Is Canada doing enough to tame Trump?

There’s such a thing as cutting off your nose to spite your face, and the tariff war between Canada and the US is starting to look like a prime example.

On Monday, Ontario Premier Doug Ford announced a 25 percent surcharge on electricity exports to the US, affecting an estimated 1.5 million households and businesses in New York, Michigan, and Minnesota.

Trump responded with all-caps outrage, raising the March 12 tariff on steel and aluminum imports from Canada from 25 to 50 percent — a move that would be devastating for Ontario’s auto sector. How, the President asked, could Canada stoop so low as to use electricity — a resource that impacts the daily lives of innocent people — as a bargaining chip and a threat?

Well, if Ontario’s auto industry collapses, it’ll cost innocent people a lot more than an extra $100 per month on their energy bills. But admittedly, it wasn’t a good look for Ford. A retaliatory policy that directly affects people’s ability to keep the heat and lights on seems ill-advised — just like policies designed to target red states and Trump supporters.

Anyway, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick (whose phone must be ringing off the hook these days) promptly called Ford. Next thing you know, Ford dropped the electricity surcharge, Trump lowered the steel and aluminum tariff back to 25 percent, and Ford was invited to Washington in a few days to discuss renewing the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA).

Wait, what? Why did Canada have to go through all this drama, only to end up where it should have started — sitting down to talk about USMCA?

That’s the puzzling question that has loomed over every step of what the Canadian media insists is a trade war, but which the US government calls a drug war. Diplomacy — negotiation — you know, talking things out, seems to have become an absolute last resort.

Fentanyl and border security were the starting points. The Canadian government has been protesting — perhaps a little too loudly — that they’ve done everything Trump asked to stop the drug from crossing into the US. But they fail to mention what concessions, if any, they secured in return for Canada’s cooperation. The Liberals should have negotiated a stable, even if temporary, position for Canada while the bigger issues were being worked out. Clearly, that didn’t happen.

Instead, we’ve had a rollercoaster of tariffs and retaliatory policies that have harmed the economy on both sides of the border, creating an atmosphere of instability and distrust that will take time to repair once the dust settles. So what exactly is going on?

Two recurring themes in Trump’s complaints against Canada are fentanyl and violations of the USMCA trade agreement. Interestingly, both issues have strong ties to China.

China was originally North America’s chief supplier of fentanyl. However, since around 2020, China has largely shifted to providing the (legal) ingredients to Canadian superlabs run by organized crime groups, including Mexican cartels. Canada is now, unfortunately, one of the world’s leading producers of fentanyl and similar drugs, although most of its fentanyl reportedly goes overseas rather than into the US, where Mexican fentanyl is available at a fraction of the cost.

China is also suspected of using Canada as a backdoor to smuggle undeclared Chinese-made auto parts into the US, exploiting a loophole in USMCA. This may be at the root of Trump’s pressure on Canada’s auto sector and his push for an early renegotiation of USMCA.

Trudeau was always cozy with China, and his administration was plagued by Chinese espionage scandals. At one particularly low point, Canada’s intelligence agency, CSIS, leaked information that the Liberals had been repeatedly warned about Chinese election interference but did nothing. Subsequent inquiries exposed the vast network of influence Beijing had established in Canada.

Trump may have no issue with Canada itself — but he may not be thrilled about its close ties with Beijing. If the Liberals have sacrificed Canada’s relationship with the US to protect Chinese interests, they certainly wouldn’t admit it. Instead, they’d be far more likely to demonize the U.S., suddenly wrap themselves in the Canadian flag, insist that Canadians take Trump’s “51st state” jabs seriously, and generally escalate the crisis as much as possible.

Unfortunately, Mark Carney, Canada’s new prime minister, is unlikely to change course. A longtime Liberal insider, he has likely supported the party’s relationship with China for years.

Whatever the case, there’s at least one foolproof way to improve US-Canada relations: handing Canada’s problematic Liberal government a well-earned pink slip.