Understatement of the millennium: "This is a very dumb thing to do."

We are officially at economic war with our formerly-closest ally. And our elbows are up.

Canadians are channelling the legendary Canadian Gordie Howe: Elbows UP

This is an act of economic war. There will be no winners.

Donald Trump, whose name I can almost not bear to say or type, and whom I will no longer gratify with the title of president, did indeed turn today into Tariff Tuesday.

Henceforth, I will refer to him as FOTUS or not at all.

His 25 percent tariffs on everything Canadian but energy, which gets a 15 per cent break, came into effect at midnight, as everyone on Earth knows by now. As I write this, ‘he’ is threatening retaliatory tariffs on Canada’s retaliatory tariffs.

My elbows are up. Way up. I’m channelling Canadian (Saskatchewan!) hockey legend Gordie Howe with a fury, mingled with disgust and disdain, I have never felt before. Never.

I’m hardly alone, which probably doesn’t even need to be said. I listened to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s address to the nation this morning and was more impressed than I have ever been with his resolve, his clarity, his forcefulness and his choice of words. I’ve had issues with *some of his behaviour in the past, but today, he was BOOM.

To Canadians, he said: "This is going to be tough, even though we are all going to pull together, because that's what we do.

“This country is worth fighting for.”

To the American people, he made it clear that we are still their friends and allies. He correctly placed all of the blame on the present White House.

And to FOTUS, he said (and this is going viral): “It’s not in my habit to agree with the Wall Street Journal, but Donald, they point out that even though you're a very smart guy, this is a very dumb thing to do.”

The reaction was swift:

***NEW YORK (AP) — Stocks tumbled on Wall Street Tuesday as a trade war between the U.S. and its key trading partners escalated, wiping out all the gains for the S&P 500 since Election Day.

The S&P 500 fell 1.7%, with every sector in the benchmark index losing ground. The Dow Jones Industrial Average shed 722 points, or 1.7%, as of 11:03 a.m. Eastern time.***

The S&P/TSX in Canada was, of course, also falling. It was down 410 points or 1.65 per cent at about 2 p.m. Eastern.

The shit is hitting the fan, and it’s hard to know when it will stop flying. But here is a multi-point scenario, if I may.

1. Stocks tumbled 1.7 per cent, but not Tesla.

Oh, no. Elon Musk’s company, by comparison, dropped eight per cent (as I write, right). But there’s more. Tesla stock was $428.22 on Jan. 15. At 1 p.m. my time Tuesday, it was $270.32. That’s down 37 per cent, but Tesla has fallen 45 per cent from December.

Musk is worth $100 billion less than he was about two months ago. Nope, not enough to demote him from the richest man in the world title . . . but it’s hard to know where this slide will end. It is also evidence that trade wars — and moronic national policy — might affect not *just the middle class.

2. Meanwhile, inflation will rise and it won’t take long for that to happen. So much for reducing the price of eggs, especially as the U.S. battles avian flu (and that’s another thing: health policy, and its effect on not just the economy but people’s actual lives). At some point, I expect, the (entire) U.S. electorate will realize they’ve been had, and what will they do then?

3. “The U.S. doesn’t need anything from Canada,” FOTUS has said. Well, let’s take a closer look at one of those things America does not need.

Potash. Canada — read, Saskatchewan — supplies 80 per cent of the U.S.’s potash, and it will be tricky to replace that from Russia or Belarus which, together, a) are really far away, ergo more expensive shipping and b) don’t mine nearly as much as Canada does. It’s impossible for them to make up the 80 per cent.

For perspective, an Illinois corn farmer recently interviewed in the Globe and Mail spent $400,000 on potash to grow her crop last year. That’s one farmer, 1,800 acres. While Midwestern American soil is among the best in the world, it does not contain potassium.

So good luck with that unnecessary item. I guarantee the fertilizer companies will not eat the economic war taxes on this critical mineral. However, the farm lobby is widely Republican. But will farmers just eat these costs now, as they bite the bottom line?

4. I’ve mentioned this in a previous blog, but just as a reminder, here’s another thing the U.S. does not need. Oil. For example, Calgary, Alta.-based Cenovus Energy owns oil refineries in Ohio and Wisconsin, which convert gobs of Canadian crude into gasoline: 74% of the American Midwest is reliant on Canadian-feedstock gas. How will Americans react to soaring prices at the pump?

5. Dang. Right. There’s also uranium. Saskatchewan mines more uranium than anyone except Kazakhstan, with grades 10 to 100 times higher than anywhere else on Earth. And supplies 25 per cent of U.S. uranium.

6. Oh, one more. Electricity. Ontario Premier Doug Ford is already, possibly in a fit of patriotic lividity, threatening to turn off lights in New York, Minnesota and Michigan. This could be another flashpoint.

So yeah, dumb. And not just for Canada and Mexico and potentially the EU, either.

Slightly off-topic, here, but regarding Canada, fentanyl was never the issue. It was the legal lie behind going ahead with tariffs. Canada has gone to great lengths to further secure the border, and at first I viewed this as appeasement, which I abhor. I’ve changed my mind. It was high time we improved our border vigilance . . . for our own security. This is the only outcome spurred by FOTUS that has been positive (tries not to barf), in my view.

Our hope, then, while I HATE to see and say this, is that deteriorating economic conditions, leading to vociferous objections from the populace, will do one of two things. (Because ultimately, it must come down to democracy, even if that is being attacked from all sides.)

Either FOTUS will see the error of his ways, figure out some ridiculous statement that can be read as a “win” — because above all else, the psychopathic narcissist needs to win and be glorified — and back off his tariffs, not to mention the wholesale firing of the bureaucracy, and a vast list of other stupid things.

Or, the clamour will become so deafening that some geniuses, somewhere, will figure out how to remove him from office.

I’ll take either one. It seems clear which is preferable.

But something must happen soon. It’s not just Canada that is in the fight of its life, post-Second World War.

What was made completely clear in the Oval Office last week, when Ukrainian Hero President Volodomyr Zelenskyy was ambushed by FOTUS and his revolting right hand, is that the security of the entire world is at stake.

It’s in your hands, American friends. We are begging you. DO something.