Key Takeaways
- The Canada-United States relationship has experienced significant trade tensions and bilateral blow-ups over the past 12 months.
- US President Donald Trump’s "America First" trade policy and tariff threats have rattled Canadian politics and led to a freeze in the relationship between the two countries.
- The tariffs imposed by Trump have hit Canada hard, with a 35% tariff rate applied to certain goods, and have led to a swift domestic political upheaval in Canada.
- The relationship between Canada and the US has been impacted by Trump’s administration, with many Canadians feeling that their country’s sovereignty and stability are under threat.
- The US has seen a significant shift in its perception of Canada, with the game having changed and Canada needing to accept this new reality.
Introduction to the Canada-US Trade Tensions
The people anxiously sipping hot chocolate in the Canadian Embassy in Washington on a cold night in January almost a year ago couldn’t have predicted the roller-coaster of trade provocations and bilateral blow-ups the next 12 months would bring. In hindsight, that unusually chilly Washington evening foreshadowed how the Canada-United States relationship would soon freeze over. US President Donald Trump’s tariff threats and his talk of annexing Canada had already rattled Canadian politics over the preceding weeks. A rushed trip to Mar-a-Lago in early November 2024 failed to mend former prime minister Justin Trudeau’s already rocky relationship with the incoming US president.
The Impact of Trump’s Trade Policy
On January 20, the day of his second inauguration, Trump returned to the Oval Office to announce his “America First” trade policy. Just weeks later, he announced sweeping tariffs on Canadian imports. By early February, it was obvious to everyone that the relationship Canadians thought they had with their closest neighbour was over. Former foreign affairs minister Mélanie Joly called on “every single political leader across the board, across the country, to stand united because, now more than ever, we need to make sure that we put country first.” The tariffs imposed by Trump have hit Canada hard, with a 35% tariff rate applied to certain goods, and have led to a swift domestic political upheaval in Canada.
The Canadian Political Upheaval
The domestic political upheaval in Canada saw Trudeau, weakened by poor polling and internal Liberal party dissent, announce on January 6 that he would resign as prime minister as soon as a new Liberal leader was chosen. Mark Carney became party leader in March and almost immediately launched an election, forming a minority government following a campaign that centred on Trump. The speed and scale of Trump’s trade war with the world caught everyone off guard, said Fen Osler Hampson, a professor of international affairs at Carleton University in Ottawa and co-chair of the Expert Group on Canada-US Relations. While the president toned down his annexation talk after Carney’s election, every deadline for a trade deal since then has come and gone, with no clear progress.
The Stalled Trade Talks
Talks between Canada and the US remain stalled, with Trump shutting down trade talks in October after being offended by an Ontario-sponsored TV ad quoting former US president Ronald Reagan criticizing tariffs. Canada and the US have had disagreements throughout their shared history, Hampson said, but in the decades after the introduction of the North American Free Trade Agreement, most observers expected the continent to grow more integrated. “That’s no longer true,” he said. “We increasingly look like three countries going our own separate ways.” For many Canadians, the past year has felt like an existential crisis — an extended, numbing assault on this country’s sovereignty and stability.
The US Perspective
In the US, the shattered relationship with Canada has had less of an impact. Americans who support the Trump administration see it doing what they voted for — even if it means Canada getting caught up as collateral damage. For Trump’s opponents, the president’s actions have driven a wave of alarming change they struggle to keep up with — and Canadian concerns aren’t necessarily their priority. Matthew Lebo, a political-science professor at Western University in London, Ont., said the Trump administration has crossed any number of red lines. “Democratic decline in many, many directions, the ignoring of constitutional limits on presidential power, the ignoring of Congress’ role in setting policy, especially about tariffs,” he said.
The Broader Implications
The year has also seen a massive deportation campaign, the deployment of National Guard troops to Washington and other Democratic strongholds, and the targeting of law firms and universities to bring them in line with Trump’s agenda. The US Agency for International Development has been dismantled, and the Department of Education is next on the list. Thousands of US government employees have been laid off, and Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has pursued a radical policy on vaccines that has alarmed doctors and researchers. US foreign policy — on everything from Russia’s war in Ukraine to missile strikes targeting alleged drug boats near Venezuela — seems to change on almost a weekly basis. The year has also seen the longest government shutdown in US history.
The Future of Canada-US Relations
Alasdair Roberts, a professor of public policy at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, described the past year as a “partial revolution.” “It’s an attempt to change the regime, but it’s limited by the fact that the courts may still check what (Trump’s) doing,” Roberts said. “And he hasn’t got the legislative changes necessary … to kind of entrench the new way of working.” Despite the rapid collapse of norms in Washington, Roberts said he does not believe American democracy is in crisis. There is dysfunction in the nation’s capital, he said, but that does not mean the entire system is malfunctioning. The state of US federal politics has forced Canada to accept an uncomfortable truth: the way the US perceives its neighbour to the north has shifted fundamentally. “This is the moment that Canada realized that the game has changed,” he said. “The game has been changing for a few years, but this is the year that the shoe dropped.”
