‘Our preference is to collaborate with the US, but as a sovereign partner,’ writes Colin Robertson/White House photo

This article is adapted from a contribution to the Association for Canadian Studies special edition of Canadian Issues/Thèmes Canadiens on the evolving state of Canada-U.S. relations.

Colin Robertson

May 14, 2025

In his second term as president of the United States, Donald Trump is forcing the Canadian body politic —every level of government and every party — to recalibrate. There is the threat not just of tariffs and economic upheaval but, for the first time since the 19th century, of annexation. Prime Minister Mark Carney set the record straight in the Oval Office on May 6, asserting of Canada that “it’s not for sale. Won’t be for sale, ever.” While we will need to keep our ‘elbows up’, the Trump challenge is an historic opportunity to put our own house in order.

Greater self-reliance will give Canada resiliency and strategic autonomy. It will allow Canada to play, once again, the useful role of helpful fixer and quietly effective bridge builder it once performed so well. In a world of constant convulsions and crisis, it’s a role needed now more than ever.

Pierre Trudeau once told me that every prime minister has three files that are permanently in his in-box: national security; national unity; and the U.S. relationship. Donald Trump currently dominates all three, with the economy a fourth file Trudeau could never have imagined in a polycrisis manufactured by our closest ally. As the recent federal election demonstrated, Canadians are very much attuned to this problem. Dealing with a hostile and predatory Uncle Sam will require patience, perseverance and, most importantly, a plan.

That plan will involve concurrent tracks requiring ongoing attention and constant adjustments, including:

• Fighting the tariffs while supporting those afflicted.
• Dismantling internal trade barriers to create freer trade within Canada.
• Building the infrastructure to get our goods to market and improve our productivity.
• ‘Getting right’ coherence, coordination and collaboration among all levels of government through rigorous program reviews that should draw inspiration from those of the early 1990s.
• Diversifying trade and encouraging provincial governments to market their goods and services and attract foreign investment.
• Re-investing now in defence and border security while also re-thinking collective security with allies.

Fighting Back

The tariffs are fracturing our economic partnership and forcing us to rethink what has long been our most important relationship. We now know this is not about coercing Canada to curb the small flows of fentanyl and illegal migrants or raising our defence spending, all of which we are doing.

On one level, it’s a straight cash grab to pay for Trump’s promised tax cuts and force business to manufacture in the United States.

But on a more strategic level, it is a systemic assault that is geopolitically alienating and economically isolating America, which makes it a long-term systemic strategy, not a short-term political or protectionist one.

Unfortunately, based on what we see in the UK-USA framework and now in the US-China ‘trade truce’ we are going to have to adapt to a future of ‘managed trade’ with tariffs of around 10 percent no matter who is in the White House or Congress.

For now, we have responded with counter-tariffs, targeting the Republican congressional leadership on whom Trump must rely to achieve his legislative agenda and his new best friends in the tech ‘oligarchy’. Counter-tariffs make sense as a negotiating tool, but we must never forget that a tariff is a tax paid by our consumers.

We can’t change our geography so our primary goals must continue to be keeping our preferred tariff-free access to the largest market in the world and a joint commitment to our binational NORAD security alliance.

While posted in the US, I used to tell visiting legislators not to kid themselves; ours is an asymmetrical relationship. We need the United States more than it needs Canada. They take three-quarters of our exports and generate about one-third of our economy while we account for about one-sixth of their exports and about 2% of their economy. We level the playing field through continual negotiation on trade agreements, overcoming impasses through binding dispute settlement – a bottom line for us in any negotiation.

I would also tell legislators that on almost any bilateral issue there are always more Americans who think like Canadians than there are Canadians.

Now, we need to enlist those voices to complement our current ‘top-level’ advocacy with a ‘bottom-up’ approach that asks Americans to lobby their own legislators to persuade President Trump to remove the tariffs. It’s time to add a Team America component to Team Canada.

In practise, this means mobilizing Canadians to call their American customers, clients and friends and to tell them that the tariffs are hurting our mutual livelihoods, and that the disruption is going to make us all poorer.

Success will depend on Canadian business — small, medium and big — and Canadian labour, especially those who are affiliated with American counterparts such as the Steelworkers, Teamsters and Seafarers, actively reaching out with their ask and in doing so posing some simple questions:

• Do Americans want to pay more for their gas and groceries because of tariffs?
• Do American farmers want to pay more for potash while losing Canada as one of their biggest markets?
• Do we really want to wreck our joint auto industry with a tsunami of tariffs every time a part crosses the border?

