Trump’s Losing Fight with Canada

Manitoba’s Premier Wab Kinew is saying out loud what other leaders everywhere should be saying: Donald Trump is a “bad person” and he is “not to be trusted.”

To read more articles by Mark Trahant, go to: Marktrahant.substack.com

How does any nation make a deal with a president who ten minutes later might change the rules, the deal itself? The answer is you can’t.

Kinew said in The Mirror newspaper.

“Everybody knows the American president by now, he’s erratic, he’s irresponsible, and he’s not to be trusted. And this is the person that we were supposed to make a deal with, and we’re going to make additional concessions for it. That’s why I say you can’t make a good deal with a bad person, because who’s to say it’s not going to be undone?”

There’s so much wrong here. Canada is the United States’ second largest trading partner (Mexico is first). And, like Mexico, the trade routes are older than the United States.

There was a Shoshone trade network that operated for thousands of years; artifacts have been found with trade items from 13,000 years ago, including buffalo, flint, shells, and what we today would call crafts. Free trade.

Canada, or Rupert’s Land, warped that broader trade network into its fur trade. This is when colonial powers took everything and left only a few crumbs behind. This was another era of obscene profits and wealth. (The first Crypto?) Starting in 1670, Hudson’s Bay Company (the company that went out of business last year after its bankruptcy) was the orginal extraction company, acquiring fur by any means for London and Paris fashion houses.

The first U.S. and Canada Trade War was in 1846 when the Treaty of Oregon ended all Canadian operations in the Pacific Northwest.

James R. Gibson, a Canadian geographer, wrote in Farming the Frontier: The Agricultural Opening of the Oregon Country 1786-1846 “

The Oregon Treaty was not a fair compromise; there was no division of the ‘Oregon triangle’ [the disputed lands in Washington state], all of which went to the United States….Canadians have valid reasons for regretting and even resenting the Oregon settlement, since the British claim to the territory north of the Columbia-Snake-Clearwater river system was at least as good as, if not better than, that of the United States on the grounds of discovery, exploration, and settlement, and since the future Canadian Dominion was deprived of any harbour on Puget Sound….Canadians should not forget that they were dispossessed of part of their rightful Columbia heritage, a heritage whose economic potential in general and agricultural possibilities in particular were initially and successfully demonstrated by the Hudson’s Bay Company. They should also remember that whenever it is tritely declared that Canada and the United States share the longest undefended border in the world, it is so mainly because the stronger American republic won its northern boundary disputes at the expense of its weaker neighbour, just as it southern boundary was gained at the expense of a weaker Mexico.

This time which neighbor is weaker is harder to define. The U.S. projects wealth and power — but Canada is holding a lot of cards in this trade dispute.

First: The public fight over tariffs, what’s in the news, is just a small part of the trade, only about 5 percent. What’s not even on the table? Energy. Fish. Fertilizer. Critical minerals. You know, things WE need.

From Canada’s Energy Regulator: (Footnotes removed)

Canada and the United States (U.S.) share a highly connected energy system. This 2025 summary of Canada’s trade at the national level shows these connections.

A network of dozens of pipelines transport crude oil, natural gas, natural gas liquids (NGLs), and refined petroleum products (RPPs) between Canada and the U.S. along with fleets of rail, marine, and freight vehicles. Additionally, 86 international power lines move electricity between provinces and U.S. states.

• Exports of crude oil, RPPs, natural gas and NGLs to the U.S. totaled $157.5 billion for the Canadian economy in 2025 , representing 20.2% of Canada’s total goods exported globally.
• Imports of crude oil, RPPs, natural gas, and NGLs from the U.S. amounted to $34.4 billion in 2025 (Figure 1), accounting for 4.4% of Canada’s total goods imported globally.
• In 2025, electricity exports to the U.S. were valued at $3.3 billion, representing 0.4% of total goods exported from Canada to all countries. Electricity imports from the U.S. were valued at $1.4 billion, representing 0.2% of total goods imported into Canada from all countries.
• In 2025, Canada provided 63.4% of the crude oil and close to 100% of the natural gas imported by the U.S. Canada also supplied 24.9% of the RPPs and 97.9% of the NGLs imported by the U.S.
• Canada was the source of 81.3% of the electricity imported by the U.S in 2025.

That’s a lot of leverage. And, on top of that, Canada is one of the most reliable international purchasers of U.S. Treasury bonds. The money that pays for our budget deficit. Canada doesn’t even have to sell its bonds — it could just stop buying new debt.

Of course President Bad Man has an answer for that, too. He said Friday about the bond market: “The yields have come back up since [Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s initial intervention in the bond market],” a reporter reminded the president. “Have you talked to him about another type of intervention? Is that something he will be doing?”

Trump replied, “We have many types of intervention. That’s one. The ultimate intervention is our military, and if we have to use that, we will.”

How does the military sell bonds? The answer is it can’t.