Canada has always been an inoffensive country, and how is that working out for it? President Trump has made more threatening sounds about Canada than about Russia. He is wielding a weapon — sweeping 25 percent tariffs — that would almost certainly drive our Friendly Neighbor to the North into a recession, while he is making its leaders and people honestly fearful of the United States.
The madman theory has much to recommend it … when dealing with Hamas or the Houthis. No one heretofore has thought it has similar benefits when handling relations with Ottawa.
It’s important to realize the magnitude of the threat Trump is making. About three-quarters of Canadian exports go to the United States, accounting for 20 percent of Canadian GDP. The Canadian free-market think tank, the Fraser Institute, notes that 25 percent tariffs would subject the Canadian economy to “the biggest external shock in a century (apart from during the initial phases of the COVID pandemic).” This is the kind of thing a much larger country does to a miscreant nation when it is punishing it for pursuing an illicit nuclear weapon, invading a neighbor or engaging in human rights abuses.
Canada’s sin is to be party to a free-trade agreement — the USMCA — that it negotiated in good faith with the same U.S. president now browbeating it.
Defenders of Trump’s approach to trade tend to cite China as an example of how pure free-trade theory doesn’t work in the real world — China is an authoritarian society, engages in massive intellectual theft and other practices, and can’t be trusted not to cut off supply chains on a crisis. None of this applies to Canada, a friendly country that shares our values and fights wars alongside us.
That doesn’t mean there aren’t legitimate complaints about Canada. But the fentanyl trade and illegal border crossings aren’t really among them (Canada is not Mexico). It is true that Canada protects politically sensitive sectors of its economy, most notably dairy and lumber. These matters have long been the subject of U.S.-Canadian negotiations. Whatever else you think of Canada’s dairy policy, it isn’t the emergency that Trump is using as the legal basis for his tariff threats.
Such an emergency would be Canada, say, launching an amphibious invasion of Michigan’s upper peninsula. If nothing else, President Trump is succeeding in deranging Canadian politics. It’s not just the possibility of ruinous tariffs, but the talk of Canada as the 51st state, a somewhat amusing joke that — as Trump keeps talking about it — now has to be considered half-serious. This is disrespectful at best and threatening at worst.
Why should we care? It is a boost to Justin Trudeau’s party in impending elections and a drag on the conservative populist Pierre Poilievre. Trump has suggested that he believes he can use economic coercion to induce Canada to submit to annexation. The opposite is likely true; the more we troll Canada and disrupt its economy, the greater the anti-U.S. reaction.
John F. Kennedy said of Canada: “Geography has made us neighbors. History has made us friends. Economics has made us partners. And necessity has made us allies. Those whom nature hath so joined together, let no man put asunder.” The man in the Oval Office, unfortunately, has a different idea.
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