It\u2019s true that the US announced tariffs against dozens more countries just days later, but there has been something odd about the lopsided attention paid to Canada, which most US presidents tend to politely ignore. Most of the tariffs Trump recently announced<\/a> were in the range of about 10%, but Canada was hit by 50% tariffs (albeit on a narrower range of exports). The president, it seems, wanted to send a message to Canada, but without hurting US consumers too much.<\/p>\n The tariffs also land differently here, given Trump\u2019s stated desire to annex<\/a> Canada as a 51st state. The president has ruled out using military force to accomplish that, saying instead that he would use \u201ceconomic force\u201d<\/a>. Tariffs would meet that definition.<\/p>\n There may have been little sign that the talk of annexation is anything more than typical Trumpian bluster, but even the suggestion, along with the tariffs, has been a shock for a Canadian political class that has long taken a friendly America as a law of nature \u2013 and has let Canada<\/a> grow shockingly dependent on the US for defence and trade. An unfriendly, potentially even hostile US is a staggeringly consequential change. It\u2019s hard to overestimate how huge a shock this has been.<\/p>\n And it\u2019s having a massive effect on our domestic politics, thus far to the benefit of the Liberal party and the prime minister, Mark Carney. The return of Trump to the White House upset an election last year<\/a> that the Liberals had been set to lose decisively. Canada\u2019s Conservatives were cruising to an easy win with a campaign focused on public safety and the cost of living, but once Trump began musing about annexation, the Liberals dumped Justin Trudeau, replaced him with Carney, wrapped themselves in the flag, and won decisively. Carney remains popular, largely because Canadians see him as the right choice to deal with Trump.<\/p>\n US pressure is complicating Canada\u2019s increasingly fraught internal politics in other ways. Canada does not have a true national economy, but a series of regional ones. Ontario and Quebec, the most populous provinces, are heavily dependent on manufacturing. In western Canada, particularly the provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan, the economies depend more on exporting natural resources, including oil. Most of this goes to the US, as Canada lacks the transportation infrastructure to readily export it elsewhere (there\u2019s that dependency).<\/p>\n The response has therefore been more fragmented than unified. Ontario has pursued a strategy of confrontation<\/a>; the western provinces have preferred to appeal<\/a> to shared interests with the US. These are obvious fissures that the US could choose to exploit. It was strange to see, when the most recent round of tariffs was announced, that most of the economic damage landed on Ontario and Quebec and the province of British Columbia \u2013 three jurisdictions that have taken stronger anti-Trump positions. The economies of Alberta and Saskatchewan were relatively spared.<\/p>\n Trump\u2019s administration was probably hoping to mete out some punishment to provincial leaders it finds irritating. But it would have given Canada a much more challenging problem had it targeted instead the western provinces, where scepticism of rule by \u201ceastern elites\u201d and separatist movements are intensely divisive issues (Albertans will vote in a referendum this fall<\/a> on whether to pursue independence). Carney must consider domestic blowback from any possible retaliation, such as an export tax on oil, lest he further inflame existing regional tensions.<\/p>\n Trump\u2019s new tariffs aren\u2019t due to take effect for several weeks, and Canada has not yet given any signal of how it will respond. To date, though, it has generally retaliated against US levies \u2013 Carney, whose political success rests on public belief that he will stand up to Trump, would find it very difficult not to retaliate this time.<\/p>\n skip past newsletter promotion<\/a><\/p>\n Sign up to Matters of Opinion<\/p>\n Guardian columnists and writers on what they\u2019ve been debating, thinking about, reading, and more<\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n This, more than anything else, is what the White House has failed to understand about Canada. The US has some legitimate gripes with us, including trade barriers and Canada\u2019s chronic underinvestment in defence. It\u2019s reasonable to be angry about those things. But the nature of Trump\u2019s actions has made resistance the only plausible Canadian response: caving in to the US president is toxic for Canadian voters. Some provincial resistance is likely due to unpopular regional leaders seeing salvation in battling Trump \u2013 and although Carney has made some concessions since becoming prime minister, including scrapping a planned digital tax<\/a> that angered US tech companies, he dare only go so far.<\/p>\n Trump has often complained that dealing with Canadians is unpleasant and nasty. He should expect us to get nastier still. Whether he knows it or not, he\u2019s left us little choice.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Though many hate to admit it, Canadians have long wished for more attention from the US. Well, we\u2019re…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":791608,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,3,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":["post-791607","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-news","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/791607","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=791607"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/791607\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/791608"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=791607"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=791607"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=791607"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Matters_of_opinion_11.jpg\")
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