Success will depend equally on our provincial and local legislators. The premiers’ involvement is critical. Many of them, notably Ontario Premier Doug Ford as chair of the Council of the Federation, are doing excellent work in their own outreach to their state-governor counterparts.

So, too, must provincial legislators, mayors and councillors, especially those in affected border communities. They are closer to the realities of trade in their constituencies, and we look to them to push local business and local labour to get involved and make the calls.

We should also enlist our expatriate “star-spangled” Canadians living in the U.S. and the one million “snowbirds”, who flock south, mostly to red states like Florida and Arizona. They need to tell their neighbours and those they buy services from that this is hurting them, particularly as Canadians cancel travel plans to the U.S..

For this campaign to succeed, we need thousands and thousands of individual voices making the case for lifting the tariffs. Our American friends need to contact their elected representatives, speak out at congressional town halls and talk with their neighbours. We need them to argue for growing the pie by taking advantage of what we already do well and making it more resilient. By making things together, we have created mutual prosperity and security.

Our vociferous response to Trump has unified Canadians, put the spotlight on Canadian products, and given Canada more U.S. media coverage than ever. Given our declining dollar, it’s an opportunity to launch a ‘Visit Canada’ tourism blitz and show Americans who we are.

Our current ‘top-down’ approach, which worked well in the past, was premised on the belief that our best and easiest entrée into the complex and cacophonous American political and policy system — a multi-ring circus of competing and conflicting interests — was through the administration and especially the president. Presidents since Franklin Roosevelt, whether Democrat or Republican, understood the big picture and their attitude to Canada was mostly benign and, often, benevolent.

But now we must endure Donald Trump — a bully if not a wannabe autocrat — who could easily be cast as a Hollywood ‘Despicable Donald’ with his minions.

Alas, while Trump may behave like a cartoon villain, he is still the president of the United States.

And, as president, Trump controls the narrative with his executive orders. By moving fast and breaking things, he sows confusion and creates chaos. That, as he outlines in his Art of the Deal, is his preferred negotiating strategy. Trump works on feelings and gut instinct. As for trying to predict him, New York Times columnist David Brooks put it best: “We’ve got this perverse situation in which the vast analytic powers of the entire world are being spent trying to understand a guy whose thoughts are often just six fireflies beeping randomly in a jar.”

For now, the guardrails, checks and balances of American democracy are under strain as never before. The Republican Party controls the legislative branch, with slim majorities in both the House and Senate. They are in thrall to, and often in fear of Trump. The Democrats are slowly getting their act together. Until the pendulum swings back toward normalcy, we depend on the third branch of government, the judiciary, to uphold the rule of law on, for example, the legitimacy of using the demonstrably false claims against Canada as a source of fentanyl and migrants to justify “national security” tariffs.

Meanwhile, we must look to our own devices.

Free Trade within Canada

We have begun to get our own house in order with the national government and premiers committing to eliminating internal trade barriers on procurement, accreditation and regulations reflecting the ‘narcissism of small differences’ between provinces.

Getting Government Right

The different levels of government need to better coordinate their industrial policies to maximize necessary improvements to our productivity and competitiveness. We have the capacity to be an agri-food and energy superpower. We should be guided by some basic questions:

• Do current regulatory policies help or hinder getting our resources — oil and gas, critical minerals, grains, seafood — to market?
• Is our current infrastructure — ports, grids, pipelines, rail — fit for purpose?
• What level of government should lead?

Answers to these questions should guide our investments and enabling legislation.

This must also include another exercise in getting government right. The best model is that conducted by the government of Jean Chrétien in the early 1990s, which evaluated which level of government was best suited to deliver certain programs. It reduced the size of government by nearly a third, in contrast to the Justin Trudeau government, which grew government by a third.

Communicate, Communicate, Communicate

Public confidence in governments and institutions is plumbing new depths in all democracies. Governments need to be more transparent in communicating information. If to govern is to choose, it is also about our leadership explaining what our priorities should be, why we make certain choices and what they cost.

Trade Diversification

We have long sought to diversify our trade but now it is imperative. Fortunately, there is broad support across party lines and with the provinces to achieve diversification.

Efforts must be ramped up starting with our more-than 50 other free-trade partners, recognizing that we are not utilizing the potential of these agreements. Working with our Trade Commissioner Service, the premiers and provinces need to step up. They are best equipped, working with their business communities, to market their goods and services and expedite closing deals, while never forgetting it is business that does business and that it is customers that create jobs.

Our key trading partners will see the value in collaboration as Trump is coming after them, too. So, better we hang together or, surely, we will hang separately.

