Canada’s EU Romance Is a Mistake

By John Gustavsson

Wednesday, September 23, 2026

 

Last week, the European Commission’s president, Ursula von der Leyen, surprised the world by announcing an offer to make Canada the first “associate member” of the European Union. What makes an “associate member” is not legally defined in any of the EU’s treaties, but there is no doubt that Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney appears determined to embrace the EU as he seeks to reduce his country’s dependence on the North American market. After Donald Trump’s threats to turn Canada into the 51st state, Carney’s approach may seem reasonable — and, judging from the PM’s approval ratings, Canadians are, so far, on board.

 

Yet running to Brussels would be as big a mistake for Canada as it was for Britain.

 

Whatever Canada’s new relationship with the EU ends up looking like, it will be a much cozier relationship than before. Whereas Carney’s predecessor, Justin Trudeau, never missed an opportunity to emphasize Canada as an indigenous land and apologize for the sins of the settlers, Carney seems to have rediscovered his country’s European heritage, going as far as to label it “the most European of non-European countries.”

 

On Canada Day, CBC/Radio-Canada announced that the country would compete in the 2027 Eurovision Song Contest, by far the biggest music competition in the world, with around 160 million viewers. Joining the ESC is not cheap; indeed, several countries decline to participate every year citing the cost. Fortunately, Carney had increased the public broadcaster’s budget for this very purpose.

 

In May, Carney became the first non-European leader ever to attend the semiannual European Political Community summit, an intergovernmental summit attended by leaders of 48 European countries. Last year, he signed a Strategic Partnership of the Future with the EU, covering areas including trade and climate transition, as well as a security and defense partnership. An “associate membership” in the EU — whatever that term ends up meaning — could be seen as a logical next step, fitting with Carney’s ambition to double Canada’s non-U.S. exports over the next ten years.

 

Carney increasingly looks like an insecure high schooler trying to hang with the cool kids. But, much like in high school, the cool kids are not really all that cool.

 

First, Europe struggles with economic growth. Since the global financial crisis, the wealth gap between America and the EU — and especially the western EU — has widened, as Europe has struggled with weak and inconsistent growth. Economic shocks like those brought on by the war in Ukraine and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz have contributed, but taxation, an ill-conceived common currency, and regulatory policy in areas such as energy, climate, and tech, bear the brunt of the blame. It would make more sense for Canada to diversify by adding more members and deepening ties with the faster-growing Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), a trade pact that has nearly eliminated tariffs among signatory countries following the United States’ withdrawal from the preceding Trans-Pacific Partnership in 2017.

 

Supporters of Carney’s European adventures may counter that there is no need to choose — that Canada can diversify elsewhere while still deepening ties with Europe. But it is not that simple. Brussels rarely gives deep market access without pulling partners toward its rule book. If “associate membership” turns into dynamic alignment, Canada, while still formally able to sign other foreign trade agreements, would find those deals harder to use: Goods and data would still have to clear European process rules, including rules written after the ink is dry.

 

Nowhere is this more dangerous than on climate policy. Whereas Carney has begun the process of rolling back his predecessor’s unrealistic goals, the EU is still charging full steam ahead, even implementing climate tariffs (the “carbon-border adjustment mechanism”) on its trade partners. That the EU climate regime is not exactly suitable for an oil-, gas-, and minerals-producing country should go without saying.

 

It may seem counterintuitive that Europe would ever try to force its environmentalism on Canada, seeing as how Canada’s minerals and natural gas — two sectors that EU rules could devastate, if applied to Canada — are part of what makes the country attractive to the EU. But in Brussels, the link between overregulation and underinvestment is not properly understood. Sure, policymakers want rare earths and natural gas — but since that’s never stopped them from overregulating those industries almost to extinction in Europe, Canada should not assume it will get a free pass. The mere threat of future regulatory alignment with the EU could deter investment into Canada’s extractive industries.

 

For Canada’s tech sector, the EU poses an even bigger threat. The EU prides itself on a “regulate first, ask questions later” approach that has strangled innovation in the union. If Canada is pushed to adapt EU tech regulations, the effect would be even worse than in Europe, since geographical proximity means Canada’s tech sector competes with the U.S. and Silicon Valley more directly than Europe’s does.

 

The same is true for the auto and chemicals industries as well as many other sectors, and geographical proximity makes it easier not just for businesses but also for skilled Canadians in affected sectors to move to the United States, something more and more of them are already doing.

 

Carney may feel emboldened by polls showing that large majorities of Canadians favor closer ties with the EU, with one poll even showing 57 percent would support full membership. But the idea of greater integration with the EU and the reality of such a path are starkly different. Brits once overwhelmingly voted in favor of EU membership, but decades of clashes between Britain’s Anglo-Saxon worldview and Brussels’s continental ways eventually led to a bitter divorce. And more than a European nation, Canada — with apologies to Quebec — is first and foremost a British nation, and that is something Carney ought to consider before he traps his country in a union that neither he nor his voters fully understand.

 

Of course, Trump was wrong to ever suggest that Canada should become America’s 51st state. It would be nothing short of tragic if Canada, in its rush to safeguard its sovereignty, merely ended up giving it away to another foreign bidder.

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.

Trump’s Trade War With Canada Is Not About Canada

By Kevin D. Williamson

Wednesday, August 26, 2026

 

The leaders in Iran will agree to nothing. The leaders in Canada could agree to anything—and it would not be enough. What should be understood is that the latter is, to some considerable degree, a consequence of the former.

 

Poor Canada has been geopolitically upgraded from afterthought to distraction—our polite friends to the north were better off when we U.S.A.-type Americans had forgotten they were there.

 

In trade as in most things, the Canadians have been nothing if not agreeable: They agreed to NAFTA, they agreed to NAFTA’s reworking as the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, just as they had agreed to the Reciprocity Treaty of 1854 and the Canada-U.S. Reciprocal Trade Agreements of 1935 and 1938, and the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement of 1989.

 

That’s a lot of agreement. The Canadians probably would agree to a good deal more if Donald Trump and his clown car of an administration were to put a serious deal on the table in front of them, but there is no such proposal. Prime Minister Mark Carney was right to walk away from “negotiations” with the United States because there were no genuine negotiations under way: Canada is simply a punching bag for the Trump administration, a prop used to gin up a couple of days’ worth of headlines when a distraction—from Iran—is desired by the retired game-show host and quondam pornographer who has been, incredibly enough, twice elected president of these United States.

 

The notion that the United States is being victimized by trade with Canada is so insipid and so imbecilic that one almost feels degraded by explaining it, if only because such an explanation implicitly takes seriously the premise that Trump et al. take the premise seriously.

 

But here goes:

 

The United States does have a substantial trade deficit with Canada, for which the United States ought to be grateful, inasmuch as that deficit is mainly driven by Canada’s export of discounted crude oil to U.S. refineries, without which the price of gasoline and diesel—and everything that is moved, processed, or stored with the use of petroleum products—would be even higher than it is right now. (Diesel is damned near $6 a gallon at my local.) Canadian producers sell their oil at a discount to U.S. buyers for a couple of reasons: 1) Canadian pipelines mostly run north-south rather than east-west, and the only potential buyer north of Canada is Santa Claus; 2) Canadian oil is sulfurous, sludgy stuff, and there are not many refineries outside of the United States set up to efficiently handle that kind of crude.

