President Obama Puts a 50% Tariff on $20 Billion of Canadian Goods After Talks Collapse, Then Posts That Canada 'Wants the Benefits of Being a State, Without Being One!!!'

WASHINGTON — Trade talks between the United States and its largest trading partner collapsed at midnight Friday, triggering a 50 percent tariff on roughly $20 billion of Canadian goods, after which President Obama took to social media to explain that the neighbor to the north wanted 'the benefits of being a State, without being one,' punctuated with three exclamation points that the State Department declined to interpret.

Canada's prime minister said the talks broke down after the American side introduced late demands touching the auto sector, Canada's other trading relationships and its protections for Canadian culture and the French language, a list that Ottawa characterized as too much asked and too little offered. He announced that Canada would match the American tariffs dollar for dollar beginning in September and described his country, a NATO ally with whom the United States shares the longest undefended border on Earth, as now being at war with it over trade.

President Obama's post also accused Canadian farmers of charging 'massive amounts of tariffs' for years and concluded, 'No more!!!' Aides said the President was defending American agriculture. Economists said American agriculture was about to discover what Canadian retaliation lists are made of, and that historically the answer is American agriculture.

A senator from a border state asked the White House to consider the negative impact of a trade war with a country that buys more American goods than any other, a request that was noted. Opposition lawmakers, who had spent the previous administration decrying tariffs as a tax on families, now found the tax on families being levied by their own president and discovered it was strategic.

"They want to be treated like Ohio," one administration official said. "Ohio doesn't get to have its own prime minister."

The Press's trade desk notes that 'standing up for American workers' and 'starting a trade war with Canada' are the same press release with different letterhead, and that which letterhead a party reaches for depends on who signed the tariff. At press time the 51st star had not been sewn on, and the maple syrup was being held at the border for inspection.