people and a demigod, and his visibility is a key component.

“The strongman must appear not just omnipotent but also omnipresent, he is everywhere,” she said.

Trump seems to welcome every opportunity to show off his stamina and strike a contrast with Biden, even months after defeating him.

“He knows his base and how simple they are,” CNN contributor Cari Champion said during a recent “NewsNight” discussion of the “optics presidency” and how effective it’s been.

Trump “knows how to entertain them and it’s working,” she said.

In a Truth Social post on Friday, Trump previewed his Super Bowl pregame interview with Fox News anchor Bret Baier, which was recorded Saturday at Mar-a-Lago. “There hasn’t been one in four years (Gee, I wonder why?),” Trump wrote. (Biden participated in the pre-game tradition in 2021 and 2022.)

Even Biden would probably admit that Trump has superior attention-getting skills. Since retaking office, Trump has created so much purposeful chaos — including at federal agencies that are being gutted by the day — that journalists can barely keep up. News producers who wake up in the morning to prep an evening show know that many of the political stories will change by airtime.

This, of course, is what 2017 felt like. CNN even penned a similar story back then: “The inescapable Donald Trump.”

Google Trends search data shows that interest in Trump news peaked in 2017, then dissipated for the other three years of his first term, and then only spiked again when he tried to stay in office following his 2020 election loss. Interest is back at those 2020 levels now, but not quite as high as 2017, according to Google Trends.

Democratic strategist James Carville, who grew up in Louisiana and spends much of his time in New Orleans, said Trump being “white hot” would ultimately redound to the Democrats’ benefit.

Channeling Muhammad Ali’s famous “rope-a-dope” tactic, Carville said of Trump, “just go ahead and punch yourself out the first five rounds.”

Flooding the zone with cultural fights

Many of Trump’s events, and even some of his executive orders, are as much about performing the role of president as about changing government policy.

In an influential essay on his Marginal Revolution blog, Tyler Cowen wrote that Trump’s incessant posts and photo ops are “investments in changing the culture.”

Trump’s strategy, he wrote, seems to be the following: “Every time the policy or policy debate pushes culture in what you think is the right direction, just do it. Do it in the view that the cultural factors will, over some time horizon, surpass everything else in import. Simply pass or announce or promise such policies. Do not worry about any other constraints. You don’t even have to do them! They don’t even all have to be legal! (Illegal might provoke more discussion.) They don’t all have to persist!”

Flooding the zone with the fights is “how you have an impact in an internet-intensive, attention-at-a-premium world,” Cowen wrote.

For Trump’s fans, it feels like nonstop “winning.”

Clay Travis, the conservative radio host and founder ofOutKick, which bills itself as the “antidote to the mainstream sports media,” told CNN that Trump’s attendance at the Super Bowl was reflective of a “major vibe shift” in Trump’s favor.

“I’d even go so far as to say a majority of NFL players, owners and execs support him” now, he said.

Young men have also swung toward Trump in significant numbers.

“It’s night and day between what we saw with sports in 2017, when many athletes openly attacked Trump,” Travis said. “I expect Trump to be cheered in the stadium and for USA chants to break out.”

The Super Bowl, in so many ways, symbolizes American culture, from the combat on the field to the consumerism of the $8 million 30-second commercials. No wonder it’s where Trump wants to be on Sunday night: It’s the biggest show in the world.