 

It takes a special kind of stupid to believe that Canada is victimizing Americans by selling us oil at below-market rates. The case is closer to the opposite: Americans buy Canadian oil on sale because Canadian producers would have a hard time getting market rates for their oil from buyers in Europe or Asia. Crude oil is not an entirely undifferentiated commodity, and transporting the stuff is a major factor in the market. Canada desperately needs investment in its energy-export infrastructure but, alas, it is as difficult to build a pipeline there as it is in the United States, and so Canadian producers remain largely captive to the U.S. market—however fickle and abusive a trade partner the United States may prove to be.

 

The more meaningful points of trade friction between Canada and the United States are relatively minor and mostly parochial: Canadian and U.S. timber producers work under different pricing structures because most Canadian production happens on public land while most U.S. production happens on private land, and U.S. producers complain that the Canadian government should make it more expensive for Canadian producers to operate, because Americans who want to buy wood-framed houses simply must be protected from lower prices. Canada does maintain a very stupid regime of dairy protectionism that should be reformed—as, indeed, does the United States, which keeps milk prices artificially high in the U.S. market through the usual methods of government controls and trade restrictions.

 

I do not enjoy writing this, but: None of the preceding 384 words really matters. The current U.S.-Canada trade drama is not about U.S.-Canada trade: It is about the Trump administration’s amazing feat of compressing about 80 percent of the political experience of the Vietnam War into a few months, packing in all of the defeat and humiliation but sparing Americans—for now, at least—the draft and the body bags.

 

The world is laughing at Scott Bessent, and only in part for his greatest personal faux pas, i.e., being Scott Bessent. The proximate cause of today’s laughter is that, having announced an “economic D-Day” targeting Iran, the Trump administration has announced a program amounting to—as predicted in this space—approximately squat. Tehran’s economic lifeline is held by Xi Jinping, with China consuming about 80 percent of Iranian petroleum exports. A regime of “secondary sanctions”—meaning applying economic sanctions to those countries whose governments decline to enforce American sanctions on Washington’s behalf—would mean a direct and ugly economic confrontation with Beijing. It is worth remembering that China ran circles around the Trump administration the last time the incompetents and amateurs in the dopey red caps tried that, with Beijing using the threat of withholding rare-earth minerals to force Trump to cry whatever is Mandarin for “Uncle!” in about two minutes.

 

Trump does not have a free hand to beat on Iran because he does not have a free hand to beat on China. But beating on Canada is a low-risk proposition.

 

The Canadians might, someday, wish to do something about that.

Luxury Nationalism

By Nick Catoggio

Monday, August 24, 2026

 

Today is D-Day for Iran—economically, that is.

 

An actual D-Day involving U.S. troops landing on the Iranian coast to liberate the Strait of Hormuz would be a disaster for the president, deepening the human cost of a war most Americans have never supported. So instead the White House intends to squeeze Iran into relinquishing the strait by choking its economy, promising sweeping sanctions on any nation that continues to do business with it.

 

Which presumably includes one very important nation with which the United States famously does a lot of business.

 

I’m skeptical that Donald Trump will follow through by leaving sanctions on China, and not just because doing so would make Xi Jinping’s visit to Washington next month more comically awkward than it’s already destined to be. The president learned a hard lesson last year when the Chinese responded to new U.S. tariffs by temporarily cutting off the supply of rare earth minerals and magnets on which American industry depends, forcing him to retreat. Now, less than three months before a midterm election Trump is desperate to win, we’re supposed to believe he’s going to start an economic war with Beijing to isolate Iran?

 

Unlikely. Trump doesn’t start fights unless he expects to win them easily.

 

To see how “D-Day” is likely to go, recall that Trump accused China on primetime television just last month of having hatched a scheme before the 2020 presidential election to potentially meddle with that election’s results. It was a sensational charge that logically required sensational consequences. “Diplomatic penalties, sanctions, maybe even war: Everything’s on the table when you meddle with the American people’s sovereignty,” I wrote at the time.

 

Trump did nothing. Days after his speech, he was asked how he planned to punish Beijing for its alleged election scheme. We might talk to them about it, he said, before noting that “it took place a long time ago. I think China is maybe a little bit different today than it was then.” (For an election that happened a “long time ago,” he sure does dwell on it a lot.) As it happened, Secretary of State Marco Rubio was set to discuss various matters with China’s foreign minister at around the same time. Did he seize the opportunity to raise the issue of the 2020 election during their conversation, at least?

 

He did not, it turns out. It wasn’t a priority.

 

There are two ways to understand the administration’s inaction in that episode (and they’re not mutually exclusive). One is that Trump deliberately overhyped the risk of election interference by China to plant a seed of doubt in Americans’ minds about the legitimacy of a Democratic victory this fall. He didn’t punish Beijing for its 2020 “meddling” because that meddling was little more than boob bait he manufactured for domestic consumption, to give right-wing “rigged election” rubes a way to rationalize defeat at the polls in November.

 

The other possibility is that Trump wanted to punish China and would have happily done so, whether or not it was actually guilty of anything, if it were a lesser power with weaker economic leverage over the United States. But it isn’t, so he didn’t. He couldn’t confront Beijing without triggering some sort of economically painful reprisal, so he TACO’d out. Once again, for emphasis: The president doesn’t start fights unless he expects to win them easily.

 

But nationalism isn’t supposed to be easy. Just ask America’s newest enemy: Canada.

 

Nationalism without sacrifice.

 

All strains of nationalism promise a return to national greatness. What they ask for in return is sacrifice. Individually and collectively, the people are encouraged to bear unusual burdens to restore the nation to glory. Suffering is the supreme proof of patriotism, especially the suffering of military-aged men cursed to live under nationalist regimes whose fantasies about greatness eventually metastasize into expansionist designs on their neighbors.

 

You don’t need to look back at the 1930s for examples. Gaze across the ocean at Ukraine, where Vladimir Putin’s hope of a three-day conquest long ago devolved into a yearslong romantic nationalist replay of World War II. The Russian state has mobilized to repel the “Nazi” threat in Kyiv; its leader will bear any burden to prove himself worthy of the Soviet legacy of indomitability 80 years ago. There’s seemingly no limit to the sacrifices Putin will ask Russians to make toward that end.

 

Nationalism isn’t supposed to be easy.

 

Trumpism is an unusual form of nationalism in that it promises the usual dreck—a return to “greatness,” domination of weaker rivals, expulsion of undesirables—but doesn’t ask for sacrifice. On the contrary. It pledges to make nationalism easy, replete with miracle cures.

 

Yes, sure, occasionally reality muscles in and forces the president to nod at traditional ideas about sacrifice. After his “Liberation Day” tariffs began driving up prices, he told Americans that their daughters might need to make do with owning two dolls instead of 30. Earlier this month he framed $4-per-gallon gas as a small price to pay for ensuring that Iran won’t have a nuclear weapon. (How the current war has ensured that is unclear.)

 

But those are exceptions to the rule. The rule was stated by the man himself in a famous tweet from 2018. “When a country (USA) is losing many billions of dollars on trade with virtually every country it does business with, trade wars are good, and easy to win,” he wrote. “Example, when we are down $100 billion with a certain country and they get cute, don’t trade anymore—we win big. It’s easy!”

