Trump’s Runaway Trade War

By Noah Rothman

Wednesday, September 09, 2026

 

The president’s advisers — senior White House officials and even “elected Republicans,” according to Axios, are throwing up their hands in frustration. “They no longer even try to persuade President Trump to do or not do something,” its Wednesday report read. “Why bother?” one asked. “What he wants,” another mused, “he gets.”

 

The deepening U.S. trade war with neighboring Canada is almost certainly one of those harebrained ideas that only makes sense to the president. On Tuesday night, Trump escalated his campaign of economic pressure on Ottawa by issuing a sweeping ban on imports of a variety of Canadian products. Americans will no longer have access to some Canadian dairy products, most alcoholic beverages, and all motorcycles. In addition, the U.S. imposed a 50 percent tariff on a range of other goods, ranging from “mattresses to motorboats.”

 

That’s not all. “Trump also moved to shut Canadian products out of large, long-term U.S. government contracts and directed the U.S. General Services Administration to declare Canadian products ineligible for those contracts until Canada allows “full and fair reciprocity″ for American products,” the Associated Press reported.

 

The Trump administration will contend that Canada started it. Ottawa has a protected market for dairy products and other key imports like soft lumber. The White House only wants an even playing field. Canada will also claim it’s the victim here. For over a decade, Canada’s liberal government has negotiated in good faith with the Trump administration over trade-related issues, but those deals aren’t worth the paper on which they’re printed. Both parties claim the other sabotaged the latest round of negotiations. Who is to say who is right?

 

That may not be a question most voters are interested in answering, given the acute threat to their pocketbooks. It’s true that the trade balance on the goods Trump targeted favors the United States. While the U.S. imports about $360 million in Canadian dairy products and roughly $900 million in alcohol, Canada imports more of both products from America. But the intangibles of statecraft may favor Canada in this conflict.

 

All evidence suggests that the Canadians are incensed by Trump’s trade aggression. They appear to be foursquare behind Carney, who owes his liberal government to Trump’s ham-fisted intervention into Canadian politics. Ottawa shows no signs of backing down, nor are there any indications that the Canadian people want him to sue for peace. The same could not be said for Trump.

 

An Ipsos poll released last week showed that just one-quarter of American adults believe Trump should take a firm hand with the Canadians. Seven in ten respondents, by contrast, want to see Washington compromise in its negotiations with its northern neighbor. Sixty percent oppose imposing new tariffs on Canada, compared with just 20 percent who do. While 12 percent blame Canada for the outbreak of hostilities and 18 percent say both countries are equally at fault, 46 percent say Trump is solely responsible for this unpopular contretemps.

 

That survey comes at a time when the public’s view of Trump’s economic policies is scraping the bottom of the barrel. Over the weekend, a survey sponsored by the Financial Times found that just one-third of registered voters approve of Trump’s economic record — a new low. Voters’ dim view of the president’s approach may be owed to what one CNN poll released in late July discovered. Then, only a meager 27 percent of American adults said Trump had the right priorities, while a “record-high” 73 percent said he had “not paid enough attention to the country’s most important problems.”

 

Sure, some dairy farmers, brewers, distillers, and motorcycle manufacturers will be thrilled with the news. And perhaps they are perfectly distributed constituencies that will, by virtue of their geography, make the difference in November’s vote. But that’s unlikely. More likely, Trump’s initiative pleases a few while angering a much larger host, and all while cementing the impression in the public’s head that he, like Joe Biden before him, neither understands nor cares much about the burdens associated with the rising cost of living in the United States.

 

If the Republican Party could have talked Trump out of it, they would have. The president is a runaway train now. And the GOP is just along for the ride.