Enclosed is a recent article from the Ottawa Citizen forwarded by Potlatch’s Canada correspondent. I will only add that the increased hostility by Canada is derived, in a large part, from its deep disappointment, disbelief, and hurt about how the United States during Trump’s presidency has treated them. It has become personal for Canadians, an emotional downer that threatens to permanently alter our historic brotherhood.
THE END OF FREE TRADE IS HERE
Integrating the two economies benefited both, but all Trump sees is a ‘ripoff’
By Tasha Kheiriddin, Postmedia’s national politics columnist,
Ottawa Citizen, August 27, 2026
Welcome to Trade Wars, the reality show that pits the mighty United States of America against
the mouse that roared, a.k.a. Canada. How’s everyone feeling today? “Kiss my ass!” yells
Ontario Premier Doug Ford. “Flunky! I will rename Lake Ontario Lake America,” claps back
U.S. President Donald Trump. Insert laugh track, cut to a commercial for a Ford F-150 pickup,
and check out the ratings — 76 per cent of Canadians agree with Prime Minister Mark Carney’s
decision to quit the talks. Everyone’s watching — what a hit.
But this isn’t a triumph. And it isn’t fiction. It’s a real dispute, with real-life consequences for
millions of people. It represents the sad demise of more than 60 years of economic integration,
starting with the Canada-United States Automotive Products Agreement of 1965, through free-
trade deals signed in 1988, 1992 and 2018, which have seen both countries prosper through
increased trade and economic activity. All of which Trump calls a “ripoff,” even though he was
at the table doing the last deal.
So now, it’s elbows up — and out. Canada is seeking new trading partners, inking 20
agreements in the past year alone. Our trade with the U.S. has dropped from 76 to 68 per cent
of total trade since 2024, and will no doubt decline further with the imposition of matching
tariffs on $26 billion of U.S. imports, including steel, agricultural equipment and appliances.
We’ve come full circle, back to the 1960s, when philosopher George Grant lamented that
Canada had become a “branch plant economy,” of the United States. He blamed the Liberal
party for surrendering to “continentalism,” whereby American companies were buying out
Canadian businesses or opening their own here, effectively making us a U.S. subsidiary.
Grant had witnessed the failure of populist Progressive Conservative prime minister John
Diefenbaker to diversify 15 per cent of Canada’s trade to Great Britain in 1957, followed by the
Ottawa Citizen, Thursday, August 27, 2026Diefenbaker to diversify 15 per cent of Canada’s trade to Great Britain in 1957, followed by the
subsequent Liberal government of Lester B. Pearson signing the Auto Pact and embracing
closer economic ties with the United States. The pendulum then swung back in the 1970s, when
Liberal prime minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau tried to trade more with Europe and created the
Foreign Investment Review Agency, designed to prevent takeovers but criticized for stifling
investment.
Diefenbaker and Trudeau failed to drag Canada out of America’s orbit, in part because during
the Cold War with the Soviet Union, Washington was our friend, not foe. Today, things are
different, but Trump is, increasingly, an emperor who has no clothes.
For the American president has a major weakness: underestimating his adversaries’ resilience.
This is on full display in that murderous regime of Iran, where his war has now dragged into its
seventh month. And it is on display in erstwhile best buddy Canada, where rather than roll over
and accept unacceptable trade terms, we walked away and basically gave America the finger.
Some analysts say those terms — attacks on the French language, curbing our ability to trade
with other nations, and continuing to tariff pickup trucks at a higher rate — may have been a
deliberate poison pill, inserted at the 11th hour by Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick to
scupper the deal and make political trouble for Carney.
Whether true or not, the reality is that we were treated badly, and the prime minister was right
to say enough is enough. You don’t turn on an ally whose people have fought and died
alongside you, whose cheap oil has powered your industry for 100 years, and whose people
have cultivated ties of friendship with you for generations.
As the insults fly and the temperature mounts, Carney has emerged as the only reasonable actor
in this drama. It’s one that all the world is now watching — and could script their own sequels
dealing with America.