 

It’s easy. Trumpism is what we might call “luxury nationalism”: It supposes that the United States is so immensely powerful, economically and militarily, that whether it prevails in any conflict is purely a matter of will. To return to national greatness, all we had to do was elect a leader with the will to use national power to compel lesser rivals to serve our interests. No sacrifice required.

 

Luxury nationalism was destined to be alluring to a people as comfortable, decadent, and civically insensate as Americans. But it’s no match for authentic nationalism.

 

Trump was reminded of that on Friday when his nemesis, Canadian leader Mark Carney, pulled out of trade talks with the United States. Details of what caused the rupture remain hazy, but the prime minister’s rhetoric afterward was austere. “You’re at war when you’re attacked, and we got attacked,” he told reporters. Part of the problem allegedly involved American negotiators being at odds with each other, with Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and White House trade adviser Peter Navarro demanding higher tariffs on Canadian aluminum than other U.S. envoys preferred.

 

If that’s true, it wouldn’t be the first time in this presidency that too many diplomatic cooks had spoiled the broth.

 

But the graver affront had to do with Canadian sovereignty, a sore subject up north after 18 months of half-jokes about “the 51^st state.” Carney claimed that the White House wanted to restrict his government’s ability to sign trade deals with other nations, “an attempted psychological annexation that could have turned Canada into an American client state, a sort of North American Belarus,” as the Toronto Star put it. One former European diplomat described the demand as “terms you ask for from an enemy after defeating them in a world war.”

 

So Carney walked away. He’s now committed to a trade conflict with a vastly bigger economy, knowing that the steep U.S. tariffs that have taken effect will do immense damage to his country. (“A full 40 percent of small Canadian exporters will be directly hit by these tariffs and nearly one-third expect their revenues will drop by 50 percent or more as a result,” one Canadian industry expert told the Financial Times.) Yet he expects to win.

 

And I’m confident that he will win, if we define a “win” as the White House blinking first.

 

Nationalism without luxury.

 

Carney has an advantage over Trump, and he knows it: Canadians are united by authentic nationalism in this matter, whereas the president has only luxury nationalism to offer his own constituents. “The decisions coming out of Washington, for most Canadians, feel deeply threatening,” one pollster told Politico. “The threat of Trump and the emotional reaction that people feel is far greater than the fear they have of the economic implications.”

 

Or, in the more piquant words of Canadian writer Stephen Marche, “For Canada, the choice [in trade talks] came down to either severe but temporary economic instability or binding itself to a pseudo-democratic fiscal basket case of a nation, whose only apparent foreign policy objective has become domination for the gratification of its president’s slapdash vanity.”

 

Repeated wounds to their sovereignty have left Canadians more willing to sacrifice economically to defend the honor of their nation than Americans who reelected Trump in the belief that his agenda wouldn’t ask them to sacrifice at all (and who don’t share his weird trade preferences or imperialist grievances). “Wars are not decided only by the question Who can inflict more pain? Wars are also decided by the question Who can endure more pain?” David Frum observed of Carney’s advantage.

 

I suspect Trump launched his trade “attack” on Canada expecting it to be the economic equivalent of his Venezuela operation, a shock-and-awe assault that would produce a quick capitulation and de facto pledge of fealty. Instead, Carney is set to deliver something that looks more like the Iran war (a comparison Frum also drew), a protracted test of wills to see which government can “endure more pain.”

 

But under luxury nationalism, Americans aren’t supposed to be enduring pain. Government by Trump is supposed to be easy.

 

The president is losing the test of wills in Iran because he’s pitted against a regime of fanatics that neither cares about the suffering of its people nor will answer to them for it. He’s going to lose that test with Canada for essentially the opposite reason, because he’s pitted against a democratic government whose constituents are solidly behind it, far more so than Americans are behind him. That government came to power last year with a mandate to stand up to Donald Trump’s bullying, you may recall; Trump’s own mandate when he was reelected the year before was to reduce the price of goods.

 

Which leader is fulfilling his respective mandate by engaging in this trade war?

 

As with Tehran, so too with Ottawa: The president started a fight because he expected to win it easily. He miscalculated, somehow failing to realize that threatening an adversary’s sovereignty will generate a surprising amount of nationalist resolve to resist. He’s now at grave risk of a backlash from an American electorate that’s facing more unexpected economic hardship in lieu of the easy wins it was promised.

 

Beware the voter who chose luxury nationalism and didn’t get much luxury in return.

 

Fear of visiting further hardship upon those disappointed voters explains the administration’s current behavior in ways both large and small. For instance, it certainly explains why Trump hasn’t followed through on his many threats to bomb Iran’s infrastructure en masse if it doesn’t reopen the Strait of Hormuz.

 

"American actions have made plain that Washington fears escalation more than Iran does—not just for now, but for the future,” Robert Kagan noted today at The Atlantic, arguing that Iran has become the dominant power in the Middle East. “The Iranians have struck at several UAE ships this month and even fired ballistic missiles at the country, but the United States has not responded since July—a fact undoubtedly noted by the UAE and Iran’s other neighbors." Escalation by the U.S. at this point would invite an Iranian attack on Gulf states’ oil facilities, destabilizing energy markets shortly before the midterms.

 

And $6-a-gallon gas is emphatically not what luxury nationalism promised.

 

Neither is hardship for the military, which is why Pete Hegseth’s Defense Department chose last week to purge the editor and publisher of its newspaper for service members, Stars and Stripes. For decades that paper was allowed to exercise independent editorial judgment, but earlier this year the Pentagon rescinded a regulation that protected its ability to do sor. In April, its ombudsman was dismissed for objecting to the Pentagon’s attempts to meddle in its coverage. Now its leadership is out. There’s nothing surprising about any of that: Fascists will always steer information outlets under their control toward propaganda.

 

But it’s notable that the purge was carried out so soon after Stars and Stripes exposed the poor conditions on the USS Abraham Lincoln and the ordeal faced by Navy families who were hurriedly forced to evacuate Bahrain. (The reporter who wrote the latter story was also fired.) That coverage revealed the Pentagon’s shocking failure to protect America’s naval hub in Bahrain, a key resupply point for the Lincoln, from Iranian attack.

 

The world’s greatest military having its bases blown up and being chased out of the Middle East by a middling power is also very much not what luxury nationalism promised. Dominating rivals was supposed to be effortless now that we had a “strong” leader with a supposedly iron will in charge. When it turned out not to be, Trumpists had no way to explain it. So instead they’re making clear to all personnel that there will be severe consequences for anyone who calls public attention to unexpected hardship on the president’s watch.

 

Lame-duck nationalism.

 

What does luxury nationalism look like once the man in charge of it has shed his last bit of accountability to public opinion?

 

America will get the answer to that question in two and a half months. After the midterm elections, Trump will no longer have any reason apart from his “legacy” to worry about voters suffering under his policies. If he wants to dispense with the “luxury” part and give the country a hard dose of old-fashioned “bear any burden” sacrificial nationalism, congressional Republicans will see to it that no one restrains him.

 

That’s what Stephen Marche meant by his dig at “pseudo-democratic” America, I assume. Ironically, at a moment when Canadians are uniting around their shared commitment to sovereignty, Americans functionally have no way to work their own will on a president whose job approval is flirting with 37 percent.