Rethinking Collective Security

While our preference must be to sustain and strengthen both NATO and NORAD with particular attention and investment in our Arctic frontier, Mr. Trump has made explicit his contempt for allies and alliances. For now, we can no longer blithelyassume the U.S. is a reliable ally to deter the threats posed by China and Russia and others that reject our rules-based order. With fellow allies, including our Indo-Pacific partners, we must look to rebuilding our armed forces and our defence industrial capacities and, unfortunately, also reconsider our reliance on U.S. defence goods and services.

We need to look to new collective security and economic arrangements, as NATO was originally intended. Such an agenda would include currencies, foreign direct investment, industrial policies, defence production and procurement as well as trade. It is an agenda particularly suited to Mark Carney’s experience.

On Negotiating with Uncle Sam

While nothing is certain, in the wake of the Carney-Trump White House meetings, it appears bilateral discussions or negotiations will continue on various tracks: border security, continental defence, tariffs, CUSMA transition or renewal, and big picture geopolitics leading into the Kananaskis G7 and then NATO summit.

There are four things to keep in mind as we negotiate new bilateral security and trade arrangements.

First, as I learned when advocating for Canada on Capitol Hill, start every conversation on security. This now means telling Americans that ‘we have their back’. We are a reliable ally making necessary investments in our national defence with NORAD renewal, especially in the Arctic, our priority. Our preference is to collaborate with the US but as a sovereign partner.

The US preoccupation with security also means that any conversation between leaders always starts with a discussion of global geopolitics. We are a G7 nation with a global diplomatic network but we need to invest in it and bring ideas and initiatives if we want to be a constructive player at the top tables.

Second, know our ask(s) but be circumspect and careful about revealing too early our gives and takes. With Trump it is all about the art of the deal, with us ‘giving’ and him ‘taking’. If Trump wants his own USMCA renegotiated, let him, not us, put it on the table. Meanwhile, we should keep close with our Mexican partners whose history with Washington gives them innate caution.

Third, the Americans will push us to move in lockstep on China as we did with EV tariffs. With our deep people-to-people ties it makes sense to work with China on climate, pandemics and non-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, as well as on trade.

In the English debate, Carney identified China as Canada’s biggest security threat, meaning that we need to recalibrate our China policy. We need our eyes wide open but our China strategy should also reflect a combination of  “coexist,” “compete,” “co-operate,” and “challenge” depending on circumstances.

Finally, while continuing preparation and ongoing advocacy with American allies, ‘ragging the puck’ and the exercise of strategic patience is a time-honoured negotiating tactic that will work to our advantage.

The polling after Trump’s first hundred days suggests he is overreaching. That four Republicans supported the Senate resolution rejecting the Trump use of national security as justification for the fentanyl tariffs on Canada signals there is a limit to their support for Trump’s vision. Even Trump is not immune from the political laws of gravity especially when it comes to the economy.

Looking Forward

Trump’s words and tariffs have unified Canadians as never before. For now, unfortunately, the implicit trust in the Churchillian belief that the US will do the right thing after all the other possibilities have been exhausted is broken.

We need to redefine our working relationship with the U.S., keeping in mind that unlike China and Russia, the U.S. is not a strategic adversary.

We need to emphasize, as political leaders have done, that our quarrel is not with the American people with whom we are friends, allies and neighbours but with Donald Trump, whose behaviour is not only anti-Canadian but downright un-American. ‘Despicable Donald’ is as much a threat to them as he is to us and our democratic allies.

But ours is more than a trade war. Donald Trump seems set on turning the multilateral rules-based order into a concert of great powers with big dictating to the rest within their spheres of influence. For Trump, this also means restoring American primacy as the AI-enabled manufacturing hub with Canada as a source of strategic resources, including water.

We can avoid this fate by actively pushing back while putting our own house in order Developing self-reliance based on a strong economy will also give Canada more strategic autonomy. This will enable us to play a useful role internationally. It is a fight worth having.

Policy Contributing Writer Colin Robertson is a fellow of the Canadian Global Affairs Institute and host of its Global Exchange podcast. A member of Carleton University’s Canada-U.S. Experts Group, he served as First Head of the Advocacy Secretariat in our Washington Embassy, as Consul General in Los Angeles and in Hong Kong and New York at our UN Mission and Consulate General. He was a member of the teams that negotiated the Canada-US Free Trade Agreement and the NAFTA. A member of the Defence Advisory Board, he is also an Honorary Captain in the Royal Canadian Navy.