Large regions of the United States have spent the past few days choking on smoke that came from wildfires in Ontario, Canada. This isn’t the first time this has happened, and President Donald Trump wants to make sure that Canada does what’s necessary to help prevent them from happening again in the future.
Trump announced on Friday that the costs the United States is racking up from wildfire smoke drifting down from Canada will be tacked onto the tariffs Canada already pays. He made the announcement on Truth Social after leaving a hazy Washington, D.C., where the smell of smoke hung in the air.
"We are holding Canada responsible for the fact that they are not properly maintaining their Forests, and Brush therein, and the United States is being unnecessarily invaded by filthy, polluted, and unhealthy air, the quality of which is dangerous, and totally unacceptable!" Trump wrote.
Trump said he planned to call Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney to find out what Canada intends to do about it, and he made clear the financial consequences are coming regardless of the answer. "I will call the Prime Minister during the day to find out what they are going to do about it. The cost is incalculable! Canada has refused to engage in basic Forest Management and Debris Removal, knowing that such refusal will lead to exactly this result," he wrote.
He didn't stop there. "This is Willful Negligence, and becoming a yearly occurrence, costing the United States Billions of Dollars, which cost of this pollution must of necessity be added to the TARIFFS Canada is currently paying. Thank you for your attention to this matter!" Trump wrote.
Rep. Nick Langworthy (R-N.Y.), who represents Western New York, has already pressed the Canadian government for answers, pointing to forest mismanagement as a driving factor behind the smoke. "Americans should not be forced to breathe hazardous air year after year because Canada refuses to properly manage its forests," Langworthy wrote on Facebook. "This is no longer a one-time emergency—it's becoming an annual public health crisis. That is unacceptable."
Langworthy also drew a distinction between bad luck and bad policy. "We can all accept that nature is unpredictable," he continued. "But repeated failures to reduce wildfire risk and manage forests responsibly are a policy choice. The United States cannot continue accepting dangerous air quality every summer as the new normal."
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Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-Ohio) joined in after Trump's post went up, and he didn't hold back. "Americans will not pay the price for the negligence of Canadian leaders. We must create a compensation fund for the victims of this atrocity. Four years in a row of record fires that have produced decades of environmental damage," Moreno wrote. He added a jab aimed closer to home: "Further proof that you don't have to be very smart to get elected as a liberal, you just have to be woke."
There is an abundance of evidence linking logging and thinning to reduced wildfire risk, yet leftists fight those tools at nearly every turn, in Canada and in the United States alike. The argument from the left is that logging and thinning harm wildlife, damage watersheds, and reduce biodiversity, and that forests offer value beyond timber. That argument doesn’t hold up when failing to manage forests contributes to more wildfires, which will do a lot more damage.
Whether the offender is the Canadian government or the Democrat Party here at home, the environment needs to stop being a political football. Millions of Americans are breathing the consequences of Canada's negligence right now, and domestic wildfires will keep producing the same misery unless something changes. Responsible, science-based forest management could fix a lot of this. The only question is whether the left will get out of the way long enough to let it happen.
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