 

If Trump decides he wants to have certain fights, like invading Greenland, he’ll no longer need to worry about how easy those fights are on his constituents. And if it’s true, as some have theorized, that he gets more aggressive with people he can bully as he grows frustrated with those whom he can’t, he might prove more callous than expected about imposing new sacrifices on Americans during his final two years in office. He can bully us without consequence—and if we elect a bunch of Democrats this fall, why, it’ll serve us right.

 

Future historians will argue over whether America’s experiment with luxury nationalism was an earnest if stupid attempt to address national decline or a descent into outright denial about it. On the one hand, electing a guy who ran on rebuilding the industrial base via tariffs, “ending endless wars” by pulling back abroad, and easing downward pressure on wages by deporting every illegal immigrant in sight sounds like a semiserious program to retrench—to put America first, to borrow a phrase.

 

On the other hand, the idea that any of that might be done without serious pain—higher prices, Chinese aggression, labor shortfalls, and slower growth—is so idiotic that it feels more like delusion than stupidity, particularly when it came packaged in the persona of an oafish con artist like Trump. Maybe Americans grasped on some level that our era of greatness had passed (polls suggest as much) and coped with it by resorting to a grotesquely childish fantasy sold by a buffoon. We’re a country that’s $40 trillion in debt and counting; dealing soberly with long-term threats isn’t really our thing.

 

There’s no such thing as luxury nationalism, but the idea may have been inevitable in a population that imagines inexhaustible wealth and power as its birthright. And given Donald Trump’s upbringing and approach to the world, that he’d end up as the face of it may have been inevitable too.

The Pointless Trade War with Canada

National Review Online

Tuesday, August 25, 2026

 

Handling China, Russia, or the EU will always be tricky. Mistakes and missteps on our part are, of course, undesirable, but given the complex issues involved, probably unavoidable. However, for the U.S. to be in the middle of a poisonous brawl with Canada (Canada!) takes a degree of foolhardiness that would once have been inconceivable.

 

President Trump’s tariff plans were always going to anger Canada, but persisting with “jokes” about the “51st state” made things worse. They helped insert a turbocharged Canadian nationalism into tariff negotiations and ensured the election of Mark Carney, a Davos-Canadian with an agenda all his own as Canada’s prime minister.

 

NAFTA was a good deal for the U.S. Its successor, USMCA, wisely kept most of it intact while adding some needed updates and unneeded protectionism. Trump described it at the time as the “largest, most significant, modern, and balanced trade agreement in history.” Once reelected, Trump wanted more, but, from his opening salvos onward, he has made reworking our trading relationship with Canada much more difficult than it needed to be.

 

The latest tariff standoff with Ottawa was triggered by the administration retaliating against Canadian retaliation (trade fights are like that) at federal and provincial levels, for earlier U.S. tariffs and the insults that preceded them. The White House claimed the power to do so under Section 338 of the 1930 Tariff Act, an act, as we have observed before, better known as Smoot–Hawley, a familiar name to students of the Great Depression. Section 338, which allows the president to impose tariffs up to 50 percent under certain conditions, had lain dormant for the better part of a century. Its survival is, to repeat ourselves again, a reminder of the value of sunset clauses.

 

Trump had given Ottawa a deadline to come to a deal covering various disputed areas in order to avoid tariffs on $20 billion of goods. Despite the two sides reportedly coming close to an agreement, the deadline was missed (each side is blaming the other). The new tariffs have come into force. Canada’s Carney has said that Canada will retaliate dollar-for-dollar starting September 8, with tariffs affecting a wide range of goods from dairy products to electronics. Trump has now announced on Truth Social (why bother with Congress?) that from January 1, yet more tariffs will be imposed: “Tariffs on all Cars, Trucks, both large and small, Automotive Parts, and Steel, will be increased to 50%.”

 

Using wording clearly intended to refresh memories of earlier insults, Trump added that “Canada will be treated like a State no longer!” He also referred to Canada’s trade surplus of $60 billion with the U.S., a surplus more than accounted for by U.S. imports of $90 billion worth of crude oil. As was noted by the editors of the Wall Street Journal, Canadian heavy crude is particularly well-suited to U.S. refineries. Exclude it, and “U.S. refineries would also operate at lower capacity.” Is that in our interest?

 

As is so often the case, tariffs will inflict economic damage on both sides of the border. U.S. manufacturers will take a hit, not least because anticipated cuts to tariffs on steel and aluminum will not now take place. Trump’s new tariff hikes will also have a direct impact on the prices of a range of consumer goods, unwelcome news for those who have to pay them and for the Republican candidates who will be asking for their votes in a few weeks.

 

The geopolitical consequences may also be serious. In an age of anxiety over supply chains, creating a cohesive North American bloc makes sense. As Carney remarked recently, Canada supplies 99 percent of all U.S. natural gas imports, 85 percent of its electricity imports, and 60 percent of its crude oil imports. But the U.S. is constantly moving in the opposite direction. It recently exercised its right to reject automatic renewal of the USMCA, setting the stage for an annual battle over its terms with our northern and southern neighbors. Meanwhile, Canada is looking to become less dependent on the U.S., with measures that may include the construction of an oil pipeline that would make it easier to supply Asian buyers.

 

The way that the administration is behaving toward Canada, an old friend, cannot fail to alarm other American allies. Referring to Canada’s trading agreements with the U.S., Carney commented that sometimes the Americans’ “signature was written in pencil,” a remark that will inevitably raise questions about the reliability of the U.S. in other policy areas too, not least defense.

 

Clearly, the U.S. and Canada need to resolve this crisis as soon as possible, a task that will be made more difficult by the likelihood of public anger in Canada over any significant concessions. But even when this has been accomplished, the damage done to one of this country’s greatest assets, its close friendship with its resource-rich and strategically located northern neighbor, is going to take a long time to repair.

 

And for what?

Trump Launches Another (Trade) War

By Jeffrey Blehar

Tuesday, August 25, 2026

 

I think my friend Erick Erickson summed it up best: As you read this, there are 69 days remaining until the November midterms. The economy and all that pertains to it — the rapidly increasing cost of living, tariff-based inflation, and Trump’s seeming indifference to all of this — is the No. 1 focus among voters. As a secondary matter, voters are concerned about the Iran war — but again, mostly because of its visible effects on the price at the pump.

 

And Donald Trump has decided to go back to banging the drum about a trade war with Canada, again. According to the New York Times:

 

President Trump threatened on Monday to increase tariffs on all cars, trucks, car parts and steel from Canada to 50 percent, starting Jan. 1, as the relationship with America’s closest traditional ally morphs into a full-blown trade war.

 

Writing on Truth Social, the president said that Canada was “among the worst Nations in the World to deal with” and that it “will be treated like a State no longer.”

 

“They feel entitled, and yet, WE DON’T NEED CANADA, THEY NEED US!” he wrote.

 

Ho-hum, another threatened trade war. “Canada wants the benefits of being a State, without being one!!!” Trump added later, just to make sure nobody had forgotten about his threat back in 2025 to annex the entire country. This all arises from the breakdown of trade talks between the United States and its neighbor to the north; Canada is not feeling particularly responsive toward Trump’s demands that it do things like eliminate French-language labeling requirements or sacrifice national sovereignty to Trump’s whims after being hit with 25 percent tariffs on most of their industrial products (steel, aluminum, lumber, etc.) back in 2025.

