February 2, 2025 - 7:00pm

In the end, Donald Trump’s tariffs on Canada, long threatened before being announced this weekend, were just about as bad as they could have been. At 25% on all goods except energy — that’s been hit with 10% instead — the tariffs will be catastrophic for Canada’s economy, which since the advent of continental free trade in the Eighties has been intertwined with America’s.

There has been a united front in Canada as politicians of all parties — including those who have spent much of their careers denigrating their own country — rallied around the flag. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s press conference, in which he recalled the blood shed on battlefields by Canadians alongside Americans, even suggested that he rather liked Canada — which might have been helpful had it come a decade earlier. In Ottawa, the American national anthem was booed in public; several provincial governments have taken American alcohol off the shelves.

It is less clear where Canada goes from here in the short to medium term. Trudeau announced retaliatory tariffs, despite Trump’s threats to double his own levies if Canada responded in kind, proving the adage that Americans simply don’t believe anyone else has patriotism or national interests. These were necessary, if only because Canada would no longer be a serious country if it allowed itself to be crushed without a murmur by its erstwhile ally.

But everyone is aware that although trade wars are mutually self-destructive, America has a lot more of an economy to destroy than Canada. Tit-for-tat is not a game which benefits America; but neither is it a game Canada can win, if only by the inexorable laws of arithmetic. It may be satisfying to slap a tariff on Florida orange juice, but it will hardly make Americans quiver in fear. Cutting off Canadian electricity and oil, which would make the US pay attention, are so far considered too drastic as retributive measures.

Nor is it clear whether Washington has an exit plan. The stated rationales for the tariffs — cross-border fentanyl trade and illegal immigration — are widely understood as a polite fiction. The quantity of fentanyl which comes from Canada is relatively small compared to what enters from Mexico. Meanwhile, more than 100,000 asylum seekers came from the United States to Canada at one border crossing alone during the Biden administration, so Trudeau’s country arguably has far more of a grievance on that front.

Trump’s public remarks, insofar as one is able to draw anything from them, suggest that what he really wants is to roll back continental free trade by forcing manufacturing to return to America. This means that the tariffs — which are in violation of the 2020 trade deal signed by, among others, a certain Donald Trump — may be here to stay.

It would be helpful if there were something other than a lame-duck government in Ottawa, too. Trudeau may still be Prime Minister eo nomine, but he lacks the legitimacy to deliver the necessary political and economic response. Meanwhile, the ubiquitous Mark Carney, who in theory is nothing but a private citizen, has been jetting around and acting as if he were already running the country. Parliament continues to stand prorogued, to the intense frustration of the Conservatives who will almost certainly win the next federal elections — when they are finally called, that is.

Last year, Canada mourned the death of Brian Mulroney, who as prime minister undid centuries of resistance and ushered in free trade with the United States, which many had always opposed as the first step to annexation by America. Now, the continental trade debate, which most had taken to be settled, has been reopened in the most dramatic manner possible. Even if Trump backs down, which looks increasingly unlikely, Canadians will never assume again that the republic down south is a benign hegemon.


Yuan Yi Zhu is an academic and writer.

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