NY Gov. Kathy Hochul slams Trump for trade war with Canada, Lake Ontario renaming

NEW YORK — New York Gov. Kathy Hochul on Friday slammed President Donald Trump for jump-starting his trade war with Canada, which she called a lose-lose conflict for both countries that is hitting New York especially hard.

Hochul predicted Trump’s Republican allies will pay a heavy price at the ballot box in the congressional midterm elections for the 50% tariffs on Canadian goods he imposed after trade talks unexpectedly collapsed in acrimony and Canada hit back with levies of their own.

“I will be happy to remind them who is doing this, who drove up the costs in the grocery store when parents are trying to get the food for their kids for their dinner tonight,” she said on MSNOW’s “Morning Joe” show. “Or when they’re trying to buy backpacks and the aluminum lunch pail is more expensive because the aluminum comes from Canada and they had a high tariff on it.”

“This is what families are dealing with,” she added.

The governor accused Trump of using the war of words with Canada to seek to divert Americans’ attention from the war in Iran, which just passed the six-month mark with no end in sight and no sign of achieving key U.S. aims.

“It is absolutely appalling that when the war in Iran starts taking a bad turn, he decides to launch a war on our best friend in Canada,” she said.

A day after Trump signed an executive order ordering the Department of the Interior to change the name of Lake Ontario to Lake America, Hochul rejected the purported switcheroo, which she derided as a childish display of presidential petulance.

She ticked off a laundry list of New York industries that are suffering from the still-escalating trade war, including tourism to New York City, upstate wineries and even Buffalo sports teams.

“It is so unfair because the communities that I grew up in, from Buffalo and then all along Lake Ontario — which is still Lake Ontario, I want to make that point — all the way up to Plattsburgh, our economies are so intertwined,” Hochul said.

Trump says he imposed the new tariffs, which will only go into effect on Jan. 1, after the midterms, because Canada has been “ripping us off” on trade for decades.

Hochul pleaded with Trump to call a time-out on the ugly rhetoric and tit-for-tat tariffs.

“That’s pretty abusive to someone who had been a longtime friend,” she said. “So I’m just asking you this: We need to stop.”

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