 

Of course, Trump’s theory of “national sovereignty” needs little elaboration at this point: In his opinion, it is something that belongs solely to the United States, particularly when Trump is running it. Hence his otherwise mystifying fixation on Canada’s status as a nation-state — he dismisses it as puny in order to inflate his own ego. Meanwhile, prices will go up as precious time is wasted in the remaining months before the election. (If it’s any consolation, it’s probably already too late.)

 

Really, I just think Trump needs, on some fundamental psychological level, to “master and dominate” situations and people — look at the man’s hiring principles for confirmation of this theory — and Canada offers him an alternate outlet to Iran for these impulses on the international stage, at least a more satisfyingly responsive one. (It remains to be seen whether they are equally intractable.)

 

America’s Ranchers Are Now Beefing with Trump

 

A brief note on futility. As the price of nearly everything continues to rise during Trump’s second term, one item he has kept a particular eye on is the price of beef. And for once this one is not really Trump’s fault. The rising price of beef is due not to tariffs or trade wars, but to the rules of supply and demand. Where’s the beef, you ask? Turns out we just don’t have enough of it.

 

Prolonged drought conditions in America’s stock-breeding states (e.g., the Great Plains and Texas) over the last several years have quietly shrunk our nation’s cattle herds. Restoring them to a healthier size will inevitably bring down the price of your hamburger — but not for a couple of years, when those new steers have finally grown old enough to bring to market.

 

In the meantime, Trump is willing to try anything in order to lower the price before the election. And he has hit upon the idea of using the only tool he knows how to wield — tariffs — in reverse: by temporarily offering relief from preexisting tariffs to foreign beef producers, an anticipated 300,000 metric tons of it.

 

Naturally, America’s farmers and ranchers are howling about this. They can stick a sock in it as far as I’m concerned, because Trump’s suspending foreign beef tariffs is like his extending the waiver of the Jones Act: a nice start, but let’s abolish the whole thing entirely. Of course, Trump would never get rid of something as beautiful as a tariff permanently — you might as well ask a jeweler to flush his diamonds down the toilet.

 

Not that it will do any good in lowering prices. For all his bravado and bluster, Trump sometimes reminds me of an incompetent version of the little Dutch boy from the old Hans Brinker story — desperately seeking to plug leaking holes in the economy with his stubby fingers, facing increasing pressure from behind, and running out of hands.

 

Harry and Meghan Are Finally Run Out of America on a Rail

 

Finally (and because the Carnival of Fools has taken such a dour turn as of late), I wanted to end on some redemptive, uplifting news: England’s useless residual royal Prince Harry has officially decided to decamp from America’s shores along with his socially climbing bride Meghan Markle, to return in shame to Great Britain. It would be nice to tell you that Trump and ICE were behind it — now that would have positively affected the November midterms — but the simple truth is that they deported themselves, because nobody wanted them around.

 

Harry and Meghan, who flamboyantly broke with the royal family in a whiny public feud six years ago and moved to Santa Barbara, had high hopes of leveraging America’s fascination with the British royals into an easy jet-set lifestyle as West Coast celebrities. What they hadn’t counted on was the unavoidable reality that (1) he’s a whimpering simpleton without a single interesting quality, and (2) she has the charisma and personal warmth of a dull but demanding pit viper. Together they made a great team. (Markle’s podcasting career has, curiously, failed to take flight. Apparently, people just aren’t that interested in listening to the co-star of Suits talk to various cosmetics CEOs about their lives.)

 

It’s helpful to remember exactly why Harry and Meghan left England in the first place: Harry claimed that the media coverage of his marriage was intolerable and that his family had acted like racist bullies toward his beloved bride. (Markle, at the time: “I just didn’t want to be alive anymore.”) It looks like they have suddenly found the will to live! Alas, a shame it had to come just at the moment England has been relegated to the minor leagues as a global power.

How to Lose a Trade War

By David Frum

Saturday, August 22, 2026

 

U.S.-Canada trade talks collapsed last night. Punitive Trump tariffs will now go into effect. Canada will reciprocate with retaliatory tariffs of its own.

 

The story may not be over. Donald Trump is notorious for issuing threats, then reversing them. Wars are on, off, on again, off again, then on a third time—but only as a “little detour.” This is not an administration that thinks even one move ahead. But without a supersized Trump TACO, the U.S.-Canada impasse likely won’t resolve soon.

 

The Trump administration has one big idea about Canada: The U.S. is larger, stronger, and richer than Canada, so Canada must sooner or later surrender to Trump’s demands. That one big idea is wrong.

 

Yes, Trump can hurt Canada more than Canada can hurt Trump. That part of Trump’s thinking is true. But wars are not decided only by the question Who can inflict more pain? Wars are also decided by the question Who can endure more pain? Trump’s failure to accept this truth is why he lost the Iran war—and why he is losing his trade wars.

 

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney has much more political permission to accept pain from a U.S.-Canadian trade war than Trump does.

 

To read current Canadian polling is to see a country united under its political leadership—and energized by its dislike and distrust of Trump’s United States. A majority of Canadians view Trump’s America as a more immediate threat to their security than Russia or China. Two-thirds favor the government taking a hard line in trade talks; fewer than one-quarter regard the United States as trustworthy. Meanwhile, Carney is backed by the Canadian public, polling at about 60 percent approval, a remarkable figure in a multiparty political system.

 

The Canadian economy has definitely suffered because of Trump’s hostility. Exports were down last year, and growth slowed. But this year, Canada got an unexpected bailout: Trump’s Iran war and inflation have boosted prices for Canadian oil, gas, minerals, and food products. Canadian incomes are rising again. Meanwhile, Canada’s low levels of public debt have kept inflation low. Whereas the U.S. government must pay 5.3 percent to borrow money for 30 years, Canada pays 4.2 percent.

 

By contrast, Trump is facing an omnishamble. “Trump’s Economic Challenge: $40tn Debt, 6.7% Mortgages and $5 Diesel.” That’s a headline in today’s Financial Times. The paper could have added one more: 33 percent job approval, and falling fast.

 

Trump’s tariffs are costing the typical American household $1,100 a year in both direct collections and indirectly in higher prices, according to the Yale Budget Lab. Although teasing out Canada-specific costs is tricky, one indicator is the price of aluminum. In 2024, about one-fourth of the aluminum consumed by Americans came from Canada, the U.S.’s single largest source of imported aluminum. Result: Whereas European and Japanese consumers now pay about $3,000 a ton for aluminum, Americans pay almost $5,000, driving up the cost of everything from a can of beer to the construction of a new hospital.

 

Although Canada’s economy is much smaller than the U.S.’s, Canada’s government has a more rational and intelligent leadership—and can therefore target its retaliation in ways that better serve national ends. U.S. alcohol exports to Canada have collapsed by 80 percent as Canadian provincial liquor stores ban U.S. wine and spirits. Canada’s booze boycott hurts more than one might expect given the comparatively small size of the Canadian market. Alcohol exporters to Canada prepare special labels for their products to meet Canadian legal requirements. More than 1 million bottles of wine intended for Canadian markets now slumber in U.S. warehouses, unsellable anywhere else without costly repackaging.

