QUICK TAKE: Trump gives Carney the ice and Xi the Washington sky

A cartoon on a Sunday night

September 6, 4:08 p.m. Pacific

While Ottawa was getting ready to retaliate against his tariffs, Donald Trump posted a cartoon on his Truth Social network on Sunday, September 6, at 4:08 p.m. Pacific time. It was 7:08 p.m. in Ottawa.

The cartoon is a single panel. Trump, in a USA Hockey jersey, standing. Mark Carney, in a Hockey Canada sweater, sprawled on the ice.

In the speech bubble: “Get up, governor.”

That is all. One panel. Two players. One bubble.

Earlier that day, Trump had written that the Canadian dollar’s imbalance with the United States was unacceptable. That it had been that way for years. But no longer.

A moment every rink knows

In Canada, we know this image without having seen it. The player down. The cold of the ice against the cheek. The sound of blades skating away.

And the other one, above, who does not offer a hand.

At a neighbourhood rink, it happens every Saturday. You get up. You go again. Nobody turns it into policy.

That evening, CTV News reports, Carney did not respond.

One panel is enough when you know the sport.

What Trump actually posted

A still image

Three days later, on September 9, Snopes sets the record straight.

An animation is making the rounds, in which Trump hits Carney with a stick. Trump did not post it. It carries an unofficial watermark saying it was animated by Grok.

He posted a still image. A drawing. Carney on the ice, Trump standing, a bubble: “Get up, governor.”

The animation, for its part, travelled. On Bluesky, on Reddit, on X, Snopes reports. Readers wrote to the site asking whether it was real. Ruling: mostly false.

The distinction matters. A president who posts a still image is not a president who posts a beating. It has to be said, even when you dislike the image.

Eight posts in two minutes

Between 4:07 and 4:09 p.m. Pacific time, Trump publishes eight posts, according to the archive Snopes consulted.

Before the cartoon, a golf video. A ranking of presidents with himself at the top. After it, an image related to Iran. An illustration of himself.

Snopes could not establish whether the image itself was produced by artificial intelligence. The site asked the White House. It says it is awaiting an answer.

So the cartoon was not a statement. It was one post among eight, on a Sunday.

Between golf and Iran, a prime minister on the ice.

Hockey, our sport

A sweater, not a jersey

The choice of sport is not innocent.

Hockey is ours. Our rinks. Our cold mornings. Our parents in the stands, hands wrapped around a coffee.

The cartoon picks the ground where defeat stings most.

Ice, not grass

The golf video went up two minutes earlier in the same feed, according to Snopes. Golf could have served.

The cartoon took the ice.

In golf, everyone plays their own ball. In hockey, there is contact. You fall. You get up.

On the ice, the one who falls usually gets up alone. We respect him for it.

Our own sport, turned against us.

Nineteen days later

The Associated Press, September 25

The cartoon could have vanished in the stream. It comes back on September 25.

That day, the Associated Press publishes its takeaways from Xi Jinping’s state visit to Washington. Six reporters share the byline.

The cartoon had made news on the 6th. It did not yet have a contrast.

In the middle of the text, one sentence. Trump even posted an image of himself in an American hockey uniform, towering over Carney crumpled on the ice.

The same text, two treatments

The agency sets the image next to something else. Trump’s deference toward Xi.

Less than a year ago, the AP recalls, the two men were locked in a tariff battle that threatened to tip the world economy into recession.

Trump has been deferential toward Xi while fuming at Ottawa, the AP writes. He is announcing 50% tariffs on Canadian imports. He is banning Canadian products, including motorcycles and alcohol, starting Tuesday.

The cartoon dates from September 6. Its reading, from the 25th.

In the middle of a summary on Taiwan, Iran, Ukraine and artificial intelligence, it comes back as a witness. The AP does not make it a headline. It makes it evidence.

Nineteen days. One rereading. Nineteen days were enough for a joke to become an exhibit.

Every image changes meaning with its neighbour on the page.

A B-2 and four F-22s

The South Lawn, September 24

On September 24, the White House receives Xi Jinping on the South Lawn. His last visit dated back more than ten years, the White House noted on September 21.

The first lady’s office gives the account the next day.

There is the Army’s Old Guard, with its fifes and drums. There is the Marine Corps Silent Drill Platoon. There is a B-2 bomber in the sky. There are four F-22 fighters at its side. There is a state dinner in the East Room.

And tea, in the Red Room. Madame Peng visits the National Museum of Asian Art with the first lady. She is shown a jade disc from the Shang dynasty.

