Canada, for those who need a refresher, is one of the United States’ closest allies. It is the No.1 buyer of our goods, and its trade relationship with the U.S. is “largely balanced . . . totaling $635 billion in 2016.” Canada’s prime minister, Justin Trudeau, has very charitably claimed that President Donald Trump “actually listens and is opening to changing his mind,“ and he and the First Lady treated Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner to a night at the theater last March. In the first several months of Trump’s presidency, our northern neighbors “flooded Washington with envoys” and “relentlessly talked up Canada-U.S. ties.” In other words, Canada is like one of those people whose perpetual friendliness you’re suspicious of until you come to realize they’re just genuinely that nice. So, naturally, Donald Trump has been doing everything he can to provoke the country and on Tuesday, he finally succeeded.

Following a tense fourth round of NAFTA negotiations between the U.S., Mexico, and Canada, wherein even the U.S. delegation appeared to be “uncomfortable with the demands they [were] presenting” on the Trump administration’s behalf, representatives for the three nations announced on Tuesday that they would not reconvene until November 17. In contrast to a previously upbeat tone re: NAFTA, Canada slammed non-starter proposals from the U.S., such as one to end Canada’s dairy system, and another to increase the percentage of U.S.-made parts that must be used in cars imported from Mexico and Canada, which Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland said would “put tens of thousands of jobs at risk.” Freeland was also skeptical of the proposal to insert a five-year “sunset clause” that would automatically end the agreement unless all parties decide to renew it, and she denounced the U.S.’s “winner-takes-all mindset,” saying the proposals from Team Trump would “undermine, rather than modernize, the agreement.” "In some cases, these proposals run counter to World Trade Organization rules,” she said, adding that Canadians should prepare in a “no-fuss Canadian way for the worst possible outcome.”

For its part, the U.S. claimed to be shocked that Canada and Mexico wouldn’t want to go along with a deal that would hurt their countries. “We have seen no indication that our partners are willing to make any changes that will result in a rebalancing and a reduction in these huge trade deficits,” U.S. trade representative Robert Lighthizer said. Meanwhile, Trump, who appears to make policy decisions based on whatever gets the most applause at his campaign-style rallies, is seemingly happy to blowup the agreement, with several reports suggesting he’s been pushing these ridiculous demands in order to jeopardize the deal.

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It was a big day for racists and Holocaust deniers on the fringes of the finance industry

On the same day that Anthony Scaramucci’s new media venture issued an apology “if anyone was offended” by a Twitter poll asking how many Jews died in the Holocaust, investor/markets commenter Marc Faber, a.k.a. Dr. Doom, has come under fire for a passage in his latest newsletter that said, basically, that the U.S. is great because white people are in charge. Writing that he didn’t want to “enter into a serious discussion of the tearing down of monuments of historical personalities,” Faber told his subscribers, “Thank God white people populated America, and not the blacks. Otherwise, the US would look like Zimbabwe, which it might look like one day anyway, but at least America enjoyed 200 years in the economic and political sun under a white majority. I am not a racist, but the reality—no matter how politically incorrect—needs to be spelled out as well.” When contacted by Business Insider about the commentary, Faber responded, “I am naturally standing by this comment since this is an undisputable fact.” He added in an e-mail to CNBC: “If stating some historical facts makes me a racist, then I suppose that I am a racist.”