 

More than 30 percent of Ohio’s exports go to Canada, and almost 40 percent of Michigan’s. Both states will this year elect a U.S. senator and fill open governor’s seats. Not only is Trump putting at risk his party’s position in purple Michigan, but suddenly the races in beet-red Ohio look in jeopardy too. These states may turn control of the Senate—and Trump’s chances of facing meaningful accountability next year for his law-breaking and corruption.

 

Trump’s theory of his trade war, like his theory of his Iran war, is that the bigger bully always wins. Size counts for a lot, but not for everything.

 

As Trump has declared over and over again, his ultimate goal in this trade war is to add Canada as a 51st state. Why? To make the United States look bigger on the map. For that goal, which excites ultra-MAGA crackpots, Trump is hazarding not only America’s most important trading relationships but very possibly every other political equity he holds, including avoiding investigations and accountability by a Democratic House and Senate after January 2027.

 

Against Canada, Trump is fighting a trade war that very few Americans support, under leadership that most Americans reject, to achieve results that virtually all Americans would dismiss as pointless if not crazy.

 

Against Trump, Canadians are fighting a trade war that the great majority support, under leadership that commands broad assent, to defend their independence and self-respect. That’s a war that even the weaker side can win, especially if it needs to hold on only a few months longer to survive.

Trump’s Canadian Tariffs Make No Sense

National Review Online

Wednesday, July 22, 2026

 

Donald Trump is compiling the most anti-Canadian record of any president since James Madison, who launched multiple invasions.

 

The White House has announced new 50 percent tariffs on a wide range of Canadian imports, “covering products ranging from wine to hockey sticks to cement,” a blow for American affordability as well as Canadian exporters. The new tariffs are set to take effect in 30 days.

 

The administration is claiming the authority to impose these latest tariffs under Section 338 of the Tariff Act of 1930, an act better known as Smoot–Hawley, a familiar name to students of the Great Depression. Section 338 itself had lain dormant for the better part of a century. It was considered on a few occasions in the 1930s and, again, in 1949 as something to be used against newly communist China. No tariffs were imposed in any of these cases. Regarded as an irrelevance in the age of postwar trade multilateralism, it was never repealed. The election of a “tariff man” in 2016 revived interest in this long-dormant section, which has now finally been reawakened. We are reminded once again, if only by default, of the value of sunset clauses.

 

Under Section 338, the president is authorized to impose tariffs of up to 50 percent on goods from a country on one of two conditions. The first is that that country has imposed “an unreasonable charge, exaction, regulation, or limitation” on any U.S. products without subjecting similar products from other countries to the same treatment. The second is when there is de facto discrimination in that country that “disadvantages” U.S. commerce as compared with that of any other foreign nation. As an example of the latter, the White House cites the way that, “beginning in March 2025, all Canadian provinces and territories halted the purchase, distribution, or retailing of U.S. alcoholic beverages.” Leaving aside the question whether the White House’s actions are in compliance with WTO rules or the provisions of NAFTA’s successor, the USMCA (questions that would take a long time to resolve), it seems to us that, on the facts, the president is within his legal rights to take the actions he has under Section 338 under domestic law, even if doing so is a mistake.

 

When it comes to negotiations, especially with historically friendly nations, adopting a tough stance is one thing; taking a belligerent one quite another. Suddenly announcing a 50 percent tariff hike on a wide range of items shortly after beginning the formal process that would terminate the USMCA in its current form in 2036 can be reasonably described as aggressive. The same can be said of the introduction of earlier tariffs on our northern neighbor, tariffs made no easier for Canadians to stomach by unnecessary, counterproductive, and insulting talk of their country as the “51st state.” Indeed, they triggered the Canadian retaliation against which the U.S. is now retaliating. That’s how escalation works.

 

We would add that in an era of rising geopolitical tensions, concern about supply lines, and worries about the Arctic, alienating Ottawa makes little sense. Mark Carney’s unwise diplomatic pivot toward Europe and China was something that he was probably always inclined to do, but the administration has now made it easier for him take this course.

 

So, what to do now? The logic behind NAFTA and the USMCA (the latter, it should be remembered, a treaty agreed during the president’s first term) was three-fold: economic efficiency (and thus greater prosperity), a reduction of the degree to which trade could act as an irritant between the U.S., Canada, and Mexico, and closer ties among North America’s three largest powers.

 

All those arguments still make sense to us, if not to the Trump administration. We hope, however, that the White House can see that trying to bludgeon its way to what it sees as a fairer trade relationship with Canada is hurting more than it helps. It should throw a few olive branches on the table as trade talks between the two sides continue.

 

More broadly, this episode only reinforces our conviction that, despite the best efforts of the Supreme Court, the current state of the law still gives the president too much latitude to turn tariffs into his playthings. That has to stop. A tariff is a tax. Taxation is, under the Constitution, a matter for Congress. When it comes to tariffs, Congress must do its constitutional duty, reverse the excessive delegation of its powers to the executive, and take back control.

MAID Gone Mad in Canada

National Review Online

Thursday, May 28, 2026

 

Encouraging doctors to get involved in people killing themselves in a society with socialized medicine and declining religiosity has ghastly consequences. Who knew? Canadians can’t say that nobody warned them.

 

Social conservatives are often accused of being overwrought in predicting a parade of horribles from each step down the proverbial slippery slope of social “progress.” By the time those horribles materialize — and in most cases, sooner or later, they do — we are on to the next cause, or we’re told that people are just accustomed to this now.

 

After all, who wants to settle for slow progress when one can enjoy the swift forward momentum of jumping out the window?

 

The antiseptic acronym MAID, for Medical Aid in Dying, is almost too perfect in how it evokes the modern nanny state: a nice lady who just tidies things up for you. It was sold, as it has been sold in nations such as Britain and American states such as Oregon and New York, as compassion for those suffering terribly at the very end from incurable ailments that robbed them of their minds, their movements, and their dignity.

 

That was the teaser rate. Now, the real bill is due. As has happened in other jurisdictions, Canada started with strict criteria in 2016 and then loosened them in 2021 to apply to anyone considered to be suffering gravely, whether or not they were close to the grave. On a per capita basis, Canadians today are more likely to die of MAID than Americans are to die of gun violence.

 

Now, MAID in Canada has its own poster boy: Dr. James MacLean. If MacLean’s case is not as sensationally grisly as, say, that of Kermit Gosnell’s abortion clinic or as flamboyant as the euthanasia crusading of Jack Kevorkian, it nonetheless underlines the banality of evil at work in Canada.

 

As reported this week by the Toronto Globe and Mail and the National Post, two of MacLean’s MAID cases in 2024 have come under scrutiny following public complaints. In one, MacLean signed off on the death of a 45-year-old man with Crohn’s disease. Crohn’s, which involves inflammation of the bowels, is chronic and frequently painful, entails expensive medical care, and can lead to an early death, especially if not properly treated. But it is a far cry from the kinds of immediate end-of-life situations MAID was billed to address; many people live with it for years and years.

