Trump’s tariffs on Canada are on pause—for now. For at least another month, the looming threat of a disastrous trade war is suspended. But the damage is already done—there is no going back to the way things were before.
In this webinar, experts discuss the effects of Trump’s threats in the short-, medium-, and long-term for Canada. What does it mean, asks host Amanda Klang, when “Canada can no longer trust the U.S. to act as an honest partner?”
“The use of tariffs as a coercive means to get what the US wants is here to stay,” says Stuart Trew, director of the Trade and Investment Research Project at the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.
“You’re really talking about the death of free trade as a principle,” he says. “The neoliberal delusion, of the free flow of goods without limits, those days are done.”
For Richard Nimijean, author of a chapter on Canada-U.S. relations in the book The Trudeau Record, this moment shows a bizarre inversion of what sovereignty means. Whereas people used to argue that Canadians needed to defend our sovereignty by being more independent of the U.S., now Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is arguing that our sovereignty is in fact tied to integration with the United States.
“What are we fighting for?” Nimijean asks. “The Trudeau government has been using sovereignty not to advance a vision of how the Canadian economy might evolve and transform, but rather to stay inside fortress America.”
CCPA Senior Economist Marc Lee points out that our task, as progressives, is to advance a vision of what actual independence would look like. “Our dependence makes us extremely vulnerable to the pressures that President Trump is bringing to bear,” he says. “We need to think longer term about what we want with this country.
“At the end of the day, we need to build a Canada that is more green and sustainable, that is more just and fair, and that is more independent from the United States.”
Caroline Brouillette, executive director of Climate Action Network Canada, agrees—and points out that this crisis should be used as an opportunity to address the ways in which so many crises are overlapping.
“The crises we are collectively facing are increasingly interconnected—whether that’s between biodiversity and pandemics, or between geopolitics and fossil fuels,” she says. “Our dependence on the U.S. is intrinsically linked to our dependence on fossil fuels. In our response, we can tackle these things jointly.
“Dictators cannot control the sun and the wind,” she says. “So [decarbonization] makes us a lot less vulnerable to these types of threats”
Speakers
Marc Lee: Marc Lee is a senior economist with the national office of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, and has published on a wide range of topics from poverty and inequality to globalization and international trade to public services and regulation.
Caroline Brouillette is the executive director·of Climate Action Network Canada, the country’s largest climate network bringing together over 150 organizations operating from coast to coast.
Richard Nimijean is a member of the School of Canadian Studies at Carleton University, and the author of the chapter on Canada-U.S. relations in the 2024 CCPA book, The Trudeau Record: Promise v. Performance.
Stuart Trew is a senior researcher·with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. He is the director of the CCPA’s Trade and Investment Research Project, which pools the expertise of labour, NGO and academic researchers to understand the impacts of corporate trade deals on public policy.
Amanda Klang will facilitate the event. She is a senior communications specialist at the CCPA, and previously worked at CBC/Radio-Canada for 15 years.