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| Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau gives opening remarks at an economic summit on Friday in Toronto. (Katherine KY Cheng/Getty Images) |
| A week ago, President Donald Trump drew back from the brink with his neighbors. He suspended his threat of sweeping 25 percent tariffs on Mexican and Canadian goods, at least for 30 days, after separate phone calls with the leaders of the two countries yielded some small concessions. The reason for the showdown was Trump’s stated disquiet with the infiltration of migrants and illicit drugs crossing the borders of the United States illegally — though analysts suspect Trump’s unique protectionist instincts and desire to strong-arm weaker neighbors for a quick victory were the more likely drivers. Trump’s animus was particularly curious in the case of Canada, which accounts for less than 1 percent of fentanyl seized by U.S. border authorities, and a tiny fraction of illegal border crossings when compared with the numbers arriving from Mexico. But his threats were all too real and forced policymakers and business owners on both sides of the northern border to contemplate the sudden unraveling of one of the world’s most far-reaching and intertwined trade partnerships. Canada’s government prepared a list of bruising retaliatory measures, while politicians across the spectrum in Ottawa and Canada’s provinces put out wounded statements of dismay.
Nationalist sentiment abounds. Hockey fans in Canadian cities even booed the U.S. anthem when it was ritually played before NHL games. That reaction was lamented by Canadian Defense Minister Bill Blair, who spoke to a handful of Washington Post journalists while on a trip last week to the U.S. capital alongside François-Philippe Champagne, Canada’s minister for innovation, science and industry. “I don’t think it’s reflective of anger among Canadians. I think it’s a reflection of disappointment,” Blair said of the booing, gesturing to the depth of closeness Canadians feel to the United States. “Ninety percent of our population lives within 100 kilometers of the U.S. border. … We fought side by side [in numerous wars], and I think Canadians always felt that that gave them perhaps a privileged relationship with the United States.” But, Blair added, that “fundamental belief” has been “challenged by recent events.”
Trump’s rhetoric — echoed and defended by his party loyalists — has flummoxed Canadians. He has repeatedly called on the country to become the “51st state” and pejoratively describes U.S. money spent on Canadian exports as “subsidies” to the Canadian economy. On Friday, outgoing Prime Minister Justin Trudeau — who Trump has occasionally mocked as “governor” — told a gathering of business leaders in Toronto that Trump was serious about the United States annexing its northern neighbor and its great wealth of energy reserves and critical minerals. “They’re very aware of our resources, of what we have, and they very much want to be able to benefit from those,” Trudeau said. “But Mr. Trump has it in mind that one of the easiest ways of doing that is absorbing our country.” There’s still the prospect of the White House returning to the tariff threat in a matter of weeks, but Canadian officials are hoping to turn the page. Blair said the Canadian government is “going to monitor [illegal border crossings] very carefully,” and pointed to measures already taken by Ottawa, including a major spending package on additional border security put forward late last year. “We’ve already got emerging a good story to tell over the work that we’ve done over the past couple of months,” Blair said. “Those numbers are coming down quite dramatically.” Champagne, the minister of industry, said he hoped that, for the sake of business confidence and the markets, the conversation between Washington and Ottawa shifted away from “tariffs” to “opportunities” for greater collaboration. He said the intertwined nature of the two countries’ economies was a source of strength, not weakness. “There is a reason why these supply chain have been built over generations: They make us more competitive,” he said. “If you want to achieve that vision of the ‘golden age’ of America” — echoing the tagline of Trump’s second term — “if you want to make life more affordable for Americans, if you want to be more innovative, more competitive, Canada is not a problem. Canada is part of the solution.” | ||||||||
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| Canadian Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry François-Philippe Champagne speaks to reporters at the economic summit. (Katherine KY Cheng/Getty Images) |
| The “solution,” in many ways, has been in action for decades. Champagne, in his conversation with Post journalists, offered a snapshot of the United States’ “indispensable relationship” and the supply chains binding the country to Canada: Sour Canadian crude oil gets piped to refineries in Oklahoma; critical minerals like aluminum and titanium move from places like Quebec to assembly plants south of the border in the defense and auto sectors; 80 percent of semiconductors manufactured in the United States get packaged and tested in Canada. Trump’s attempts to unspool all these pivotal connections would be counterproductive and harmful to both countries. It would also rock the entire international trading system. “I’ve been in touch with a lot of colleagues in different capitals around the world,” Champagne said, highlighting Canada’s role as a member of NATO and the Group of Seven major economies; and as the only G-7 member with free trade agreements with everyone else in the bloc (as well as a major pact with the European Union). “The world is watching how the United States of America will deal with Canada.” Blair said that Canadians, too, were ready to listen more keenly to Trump’s concerns. While Canada won’t deploy troops to its border, he acknowledged “the need to do a better job policing it.” He also said Canada needed to step up its defense spending on a host of fronts, though it still will fall considerably short of the 5 percent of GDP that Trump now expects NATO allies to muster for their militaries. Looking to the Arctic, Blair said there was a “gap” between Alaska and Norway that needs to be filled collectively. “The Russians have 17 deepwater ports in the Arctic Ocean. And I don’t have one,” Blair said. “They’ve got over 30 polar icebreakers. I’ve got a couple of them. America has one. We need to do better. We’re doing that together.” Canada has long sheltered under the U.S. security umbrella, but Trump has provoked a deeper reckoning. “We’ve been protected by oceans and ice and distance for a very long time, and those protections are no longer things we can take for granted,” Blair said, pointing to the advance of new technologies, the increased capabilities of Russia, China and other adversaries, and the global impacts of climate change. Looming in the background, too, was the unpredictability of Canada’s closest ally. “We know that there will always be a close and deep relationship with the Americans,” Champagne told me. “But I would say also that the rules of the game have changed.” |