 

As the Cleveland Clinic observes, “Crohn’s disease isn’t usually life-threatening. Life expectancy is generally normal. But ongoing inflammation can increase your risk of colon cancer and cause other complications. . . . Treatment can help manage irritation and reduce symptoms. Most people with Crohn’s disease can live full, active lives.” At least in America, that is.

 

The National Post tells us the basis upon which Dr. MacLean thought it appropriate for the man to be put down: “because of his illness, didn’t have an active social network, had difficulty maintaining a job, found personal relationships difficult and was dependent on family for housing and financial support. He had a history of mental illness, previous bouts of suicidal thinking and on-going alcohol and opioid misuse that cost him his driver’s licence.” His family told the Globe and Mail that “he was still able to pursue hobbies such as skydiving and maintain friendships. They said the isolation of the COVID-19 pandemic and loss of work as a timber framer sent him into depression and alcohol abuse.” Think how many lives this describes, and what sort of mentality deems them worth ending at 45, with no hope of a redeeming second act.

 

In a cavalier twist that seems almost parodically Canadian, MacLean performed his entire assessment of the man outside of a Tim Hortons coffee shop. Six months later, meeting again outside of the coffee shop after communicating with the patient by text, MacLean drove the man to the “industrial-like facility” for MAID after the man refused to ride there with his sister. His family objected to the death and was not consulted in the assessment. As MacLean texted the man, “Do they think it is going to negatively impact them? It is not about them.”

 

In the second case, MacLean tried and failed to kill a 67-year-old cancer patient who had previously consented to MAID; MacLean was called in when the man lost consciousness. When the doctor wasn’t able to obtain a fresh kit from the pharmacy — pause here for a second to think of a pharmacy playing executioner’s handmaid — he simply grabbed one off the shelf that turned out to be missing the drug that was supposed to paralyze the man’s muscles to stop his breathing. MacLean gave him a powerful sedative and pronounced him dead anyway when his heart stopped, then left before his breathing resumed.

 

The doctor’s excuse was that “he believes the stress of the situation, including the last-minute and urgent request for his attendance and the substantial number of people present with significant tension amongst them, contributed to initial failed provision of MAID.” Doctors endure stress and time pressures routinely, but this sounds like the small voice of conscience, not quite stilled, in the “significant tension” over using medicine to kill rather than heal.

 

Just imagine how the botched execution of a mass murderer caused by the failure to administer the correct sequence of drugs would be received: as a moral stain on the entire “cruel and unusual” enterprise and grounds to force the pharmaceutical companies to discontinue the toxic drugs. But when the state approves this sort of thing for people who committed no crime besides illness and despair, we get what happened here: a “caution” for Dr. MacLean and an order that his practice be better supervised for six months. He can’t be taken off his rounds, after all, because those Canadians just won’t kill themselves.

Canada’s Anti-American Defense Industrial Strategy

By Jamie Tronnes & Daniel Dorman

Thursday, April 16, 2026

 

There is something unprincipled and backward about Canada’s new Defense Industrial Strategy (DIS). Namely, its protectionism and not-so-subtle anti-Americanism.

 

As highlighted in Prime Minister Mark Carney’s press release, a core tenet of the strategy is to “raise the share of defense acquisitions awarded to Canadian firms to 70%” or, as Carney said elsewhere, to significantly reduce “dependency” on the U.S.

 

This buy-Canadian defense industrial strategy fails in two distinct ways. First, it takes advantage of the U.S. at a time of already strained relations and a forthcoming review of the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement. And second, as our colleague at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute Richard Shimooka explains, it is backward. Instead of starting by defining Canada’s defense needs (the actual requirements of Canada’s military and the capabilities needed to support our allies) and then building an industrial strategy to meet those needs, Canada started with an industrial strategy apparently designed to extract economic benefit from defense investment and which largely fails to consider the actual military needs of the Canadian Armed Forces.

 

In fairness, the DIS states, “Canada has a long history of working closely with the United States and looks forward to a continued strong Canada-U.S. defence relationship” but this strikes us as lip service — a half-hearted reassurance for American readers — against the broader messaging of “reducing reliance” on the U.S. that Carney highlighted as the strategy was released, and against the actual substance of the policy that Canada “will focus first on building in Canada.”

 

Citizens on both sides of the Canada-U.S. border may be surprised to learn that when the American Department of Defense (DOD) “buys American,” Canadian companies are allowed to compete on equal footing with American firms. The Canada-U.S. Defense Production Sharing Agreement (DPSA), in place since 1956, and supporting legislation allow Canadian firms to sell to the world’s largest military spender as if they were domestic American companies. This allows Canadian companies to export more than $2 billion a year directly to the DOD.

 

Additionally, under the Defense Production Act’s Title III, the DOD can invest and source rare earths and critical minerals, as well as other key inputs to defense, directly from Canadian companies, treating them as if they are American. This is a major positive for both countries and further demonstrates the preferential treatment Canada receives from the DOD in procurement and defense supply chains.

 

The DIS acknowledges the strength of Canada’s defense exports generally and to the United States specifically: “Not only is the Canadian defence sector a major supplier to the Canadian Armed Forces, it is also an export powerhouse. Virtually half (49 per cent) of the defence-related products and services produced by Canadian firms are sold abroad. Of these, the majority (69 per cent) go to the United States.” But the DIS fails to acknowledge that this strength in our exports is because of the DPSA and America’s preferential treatment of Canadian firms. Put differently, the DIS implicitly celebrates the result of America’s preferential treatment of Canadian industry while failing to extend the same treatment to U.S. firms. This is fundamentally unfair to the U.S. and, should Trump take notice, will presumably become a further trade irritant in the lead-up to USMCA renegotiations in June of this year.

 

There is no doubt that Trump’s protectionism, tariffs, and “51st State” rhetoric toward Canada have been unsettling, but Canada shouldn’t respond to American protectionism with protectionism of its own. Canada arguably benefits a great deal more from the DPSA than the U.S. The entirety of the DIS represents $6.6 billion in investment from the Canadian government into the defense industry, but it may threaten at least $2 billion of exports to the United States. A $6.6 billion investment strategy that risks $2 billion of business hardly seems a wise move for Canadian industry.

 

In his comments around the release of the DIS, Carney qualified the strategy, noting that: “Our first responsibility as government is to defend Canadians. . . . We will always be choosing the best supplier for those defense needs.” This is absolutely the right sentiment, but it is hard to square that circle with the buy Canadian provisions of the strategy. In some cases Canada may be able to build the best equipment for its military, but generally speaking, Canada should seek to work within areas of comparative advantage, and this means working with allies more, not less. The arbitrary increase to buying 70 percent Canadian-made equipment is simply not compatible with the urgent need to rearm Canada’s military effectively and for a feasible cost. Decades of cuts to Canadian defense spending has atrophied Canada’s domestic military production capabilities so much so that it’s virtually impossible for Canada to buy Canadian. While Canada is increasing its defense spending, it’s not nearly enough to stand up the multilaterally borne costs of developing significant war-fighting capabilities such as war-fighters, kinetic interceptors, or long-range missiles.

 

Canadian-made does not necessarily mean best fit for warfare. The highest procurement consideration should be to procure the best and most advanced technologies that can contribute to North American lethality and, thereby, the deterrence of conflict. A diversified and integrated supply chain, spread across geopolitically linked neighbors and allies, benefits both.

