Trump has singled out us Canadians for special treatment in his tariff war – there is no choice but to get nasty | Matt Gurney

Though many hate to admit it, Canadians have long wished for more attention from the US. Well, we’re getting it now. And it turns out that President Trump and some of his top supporters in the Maga movement don’t much like us.

The first big hint was when he started talking about annexing us, saying we couldn’t survive without American support. But the most recent example of Trump’s dislike for Canada can be seen in his latest tariff policies. Canada was largely spared the impact of his “Liberation Day” tariffs in April 2025 by its pre-existing free trade deal with the US (and Mexico), but earlier this month, as expected, the US declined to extend that deal for another 16-year term. It’s now subject to annual renegotiations. Then, last week, the White House announced tariffs as high as 50% on a selection of Canadian products including, for the first time, items previously protected by the trade agreement. The US called it retaliation for Canadian trade practices.

It’s true that the US announced tariffs against dozens more countries just days later, but there has been something odd about the lopsided attention paid to Canada, which most US presidents tend to politely ignore. Most of the tariffs Trump recently announced were in the range of about 10%, but Canada was hit by 50% tariffs (albeit on a narrower range of exports). The president, it seems, wanted to send a message to Canada, but without hurting US consumers too much.

The tariffs also land differently here, given Trump’s stated desire to annex Canada as a 51st state. The president has ruled out using military force to accomplish that, saying instead that he would use “economic force”. Tariffs would meet that definition.

There may have been little sign that the talk of annexation is anything more than typical Trumpian bluster, but even the suggestion, along with the tariffs, has been a shock for a Canadian political class that has long taken a friendly America as a law of nature – and has let Canada grow shockingly dependent on the US for defence and trade. An unfriendly, potentially even hostile US is a staggeringly consequential change. It’s hard to overestimate how huge a shock this has been.

And it’s having a massive effect on our domestic politics, thus far to the benefit of the Liberal party and the prime minister, Mark Carney. The return of Trump to the White House upset an election last year that the Liberals had been set to lose decisively. Canada’s Conservatives were cruising to an easy win with a campaign focused on public safety and the cost of living, but once Trump began musing about annexation, the Liberals dumped Justin Trudeau, replaced him with Carney, wrapped themselves in the flag, and won decisively. Carney remains popular, largely because Canadians see him as the right choice to deal with Trump.

US pressure is complicating Canada’s increasingly fraught internal politics in other ways. Canada does not have a true national economy, but a series of regional ones. Ontario and Quebec, the most populous provinces, are heavily dependent on manufacturing. In western Canada, particularly the provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan, the economies depend more on exporting natural resources, including oil. Most of this goes to the US, as Canada lacks the transportation infrastructure to readily export it elsewhere (there’s that dependency).

The response has therefore been more fragmented than unified. Ontario has pursued a strategy of confrontation; the western provinces have preferred to appeal to shared interests with the US. These are obvious fissures that the US could choose to exploit. It was strange to see, when the most recent round of tariffs was announced, that most of the economic damage landed on Ontario and Quebec and the province of British Columbia – three jurisdictions that have taken stronger anti-Trump positions. The economies of Alberta and Saskatchewan were relatively spared.

Trump’s administration was probably hoping to mete out some punishment to provincial leaders it finds irritating. But it would have given Canada a much more challenging problem had it targeted instead the western provinces, where scepticism of rule by “eastern elites” and separatist movements are intensely divisive issues (Albertans will vote in a referendum this fall on whether to pursue independence). Carney must consider domestic blowback from any possible retaliation, such as an export tax on oil, lest he further inflame existing regional tensions.

Trump’s new tariffs aren’t due to take effect for several weeks, and Canada has not yet given any signal of how it will respond. To date, though, it has generally retaliated against US levies – Carney, whose political success rests on public belief that he will stand up to Trump, would find it very difficult not to retaliate this time.

This, more than anything else, is what the White House has failed to understand about Canada. The US has some legitimate gripes with us, including trade barriers and Canada’s chronic underinvestment in defence. It’s reasonable to be angry about those things. But the nature of Trump’s actions has made resistance the only plausible Canadian response: caving in to the US president is toxic for Canadian voters. Some provincial resistance is likely due to unpopular regional leaders seeing salvation in battling Trump – and although Carney has made some concessions since becoming prime minister, including scrapping a planned digital tax that angered US tech companies, he dare only go so far.

Trump has often complained that dealing with Canadians is unpleasant and nasty. He should expect us to get nastier still. Whether he knows it or not, he’s left us little choice.

• Matt Gurney is a journalist based in Toronto, and co-editor of The Line, an online magazine