People protest outside of the U.S embassy in Vancouver, British Columbia, on March 4, 2025.
Canadians, best known for their niceness rather than fierce nationalism, have been stirred and galvanized by Donald Trump’s childish insults and belligerent actions toward their country. In the process, our usually laid-back neighbors to the north have revived their country’s Liberal Party while striking deep fear in the heart of red America.
It wasn’t long ago that Canada’s Conservative Party was headed for an electoral landslide, with Liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s popularity hitting rock bottom. Just like every other governing party in the industrialized world, the country’s Liberal Party was the target of voter fury due to high inflation, leading Trudeau to announce in January that he would resign as party leader and prime minister.
But between threatening and then enacting and then backing down on tariffs, mockingly referring to Trudeau as “governor,” and demeaning Canada as “the 51st state” while threatening to annex the sovereign nation, Trump has single-handedly revived Canadian Liberals, who are now running just slightly behind the Tories this election year. Canadians are set to head to the polls on Oct. 20.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau holds a news conference on imposed U.S. tariffs as Foreign Affairs Minister Melanie Joly, Finance Minister Dominic LeBlanc, and Public Safety Minister David McGuinty look on in Ottawa on March 4, 2025.
It is an act of breathtaking idiocy for Trump to turn our closest ally into a firebreathing foe that’s foaming at the mouth to take us on. But he’s certainly being cheered on by his minions in online forums, where the conventional wisdom is “Canada is small so they have no chance, they are too dependent on America!”
Weirdly, few are trying to justify a trade war with no rationale behind it. Trump’s claim that fentanyl is coming into the U.S. from Canada is not only wildly overblown, but an excuse and a legal necessity to give Trump the power to enact tariffs without congressional approval. But that hasn’t stopped his cult members from cheering on the world’s dumbest trade war.
You know who isn’t cheering him on?
The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board.
“We’ve courted Mr. Trump’s ire by calling the Mexico and Canada levies the ‘dumbest’ in history, and we may have understated the point,” they wrote. “His taxes will hit every cross-border transaction, and the North American vehicle market is so interconnected that some cars cross a border as many as eight times as they’re assembled.”
This is the same editorial board that said a vote for Kamala Harris was an endorsement for “the bloody-mindedness of the modern left, with its regulatory coercion, cultural imperialism, economic statism, and desire to strip judicial independence.” Meanwhile, the editorial board argued, Trump “would stop the crush of new regulation, restore a freer market for health insurance, unleash U.S. energy production, and reform the tax code. His default priority would be growth, which the U.S. desperately needs after a decade of progressive focus on income redistribution and the worst economic recovery in 70 years.”
You know who wouldn’t have enacted “the dumbest” tariffs in history? Kamala Harris, that’s who.
You know who else isn’t cheering Trump’s tariffs? Rural Americans.
“Get ready to start making a lot of agricultural product to be sold INSIDE of the United States,” Trump wrote in a social media post. “Tariffs will go on external product on April 2nd. Have fun!”
The reality for those farmers?
The Des Moines Register reported the following, while noting that (red-voting) Iowa “leads the nation in corn, pork, egg and ethanol production, ranks second in growing soybeans and 10th in raising beef: “Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Ottawa would respond with immediate 25% tariffs on $20.7 billion worth of U.S. imports and on another $86.2 billion if Trump's tariffs were still in place in 21 days. China's commerce ministry on Tuesday said its new levies, which take effect March 10, will include a 15% markup on chicken, wheat, corn and cotton and 10% on soybeans, pork, beef, fruits and dairy. Mexico did not immediately announce its response.”
But are farmers having fun, as Trump said they would?
“Lower prices aren’t fun for farmers,” the president of the Iowa Farmers Union board told The Des Moines Register. “Losing reliable trade markets is not fun for farmers. It’s unrealistic to expect that domestic demand is going to magically take up the slack.”
In deep-Red Kansas, the president of the Kansas Farm Bureau said, “We truly believe that tariffs are going to hurt us in the short term, but we certainly hope that it brings a better deal in the long term.” Part of their problem isn’t just that the American market is smaller than the global one (it’s simple math that escapes Trump), but American farmers get 80% of their fertilizer from Canada—and it’s suddenly 25% more expensive.
The American Farm Bureau is doing math: “Mexico's $30 billion a year in our ag exports. Canada's $29 (billion). China's been about $24 (billion). Add them up. Those three countries are half of all U.S. agricultural exports.”
Yeah, Kansans aren’t having fun either.
During Tuesday’s speech in front of a joint session of Congress, Trump asked farmers to “bear with me again” as he once again destroys their foreign markets. Last time he did this in 2018, he bailed out farmers to the tune of at least $23 billion in response to another one of his trade wars. (The Topeka Capital-Journal, deep in farm country, says the number was $28 billion.)
This time around, Trump is too busy hollowing out federal agencies (including the Department of Agriculture) while his billionaire co-president Elon Musk and his cost-cutting bros at the so-called Department of Government Efficiency cancel out every bit of aid they can get their hands on. And why would Democrats in Congress go along with a bailout this time? This is exactly what rural America voted for, and there are few farm-state Democrats left to carry their water.
Funny enough, one prominent messenger for the “elections have consequences” platform is none other than Republican Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley.
While the consequences from tariffs aren’t “very good news for farmers,” he said, "[Trump is] doing what the voters voted him to do. Elections are supposed to have consequences.”
As for those consequences?
“We’re just going to have to see how it works out. If he's doing it for negotiating purposes, to get people to the table, to get tariffs down [and] we have lower tariffs around the world, then I'll have to say he's been successful. And I would say amen to his work,” Grassley said. “And if he fails to do that, and it's catastrophic for Iowa and the nation's economy, then I'd have to say, 'I told you so.’”
Given the fallout from Trump’s first trade war and the tens of billions that were needed to bail out farmers then, there is nothing to suggest that this round won’t be even more catastrophic for the so-called heartland of America.
And with Musk and his billionaire buddies feeding at the government trough, there won’t be any money left to bail anyone out this time.
Anyone who still thinks Canada is powerless isn’t paying attention—and Trump’s most recent retreat indicates that even he gets it. Actually enacting tariffs would extend the pain far beyond farm country to home builders (as if the price of housing isn’t already high enough), the spirits industry in red Kentucky, the auto industry (its carve-out is only for one month), and more.
All of that would lead to higher prices for Americans, breaking Trump’s campaign-winning promise to tame inflation on “day one.” And for what?
Canada is certainly not powerless in this trade war and Trump’s bullying has only rallied our northern neighbors the way Russian aggression rallied Ukraine. In a battle of wills, I’m betting on Canada to better withstand any coming economic pain.
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