 

Canada is finally stepping back up to the plate on defense, rearming the military and aiming to meeting its NATO spending commitment. You don’t need to be a warmonger to see that, in an increasingly dangerous world, Canada keeping its commitments to allies and providing a level of deterrence for those who intend to harm the West is a good thing. But, the buy-Canadian DIS is not necessarily a step in the right direction.

 

Canada’s DIS is too protectionist, contains too much anti-American political rhetoric, and is not enough about actual defense.

Canada’s Dangerous Obsession with Donald Trump

By Stephen R. Nagy

Sunday, April 12, 2026

 

There is a comfortable orthodoxy settling over editorial boards, university seminars, and policy conferences from Ottawa to Brussels. It goes something like this: Donald Trump broke the international order, the United States is an unreliable partner, and the remedy is diversification — toward China, toward the BRICS bloc of emerging economies (including players like Brazil, Russia, and India), toward anyone who is not Washington. This narrative is not merely incomplete, it is dangerously wrong, and the countries indulging in it are squandering what little time they have to prepare for a world that is about to change in ways that have nothing to do with who occupies the Oval Office.

 

Let’s begin with the diversification fantasy. Canada in particular has spent considerable political energy signaling that it can meaningfully reduce its economic dependence on the United States. The arithmetic tells a different story. Roughly 75 percent of Canadian exports flow south. The infrastructure — pipelines, rail corridors, and supply chains — is integrated on a north-south axis that took the better part of a century to build. As Michael Hart has argued, the Canadian-American economic relationship is not a policy choice; it is a geographic and structural reality. Talking about diversification may win applause at Davos panels, but it does not build liquified natural gas (LNG) terminals, nor conjure new consumer markets out of thin air.

 

The second delusion is that China represents a viable alternative anchor for liberal democracies. But Beijing’s long-term strategy is now well-documented. The Belt and Road Initiative, the Global Development Initiative, the Global Security Initiative, the Global Civilization Initiative, and the expanding architecture of BRICS are not charitable enterprises. They are institutional instruments designed to construct a parallel international order — one in which sovereignty is defined as regime security, human rights are culturally relative, and the rule of law is subordinate to the rule of party. Elizabeth Economy has argued persuasively that Xi Jinping’s China is not joining the existing order; it’s seeking to revise it from within and, where necessary, replace it from without. Canada, the European Union, and the broader constellation of democracies benefit enormously from the institutional architecture that emerged after 1945 — open trade adjudication, treaty-based security, and freedom of navigation. To flirt with Beijing as a counterweight to Washington is to saw off the branch on which one is sitting.

 

Third, and perhaps most corrosive, is the notion that Trump and the United States are the root cause of dysfunction in the international system and at home. China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea have been working to revamp and replace the international system since the end of the Cold War. Rather than being an instigator of the dysfunction, the U.S. has defended the international order.

 

Blaming the U.S. for socio-economic problems at home is an exercise in scapegoating dressed up as analysis. Canada’s productivity crisis did not begin in 2017. The European Union’s demographic stagnation, regulatory sclerosis, and energy vulnerability were not created in Mar-a-Lago. Britain’s post-Brexit turbulence was a sovereign British decision. The high-quality data — from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the IMF, the Bank for International Settlements — consistently points to domestic governance failures as the primary drivers of sluggish growth, housing unaffordability, and declining competitiveness across the Western world. As Fareed Zakaria notes in Foreign Affairs, the crisis of liberal democracy is largely self-inflicted, a product of decades of deferred structural reform and political systems that reward short-term consumption over long-term investment. Blaming America is easy. Reforming pension systems, rationalizing health-care spending, and liberalizing planning regimes are all hard. Democracies are choosing the easy path, and it leads nowhere useful.

 

There is also an uncomfortable illiberal undercurrent in fashionable anti-Americanism that deserves scrutiny. The United States, for all its polarization and dysfunction, remains the society in which citizens can write, speak, protest, and publish virtually without restraint. Can the same be said of the alternatives on offer? Can it be said of Beijing, where a single social media post can result in detention? Of Moscow, where independent journalism is functionally extinct? The reflex to equate American imperfection with villainy betrays a moral confusion that would be laughable if its consequences were not so serious.

 

Now consider what is actually coming. Over the next five to ten years, the world will be entering a period of simultaneous leadership transitions in the four most consequential states outside Europe, and almost no one in the policy establishment is adequately preparing for it.

 

The United States will eventually move beyond Trump. But what will replace MAGA? The movement has restructured the Republican Party’s coalition around economic nationalism, skepticism of alliance commitments, and a transactional view of trade. That ideological infrastructure will not vanish with one man. As Walter Russell Mead has written, Jacksonian nationalism is not an aberration in American political culture, but a deep current. Allies who are simply waiting for Trump to leave are waiting for a restoration that is unlikely to arrive in the form they imagine.

 

China faces an even more consequential transition. Xi Jinping has systematically eliminated rivals, abolished term limits, and concentrated power to a degree unseen since Mao. History suggests — and scholars like Jude Blanchette have detailed — that when a paramount leader of Xi’s type exits the scene, China turns inward. Succession struggles consume political oxygen. Factional competition paralyzes decision-making. The interregnum enduring bipolarity could last years. How the world manages a distracted, unstable, nuclear-armed China with the world’s second-largest economy is a question of the first order. It is receiving attention of the third order.

 

Russia after Putin is unlikely to be a moderated Russia. The institutional bench behind Putin is populated not by liberals, but by security-state hardliners and ultranationalists who view the current regime as insufficiently aggressive. As Andrea Kendall-Taylor and Erica Frantz have argued, personalist autocracies rarely transition to moderation; they transition to chaos or to something harder. A post-Putin Russia armed with 6,000 nuclear warheads and led by someone to Putin’s right is a scenario that demands preparation now.

 

India, too, is in flux. Narendra Modi’s vision of a Hindu-majoritarian state that asserts civilizational confidence on the global stage has transformed Indian domestic politics. When Modi eventually leaves office, the question is not whether Hindu nationalism endures, but what form it takes and how a more assertive India interacts with an Indo-Pacific already strained by Sino-American competition. This is a first-tier strategic question for every democracy with interests east of Suez.

 

Layered on top of all this are structural disruptions that respect no political calendar: the coming tsunami of artificial intelligence displacing white-collar labor at a scale and speed for which no government has a credible plan; birth rates across the developed world falling below replacement and, increasingly, across the developing world; aging populations consuming ever-larger shares of national budgets; and the uneven but accelerating impacts of climate change on agriculture, migration, and state stability.

 

These are the issues that will define the next 25 years. Not Trump’s tariffs. Not the latest inflammatory social media post from Washington. Not the satisfying but ultimately sterile exercise of anti-American virtue signaling.

 

When you engage exclusively with a certain demographic of media commentator, academic, or policy analyst — the kind who populate panels and podcasts with a reliably rewarded anti-Trump lens — you receive answers that reinforce your priors. Confirmation bias is not a strategy. It’s a sedative. And countries that are sedated while the world transforms around them do not get second chances.

 

Canada and its allies need to do something deeply unfashionable: Stop staring at Washington and start staring in the mirror. The big picture is not about Donald Trump. It never was.