To halt the ostensible overflow of deadly fentanyl and illegal aliens into the U.S., President Donald Trump has imposed 25 per cent tariffs on Mexican and Canadian imports, as well as a 10 per cent tariff on Chinese imports. Despite Canada constituting “less than one per cent of the fentanyl and illegal crossings into the U.S.,” Trump has remained adamant in extending tariffs to Canadian goods, with recent orders to hit aluminum and steel with an additional 25 per cent in an attempt to protect and strengthen America’s manufacturing industry.
According to the International Trade Administration, “Canada exported 6.6 million metric tons of steel” in 2023, making it one of the largest suppliers of steel worldwide, whose top market includes the U.S. Canada and the U.S. are each other’s closest trading partners, with “nearly $3.6 billion (2.7 billion USD) worth of goods and services crossing the border each day,” according to a 2023 census by the Government of Canada. The charging of these tariffs, therefore, will not only impact Canadian industries, but raise costs for American manufacturers who are heavily reliant on imports such as steel and aluminium.
In response to Trump’s unjustified and shocking deluge of orders, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced retaliatory measures on behalf of Canada’s own interests — signifying a growing divide between the West’s closest trading allies.
Immediate tariffs will be placed upon $30 billion worth of American goods effective Feb. 4, followed by further tariffs upon $125 billion worth of products effective Feb. 23 — covering American beer, spirits, wine, fruits, fruit juices, vegetables, and consumer products such as perfume, clothing, household appliances, and many more. Trudeau says this $155 billion tariff package, like the American tariffs, is certainly “far-reaching,” but he holds that it is an adequate measure to “stand strong for Canada […] to ensure our countries continue to be the best neighbours in the world.”
Political Economy Professor Gregory Albo says that Trump’s tariffs will impact almost every economic sector, since “more than 70 per cent of Canadian exports go to the U.S., and any cuts there spill over into non-export sectors by increasing unemployment [and] consumer demand.” The most affected, he adds, are “resource sectors such as forestry, oil and gas, specific agriculture exports such as cattle, feed grains, and specific manufacturing exports such as steel, aluminium, processed foods, and so forth.”
The ripple effects of these tariffs are wide-spread, disrupting key resource and manufacturing industries — especially those “that have had a long history of sectoral free trade, coordinated supply chains, and shared final assembly capacity as in autos, aerospace, and other transport and military goods.”
Although large-scale tariffs may seem to benefit the dominant power, Albo claims they will mostly damage U.S. production: “The trade inputs from Canada into U.S. production are often critical and so many sectors share supply chains that U.S. production can be very badly hit.” Due to deeply-integrated Canadian-American supply chains, Trudeau’s counter-tariffs will likewise raise costs and production problems, but “the asymmetric power between the two means Canada will try to be more targeted in their counter-responses rather than the sweeping tariffs being applied by the U.S.”
Trump’s tariffs are arguably a strategic method of undermining the sovereignty of Canada through economic subjugation, clear in his “51st state” rhetoric. Trump has referred to the Prime Minister as “Governor Trudeau” multiple times, asserting that Canada has “a lot of problems” which can only be rectified through statehood. In the same breath, he has made claims that Canadian industries are being “subsidized” through billions of American dollars, allegedly causing deficits within the American economy.
Albo perceives this rhetoric, coupled with the tariffs, as bullying threats to exert “more border controls in line with U.S. goals, more military spending, [and] more intervention in Canadian policies with respect to health and environmental policies.” Should Trump persist in leveraging trade and spewing imperialist rhetoric to gain national dominance and risk the stability of countless industries, Canada may soon find itself as a dependent subject rather than a friendly neighbour.