Two kinds of courtesy

For Carney, a cartoon on the ice. For Xi, the Washington sky.

Red carpet for Beijing, ice for Ottawa.

I do not fault the protocol. A state visit has its rites. I only look at what the rite says, set next to the cartoon.

This piece argues that the cartoon is not first of all an insult. It is a measurement. It shows who can be hit without consequence.

A rite for one, a caricature for the other.

The two who hit back

One sentence from the AP

The Associated Press writes a sentence I read three times.

Only China and Canada retaliated against Trump’s tariffs last year with tariffs of their own.

Two countries. The same move. The same refusal to bend. Both held. Only one got dinner.

Two answers from Trump

For China, a state dinner. For Canada, a cartoon.

For China, a trade truce extended by two months, to January 10, 2027, according to the AP. For Canada, 50% tariffs and a ban that takes effect Tuesday.

For China, a president who talks about a gentleman. For Canada, a president who talks about a governor.

Same move. Two treatments. One criterion. The treatment does not follow the move. It follows something else.

And yet both did the same thing.

Same retaliation, two menus.

Jeff Moon’s word

Punching down

The AP put the question to Jeff Moon, a former US trade official. His answer is short.

“Trump is a bully who enjoys punching down when he can,” he says. And who stops when he can’t.

Moon recalls that Canada sends about 70% of its exports to the United States.

When he can’t

When Beijing restricted its exports of critical minerals, punching down was no longer possible, Moon says.

Moon is not talking about character. He is talking about the balance of power. Seventy percent is the grip. That is where the blow lands.

That is the mechanism. Not mood. Leverage.

Moon does not name a virtue. He names a limit. And that limit is called Beijing.

Whoever controls a tap gets a dinner. Whoever depends on a customer gets a cartoon.

No one caricatures the one who controls the tap.

The rare earth tap

Seventy, eighty-seven

The tap has numbers. China accounted for more than 70% of global rare earth mining and more than 87% of refining and production in 2024, CNBC notes, citing the US Geological Survey.

Last year, Beijing placed 7 rare earths under export controls. Its global trade surplus hit a record $1.2 trillion in 2025, even as its sales to the United States fell.

Ford halted production of the Explorer in Chicago for a week, for lack of magnets, the network writes. Suddenly the United States knew the vulnerability it had wanted to create in Beijing: depending on what the other side can withhold.

A magnet goes missing. A line stops. The tone changes.

A great gentleman

Trump used to say China threatened the American economy. Now he says of Xi: “He’s a great gentleman; we get along great,” the Associated Press reports.

Michael Kovrig, a former Canadian diplomat detained by China during Trump’s first term, sums up the game. Xi and Trump got into a contest of leverage, he says. Xi won.

Kovrig knows the subject up close. Beijing detained him. He talks about leverage, not personality.

With Trump, respect follows the supply chains.

Taiwan as currency

Fourteen billion on hold

The deference has a price, and it is not Canadian.

A $14 billion arms package for Taiwan has been awaiting Trump’s approval for months, CNBC writes. After meeting Xi in Beijing in May, Trump said it was on hold. A very good bargaining chip, in his view.

What Xi asks

On Iran and Ukraine, no breakthrough, the AP notes.

In Washington, Xi privately pressed Trump to stick to the correct position of opposing Taiwan independence, the AP reports. Taipei denounced a presentation that distorts the facts.

Ottawa has nothing to say about this bargaining. It is not at the table.

There is the week’s bad move. Not the cartoon. The chip.

I stand with Taiwan, and I say so plainly. Arms promised to a democracy are not something you pawn.

A democratic island put on the scales of a bargain. A Canadian ally mocked for its dependence. Both moves serve the same player: Beijing.

Taiwan is not a chip. Canada is not scenery.

What Canada does not have

No tap

The uncomfortable fact has to be said.

Canada has no rare earths to shut off overnight. It has no tap capable of halting an American assembly line within a week. It has a customer that buys 70% of its exports.

It retaliated anyway. Its counter-tariffs targeted nearly $28 billion of American products starting Tuesday, September 8, according to CTV News.

Still, it holds a card the panel does not show. Canada is the largest export market of the United States, the AP recalls.

Retaliation is not enough

No tap. No dinner.

Retaliation did not buy respect. It bought a cartoon.

That is the bitter lesson of these three weeks. Retaliating is not enough. It takes leverage.

And yet dependence is not a fact of geography. It is a sum of choices, made year after year.

Dignity is not proclaimed. It is built by depending less.

