From the frozen and sparsely populated northern territories to Toronto’s crowded streets, and from Newfoundland to Vancouver, a storm of fury is building in Canada. It’s not aimed at Americans — our friends and neighbors — but at President Trump and the enablers who are helping facilitate an economic disaster of his making.
His policy of 25 percent tariffs on Canadian exports to the U.S. has sparked a needless trade war with America’s closest friend and ally. Canadians are not going to sip maple syrup and just take it. This is a betrayal, plain and simple. We are done being polite and pretending otherwise.
Let us start with Trump’s absurd claims about the U.S. getting a raw deal from Canada. He negotiated the U.S., Mexico, Canada Trade Agreement, crowed that it was the best trade deal ever, and signed it in 2020. Now, he is torching it with tariffs built on lies and bluster. He gripes about dairy, claiming Canada slaps 390 percent tariffs on U.S. imports. The reality? It’s only 250 percent, and that’s only above a quota negotiated by Trump that the American dairy industry hasn’t even hit since the deal began. So there have been no tariffs triggered yet — none.
Then there is the laughable claim that the U.S. subsidizes Canada. Subsidizes us? American firms own chunks of our economy — our own fault, sure, but it’s the truth. Meanwhile, we have sold you cheap electricity for decades, propping up your electrical grids and your economy. So, who is subsidizing whom? It’s maddening to hear Trump administration officials whine when the U.S. is getting a deal that many Canadian hydro consumers would relish. This is another Trump lie for which Americans and Canadians will pay the price.
The rage of Canadians isn’t targeted at the American people but at your leader, whose irrationality seems to have no limits, and toward the sycophants propping him up. Those who voted for him also own this. You elected him again, and now he’s smashing a bond that’s benefitted both countries for generations. Canada is not mere collateral damage. We’re the target, and we’re not going to take it sitting down.
Canadian steel and aluminum is also a target where tariffs could severely damage the U.S. economy by disrupting integrated North American supply chains that support millions of jobs. Canada is the largest supplier of these materials with exports valued at over $35 billion annually, feeding the automotive, construction and aerospace sectors which rely on these exports for production. Imposing tariffs would feed inflation and trigger retaliatory measures from Canada.
Canada’s retaliation to this trade war has become personal for millions of Canadians. Consumer boycotts of U.S. goods are reshaping store shelves in Canada — not out of spite, but because no one is buying. Canadian retailers are dropping American produce, wines and spirits, and other products and finding alternatives. Lower prices once drove us to your fruits and vegetables, but sourcing elsewhere at a slightly higher price isn’t the hit we feared. Your farmers though, they are going to watch crops rot as markets vanish — just ask Jack Daniel’s what’s happening with their whiskey, which sits on pallets unsold.
Energy is a bigger issue. We supply 60 percent of your crude oil, for which your refineries are specifically built. Swapping out Canadian crude for Saudi or Venezuelan won’t help if we cut off oil exports. And then there are autos. Parts can cross the Detroit-Windsor border as many as eight times before a car is completed. That is a business decision made by Ford, GM, and Stellantis, not Canada. Trump’s tariffs are clogging a system that has powered both our economies for decades to the benefit of both nations. But now his tariffs will kill jobs not save them.
Canadian travel to the U.S. is also plummeting. Canadians are the No. 1 visitors to the U.S. spending over $20 billion annually but Canadians don’t want to spend their dollars in a nation led by a man that is threatening our country with annexation. Canada will never be the 51st state, and Americans need to accept this.
A trillion-dollar trade relationship is coming apart. Although it will sting us, it will cost the U.S. far more. Factories don’t appear overnight, and Trump’s “reciprocal tariff” fallacy won’t balance anything. This slow-motion train wreck is Trump’s doing and Americans will pay a steep price for his economic vandalism.
But the real pain comes from the betrayal. Canada has stood with you through wars and other crises. We’re not just neighbors, we’re family. Yet Trump and his cheerleaders treat us like a punching bag, egged on by MAGA cultists who swallowed his nonsense whole. His enablers in Congress and the media parrot every lie, while his base cheers a policy as stupid as it is mean spirited. This isn’t leadership — it’s sowing pandemonium.
We don’t want this fight. Stop this insanity and our counter-tariffs vanish fast. We’ll apologize for the corner you boxed us into — not from weakness, but because we cherish what we had. We’ll stay your friends if you want but until then our anger will burn bright — not at Americans, but at the madness you’ve unleashed and the system sustaining him. Trump isn’t just bullying Canada, he is attacking sanity, and we’re not backing down as long as he continues.
Fareed Khan is a government relations and public policy professional with over three decades of experience addressing a broad spectrum of domestic and international public policy issues. His op-eds and analyses of public policy have been published in newspapers across Canada.
