Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said Tuesday that he and Donald Trump agreed to intensify negotiations on a trade agreement between Canada, the U.S. and Mexico, just a day after the U.S. president announced 50% tariffs on most Canadian goods. The machinery of state power moved fast. Ordinary people, workers, farmers and families are the ones left to absorb the shock.
U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer was set to testify before the Senate Finance Committee at 10 a.m. EDT, another round of official theater while the damage from tariff warfare hangs over both sides of the border. The hearing puts the trade agenda back in front of the same institutions that keep deciding the terms from above, with everyone else expected to live inside the consequences.
Who Pays for the Power Game
Carney said in Ottawa, “I spoke this morning with the U.S. president and we agreed to deepen and speed up our negotiations over the next few weeks.” He added, “Canada will do all that is necessary to support our jobs, our workers, our farmers and to make Canada stronger, more independent and more resilient.” Those are the people at the bottom of the chain, the ones who get named when leaders need cover for decisions made in closed rooms.
Trump said Canada had unfairly discriminated against American autos, alcohol and dairy products. The new tariffs were scheduled to come into effect 30 days from Monday. The tariffs could unleash a new wave of economic chaos, with risks of higher inflation and further fraying of relations between two nations that previously had warm, close ties before Trump’s return to the White House. An administration official previewing the action Monday said Canada was one of the only nations other than China that retaliated against Trump’s previous tariffs and must be held accountable.
That word, accountable, does a lot of work in the mouths of rulers. It means punishment from above. It means the state deciding who gets squeezed when trade disputes turn into a contest of leverage.
The Costs Land Below
The new 50% tariffs would exclude energy products, potash, fish and critical minerals, but would include goods previously protected from import taxes by the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, or USMCA. That 2020 trade pact was not renewed by the U.S., triggering a new set of negotiations that could run until 2036. The people who signed the pact are gone from the room; the people who live with the fallout are not.
Canadian economists said the tariffs are more narrowly focused than first believed and would affect around 5% of Canada's exports to the United States. The wide range of goods includes honey, liquor, cement and hockey sticks. Robert Kavcic, a senior economist with the Bank of Montreal, said in a note to clients that the proposed tariffs would cover roughly $28 billion Canadian ($19.8 billion U.S.) worth of annual Canadian exports to the United States. That amounts to 0.8% of the Canadian economy, he said. Kavcic said chemicals, plastics, electronics and industrial equipment are the biggest target in the new tariffs, followed by consumer goods and forestry products. Miscellaneous manufacturing machinery and agricultural or food products round out the list.
Those figures are the clean language of institutions measuring the damage after the fact. The people who make honey, liquor, cement and hockey sticks don’t get to vote on whether their livelihoods become bargaining chips.
What the Premiers Call Resistance
Carney said he planned to meet virtually with the country’s premiers later Tuesday. British Columbia Premier David Eby criticized Trump and the proposed tariffs, saying, “This feels like an increasingly desperate and flailing approach to relationships with our country,” and, “There's no question it will hurt families in British Columbia.” He said Trump is wrong to think he can “bully us into whatever he wishes.” Eby added, “I feel sorry for Americans. If you can't be friends with Canada, then you almost certainly do not have friends anywhere in the world, and that is a very lonely place to be.”
Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe said, “When tariffs are applied it increases the cost for families and to do business on both sides of the border,” and, “These tariffs do nothing for making a more competitive North American economy.” Ontario Premier Doug Ford said, “We always seem to be on our back heels. We need to be on the offense. Not constantly on the defense with President Trump. We need to stand up to the bully, and we need to hit him tariff to tariff, all the way across the board.”
That’s the language of managed retaliation, the same border logic with a different accent. The premiers talk about standing up, but the structure stays intact: governments negotiating over who gets to tax whom while families pay more and businesses absorb the hit.
Trump told reporters in the Oval Office that he loves the people of Canada but claimed the country needs the United States to survive. He said, “Canada's been very, very tough on us over the years, for many years, and no other president's done anything about it.” Trump added that the new tariffs are separate from his threats to hit Canada with additional levies due to wildfire smoke that affected millions of people in the Great Lakes, Northeast and Mid-Atlantic regions of the U.S. He repeated his claim that Canada is not managing its forests properly.
One frustration for the U.S. is that eight Canadian provinces have banned the sale of U.S. alcohol at provincially operated liquor stores. Carney said it's up to the provinces to decide if they wish to continue the ban. Eby said the citizens of his province support the ban, saying, “There is not a chance in hell that U.S. alcohol is going back on the shelf in British Columbia.”
The border fight keeps getting dressed up as strategy. What it really means is more pressure from above, more costs pushed downward, and more people told to endure it while the powerful call it negotiation.