Without leverage, retaliation gets drawn as a caricature.

Back to the cartoon

The same panel, reread

Back to the September 6 panel. Not a line of it has changed. Our view of it has.

On the 6th, it looked like schoolyard mockery. On the 25th, after the B-2 and the state dinner, it reads differently.

The one on the ice is the one you can hit at no cost. The one standing is the one who can no longer hit Beijing.

A map of leverage

The cartoon is no longer a joke. It is a map.

It does not show the other players. It does not show the referee. It does not show the crowd.

The ice is dependence. The sweater is the country. The bubble is the old governor line, already served to Justin Trudeau, CTV News recalls.

And the Washington sky does not appear in the panel. It was reserved.

Reread, the caricature becomes a map.

Thirty-five percent

A reliable ally

In 2022, 83% of Canadians saw the United States as a reliable partner. In 2026, the figure is 35%, according to the Pew Research Center, cited by CNBC.

Forty-eight points lost. In four years. Thirty-five. The number speaks for itself.

A cartoon did not do that work alone. There were the tariffs. There was the 51st state. There was the governor.

What we accept

There is also what we accept. Laughing it off through clenched teeth. Sharing the image while calling it grotesque. Moving on by Monday.

I caught myself doing it. I looked at the panel, sighed, closed the screen. That sigh is what worries me.

A country that sighs at its own caricature has already started getting used to it. I do not know how many panels it will take for that sigh to become a habit.

A sigh already lets the panel win.

The opening Beijing is waiting for

A front coming apart

The mockery costs Trump nothing. It costs the West. A cartoon. A narrative. A gift.

Trump has taken a sledgehammer to his alliances, CNBC writes. NATO and its spending. Troops in Europe. Greenland. Canada.

The current American approach consists of attacking all these countries instead of forming a common front, Melanie Hart of the Atlantic Council tells CNBC.

China presents itself to the world as the stable counterweight to an erratic and violent United States, adds Ryan Hass of the Brookings Institution.

What the cartoon gives Beijing

The American defence network scored 81.4 out of 100 in 2025, against 18.9 for China, according to Australia’s Lowy Institute, cited by CNBC. That is the advantage Trump is squandering. He did not build it. He inherited it.

Beijing does not need our allies to switch sides, CNBC explains. It is enough that they hesitate to follow Washington.

Every cartoon of an ally on the ice works for that narrative. For free. Beijing’s narrative needs a West that mocks itself.

The first threat to the West remains Chinese power. A president who wines and dines it while mocking his neighbours gives it two gifts in the same month.

Two gifts to Beijing, in a single month.

Get up, says the bubble

Getting up how

The bubble says: get up. It should be taken at its word. Up, yes. But on our own skates.

Getting up, for Canada, does not mean answering with another cartoon. It does not mean shouting louder.

First, it means refusing the word. Canada has no governor. It has a prime minister.

CNBC mentions it in passing: this month, the European Union invited Canada to become its first associate member.

The missing leverage

Leverage can be built. Customers elsewhere. Minerals refined at home. Allies who refuse to be divided.

This is not revenge. It is hygiene.

And yet none of this gets done in nineteen days.

Getting up takes longer than a cartoon.

The ice and the sky

The panel, today

The September 6 panel is still online. Trump standing. Carney on the ice.

It no longer says only mockery. It says a ranking: those who get seated at the table, those who get drawn on the ice.

The Washington sky, for its part, closed behind the B-2.

There is no need to wait for the next panel to get to work. A panel is not answered. It is outgrown.

What we still have to hold

On Tuesday, the ban takes effect. Xi has gone home with his truce.

In five years, will we finally hold something Washington cannot afford to lose?

The question is not one of pride.

It is one of leverage. An ore refined here. A customer found elsewhere. An ally who refuses to be divided. Each one erases a line from the panel.

The sky for the rival, the ice for the ally.

Sources:

Primary Sources:

• Associated Press — takeaways from the Trump–Xi summit, the deference and the hockey cartoon, September 25, 2026
• White House, Office of the First Lady — arrival ceremony and Xi Jinping’s state visit, September 25, 2026
• CTV News (CP24) — the Get up, governor hockey cartoon posted by Trump, September 6, 2026

Secondary Sources:

• Snopes — the still image Trump posted and the animation that did not come from him, September 9, 2026
• CNBC — Trump and Xi, divided allies, rare earths and Taiwan, September 23, 2026
• PBS NewsHour (Associated Press) — why Trump rolls out the red carpet for Xi, September 21, 2026