Issue No. 22 - September 8, 2026
Today marks the start of Canada's promised “dollar-for-dollar” retaliatory tariffs, announced by Prime Minister Mark Carney after trade talks between the two countries collapsed last week. The countermeasures land squarely on top of the President's own 50 percent tariffs on roughly $20 billion of Canadian goods, which are already in effect.
None of this appears to have dampened the President's enthusiasm for the underlying concept. “Tariff is the most beautiful word in the dictionary,” he has said, repeatedly, across multiple administrations and several trade wars, treating the word itself with an affection usually reserved for a favorite grandchild or a well-aged steak.
Economists remain divided on whether tariffs are good policy. The President remains undivided on whether “tariff” is a good word. Today, both positions get tested at the border, simultaneously, dollar for dollar.
Headline Thread
THE MOST
BEAUTIFUL WORD
A direct quote, worn proudly, at full volume, on the same week the word in question became roughly $20 billion more expensive to say out loud. Somewhere, an economist is trying to explain the concept of “beautiful” and “consumer price index” existing in the same sentence.
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The Fake News Desk
LOCAL MAN'S FITNESS TRACKER CONGRATULATES HIM FOR STANDING UP, TREATS IT AS A MAJOR MILESTONE
Tempe resident Gary Oduya, 39, received a small vibration and a cheerful notification from his smartwatch on Tuesday reading “Goal Reached: Stood Up,” after he rose from his couch to answer the door for a delivery driver.
“It played a little sound. There was a trophy icon,” Oduya said, still holding the watch up for inspection. “I've run actual 5Ks that got less enthusiasm from this thing than getting up to sign for a package.”
The device reportedly logs standing goals in one-hour increments and had, prior to Tuesday, gone eleven consecutive hours without registering a single qualifying stand. Oduya says he has started to suspect the bar for these achievements is calibrated less around fitness and more around “basic continued existence,” a theory his watch has, so far, declined to dispute.
He has since stood up two more times, for water and for the thermostat, and reports the watch congratulated him both times with what he describes as “the same amount of enthusiasm as the package thing, which honestly undersells the thermostat trip, that one was further.”
