A person wears a hoodie with the Make Canada Great Again slogan, during the inauguration of Donald Trump as U.S President on Jan. 20, 2025.DAVID HIMBERT/Getty Images
A read of the long list of U.S. products from air conditioners to sewing needles that will now be subject to Canadian countertariffs should only lead to one conclusion: This whole thing is stupid.
It’s not the Canadian retaliation that is stupid. That is necessary. It was forced upon Canada, by aggressive U.S. trade tactics but also by the destructive, domineering intent they are meant to serve.
But here we are, in 2026, slapping 50-per-cent tariffs on American fishing rods and light fixtures and steel and so on to counter their unjustified 50-per cent tariffs on hockey sticks and honey and on and on. On both sides of the border, inflation will go up, plants will close and people will lose their livelihoods.
As if to remind us how far we are from sanity, the President of the United States went on social media to declare that the U.S. “is giving serious consideration” to changing the name of Lake Ontario to Lake America – which among other things raises the question of what the word “serious” means in Donald Trump’s world.
Then there is the exchange of schoolyard taunts with the Premier of Ontario, Doug Ford, whose kiss-my-ass defiance of Mr. Trump initiated an uncreative war of words.
There are plenty of Canadians who will second Mr. Ford’s emotions about Mr. Trump, and there is some dark fun in the way their country’s most boisterous premier is living rent-free in POTUS’s head. For some, it’s comic relief for early days in a maddening trade war. But let’s admit it is still fighting stupid with stupid.
In that environment, Prime Minister Mark Carney and his ministers have – so far, at least – shown an admirable level of relative cool.
The retaliatory tariffs announced Tuesday mostly mirror U.S. tariffs, so that Canadian companies that now can’t profitably sell into the U.S. market won’t have to compete with U.S. products coming into Canada. These measures didn’t amount to wild swings or provocative reaction.
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They were, if anything, a cautious first move, without shivs – such as targeting Republican districts – that might goad Mr. Trump to escalate again. Now that’s up to him.
Mr. Carney has made some pointed comments about Mr. Trump and his administration, including that their signature is sometimes written in pencil, but he did not indulge in name-calling as Mr. Ford has.
Of course, the madness of the trade war and its senseless economic destruction comes from Donald Trump. It’s what he does. There isn’t much point now lamenting his protectionist policies.
But you’d think many Americans would see there’s a difference between building a tariff wall against Chinese goods and trying to drive Canada’s economy to its knees. You would think more would object to the senselessness. And some do – but Project Stupid is still going full speed ahead.
American auto workers might want to see more assembly plants in the U.S., but it should be pretty clear to Michigan auto workers that uprooting the Canadian chunk of the Great Lakes auto ecosystem isn’t going to make the other side of it more competitive. And also, that if Mr. Trump’s policies succeeded in moving Canada’s auto-assembly plants to the U.S., Canadians will one day be buying more cheap cars from China, or elsewhere.
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Mr. Trump has given this trade war an existential meaning for Canadians, so there isn’t much easy opportunity to make a deal, and it’s a double problem because the U.S. President doesn’t stick to his commitments. In the meantime, he will mete out punishment to people who make hockey sticks because Canada dared to respond to his attacks by pulling Wild Turkey off the shelves.
One good thing is the hope that Buy Canadian polices will create some new Canadian companies and another is that Mr. Trump’s threats will shake off complacency and encourage independence. But there’s still no sense at all in a Canada-U.S. trade war.
Somewhere, someone in Ottawa is probably trying to figure out if tariffing plastic spatulas or chewing gum, or whatever, is the best way to respond to the next wave of Mr. Trump’s threats. They’re forced to do this because smart folks in the U.S. are turning their talents to acts of economic vandalism that will throw people out of work. And stay tuned for plans to change the name of the St. Lawrence to the America River.