Well folks, the day has come, and the guillotine has dropped on us. Donald Trump did exactly what he was threatening to do for months and made it clear that this was inevitable. Last night, he told an assembled gaggle of White House journalists that was the case exactly that, that there was nothing we could do to avoid this. For all the whinging and attempts to “secure the border” (which is far more secure than the Americans southern one) and “stopping fentanyl” (which Canada officially makes 0.01% of all fentanyl entering the US, according to the Americans themselves), it turns out those “reasons” were nothing more the weakest of fig leaves.
Trump was going to do this, he was hellbent on doing it and he really doesn’t care about the diplomacy niceties or heck, even that legality of it. Fuck it all, Trump wants to Trump. And if you’ve been watching and trying to keep up with the flood of legally dubious and illegal crap he has been doing over these two weeks, this shouldn’t be a shock. He’s purging the FBI and just yesterday his right-hand dude Elon Musk (someone who is not elected or even a government employee of any sort) just took control of the US Treasury’s payment system against all the norms and maybe the laws. Trump and his team have started this term pushing people around and daring the courts and the law to stop them. And if it ever gets to the Supreme Court, he will likely dare them to try to enforce whatever rulings they may make against him (if they aren’t totally onside yet).
All of those are things that he promised to do and was included within Project 2025, that document he assured us all he “had nothing to do with” and “was not his plan”. So, when you’re dealing with someone who has no respect for law when it doesn’t suit his needs, and is acting like an early-stage autocrat, why exactly should we be surprised that he wouldn’t show us anymore respect than he’s showing his own fellow citizens?
Over the past year, I get why some people didn’t want to take Trump and his frequent “vowel movements” (credit to Mark Towhey for that one) too seriously. It was so insane, so out there and so nutty, how could we ever think that our biggest ally, our strongest trading partner, and our southern neighbour would ever accept their leader turning on us like that? While I have long argued that it was naïve to think that way, I couldn’t get upset at people for thinking that way. We’ve been blessed in Canada for decades to not have to face true peril and danger like this to our economy or sovereignty, so I get it that people wouldn’t jump to that conclusion so naturally.
But folks, that is where we are. We need to be clear eyed and brave in this moment because this is something that none of us asked for. And we need to think about how bad this could get and not allow our imaginations to limit how bad it could be. Because if anything is clear here, while we are being thrown into a trade war, there is more at play here than a trade war.
This isn’t about drugs or border security. If it were truly about those things, the American President wouldn’t set out to shove us into a recession, while driving up inflation in his own country after he was elected because of his pledges to deal with “the high price of eggs.” If this were truly about those issues, he would have set out an actual attainable target to hit to lift these crippling tariffs, instead of saying “zero deaths from drugs ever.” And if this were truly about those issues, he wouldn’t have spent the last month increasingly talking about “expansion,” “manifest destiny” and making Canada the “51st state”.
Instead, he’s spent the last two months berating our leaders, degrading our country, and talking about annexing us. He’s bellyached about us supposedly being “so bad” to the US, while ignoring all the bad influences that state of the American border is having on our country, like the flooding of illegal hand guns to gangs here or the actually larger number of illegal migrants coming North towards Canada over our border than actual go South. He hasn’t tried to work with anyone and hasn’t shown any interest in making this work better for both sides.
As Canadians, we are generally an easier going nation and we used to rolling with some gentle ribbing from our neighbours to the South. But the amazing level of disrespect coming from the American leader, his administration, and his party (which he has mostly taken over) has been too much to bear. It takes a lot to get us to feel this way so viscerally and quickly, but it shouldn’t be surprising that declaring economic war on you and threatening to take over your country can bring that out of us. Trump himself said he wanted to “economic force” to absorb us, so it’s comforting to see my fellow citizens take this so seriously.
The fact remains that we didn’t ask for any of this at all. We have been good neighbours (not perfect, but good) and we’ve held up our end of the bargain. We’ve been faithful to all the agreements we’ve entered into with Canada, even when the US hasn’t. We’ve been good trading partners, helped grow both economies and have been an ally against malign economic actors like China. That’s why all of this is so economically damaging and deeply insulting to Canadians.
He’s treating their adversary China with relative kid gloves compared to the shiving he’s trying to give us. He’s attacking our country, which has stood and fought beside the US in their time of need, through two World Wars, Korean, the Cold War, 9/11 and Afghanistan. Canadians have died in service of that commitment and did so in good faith. It’s not lost on me that less than 24 hours after Canadian fighter jets scrambled in the Arctic to join American jets to ward off Russian military aircraft, Donald Trump does this to his own ally. And while doing so, Trump dares us to do nothing about it or he’ll sucker punch us again.
And that’s why, even though we didn’t ask for this fight or start it, we cannot back down from it. We must retaliate and do so significantly. Half-measures won’t do because we must show that we’re going to fight back to protect our economy, our nation, and our sovereignty. I heard a commenter on CBC earlier today call a tariff war “a circular firing squad,” and he’s not wrong about that. But the alternative here is not any better, because (extending that metaphor) you can’t allow yourself to be shot and not push back just because you’re afraid you might get shot again.
We couldn’t avoid a situation where this was going to happen, because Donald Trump was determined that it would. We need to accept that, internalize it, and realize what it means for us. Donald Trump didn’t do this because he wanted to find a solution that made both of our countries stronger and better off. As much as we’d like to assume that he doesn’t have any greater designs to take us over, I believer today’s actions makes it clear that we simply cannot take the risk of that assumption.
Today is a dark day for us on so many levels and should be for many other nations around the World. Today appears to mark the potential end of the era of free trade that while it has not been perfect, has served both the United States and Canada relatively well over time. If Donald Trump has his way, that will likely spill over into any trade with them. If he will so brazenly violate and disregard an agreement like that with us, he clearly won’t hesitate to do the same with others.
Today also appears to mark a potential end to a strong relationship and alliance with our neighbour. Our relationship has been a strong building block for the strongest military alliance on Earth in NATO, and institutions like NORAD which have made North America into one of the most stable and peaceful places on the planet. Donald Trump is making it clear he doesn’t give a tinkers cuss about that, and he’s made it clear that “America First” is really all about “America Alone.”
And today appears to be a clear moment for reflection and re-evaluation of so many assumptions about our relationships that have been true for nearly a century. Next to none of us alive today have lived in a Canada where those assumptions were ever in question, and those assumptions allowed us to build the way that we have. After today, we clearly cannot take those for granted anymore and cannot assume that our American neighbours are our friends and allies. We need to re-evaluate who our friends truly are, and who we can work and trade with to move further away from our formerly steady neighbour. To borrow the sentiment of journalist Steve Chase from the Globe and Mail:
This is not a trade dispute. It's a declaration of war on Canada with the weapon being 25% tariffs that will devastate our economy and standard of living. This is not the behaviour of a friend, a partner or ally.
We have to be clear eyed about what we’re seeing and act accordingly. We’re dealing with the political equivalent of a mobster, talking about what a nice restaurant you’ve got over there before lamenting the shame it would be if it suddenly burned to the ground. And if this is what Donald Trump will do to his closest democratic friends, what will he do to you Europe, Japan, South Korea, and others? We have to stand up to this now, whatever risks that may come from this. Like dealing with any common, insecure bully, if you don’t fight back, they will keep coming back to push you around and it will never get better. We didn’t choose this hill to fight on, but if this is the one where we must fight, we will. The only way that we can assure that we’ll remain the True North Strong and Free is to stand up for it and fight back. Because if we don’t, we’ll lose for sure and be far worse off for it.