Lessons from the U.S.-Canada Trade War: The Politics of Attention, Discernment, and Civilian Impact

Deep in Donald Trump’s sixth year as President of the United States, the global public is familiar with his spectacles. From the White House renovations, to making the nation’s 250th birthday a showcase of his ego, to renaming various geographic entities, absurdity has become expected from Washington. 

There’s another angle to these actions: Trump deliberately consumes attention to misdirect the public from focusing on more important matters. Under this framing, these are not just spectacles. They advance imaginary, null issues that distract from existing, impactful ones – such as U.S. involvement in Middle Eastern conflicts, polarization over immigration policy, public outrage around AI regulation, and the continuous harms of climate change, to name a few. Through his distraction strategy, Trump inhibits organization, mobilization, and offense from his opponents; ensures policymakers are occupied with topics agreeable to him; all while eluding his responsibility to govern. 

This might feel hard to prove since the counterfactual is unobservable. For example, we’ll never know if Executive Order 14172 would have accomplished anything more important than renaming the Gulf of Mexico had Trump not cared. Nonetheless, experts have long studied how policy systems are vulnerable in succumbing to forces that disrupt their stability. Such a force could be a high quantity of erroneous demands from a powerful authority, in which case the American system is being flooded. 

The silver lining of these distractions is that their positive effects – what they directly impact rather than prevent – have been relatively trivial. The state of the National Mall Reflecting Pool isn’t going to improve material conditions for Americans, but it’s not going to worsen them either. 

What the U.S.-Canada trade war reveals is that when Trump’s distraction strategy expands to the international scope (not that this is the first time), its consequences lose triviality. 

Trump claims that the 50 percent tariffs he placed on Canadian goods last July – spanning wine, hockey sticks, cement, and more – were motivated by Canadian discrimination against the U.S. because Canada imposes restrictive tariffs exclusively on American products such as cars, dairy products, and alcohol. It was through this reasoning that he invoked Section 338 of the Tariff Act of 1930, which authorizes tariffs as retaliation against discrimination. 

Legal scholars promptly invalidated this action. Canada’s tariffs on American cars were countermeasures following previous tariffs placed by Trump; the U.S. and Canada have a longstanding dispute regarding American access to Canadian dairy; and Canadian imports of American liquor nosedived back in 2025 amid brewing trade tensions. Section 338 authorizes the President to impose tariffs that proportionally offset harms by applying to the relevant goods facing discrimination – criteria unmet in this case. 

Moreover, in its 96 year history, Section 338 has never been invoked before. It’s essentially been overwritten by the Most Favored Nation status required under the World Trade Organization. If Trump had truly substantiated claims against Canada, he could have filed a dispute with the WTO, as Canada has done against the U.S. many times before. 

Others claim Trump has a host of unspoken motivations for these tariffs: Canada, along with the People’s Republic of China, are the only two countries that have previously retaliated against Trump-imposed tariffs. Brazil threatens to become the third after Trump imposed 25 percent tariffs on select Brazilian goods, so he is signaling to both Canada and Brazil that he’ll fight back. Additionally, the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement is under review, and so far negotiations between the U.S. and Canada have collapsed. The Section 338 tariffs are viewed as a form of pressure on Ottawa to concede to American demands. 

The U.S.-Canada relationship has basically been a diplomatic love story for over 150 years. With entwined economies, shared energy infrastructure, and a long history of essentially one national defense apparatus for the two countries, this supposed Canadian discrimination against the U.S. is not only disproven, but generally dubious given their history. 

Note that not every international instigation by Trump is an imagined problem. For example, the U.S.’s unofficial war with Iran is presently one of the most pressing issues globally. Trump claims to have initiated strikes last February to destroy Iran’s national defense forces, especially the development of nuclear weapons. This follows Iran’s historical violations of United Nations Security Council Resolution 2231, spearheaded by the U.S. alongside fellow UN member states to limit the Iranian nuclear project. The U.S. has also designated Iran as the leading state sponsor of terrorism for over 40 years, which speaks to their hostile diplomatic relations. 

This is an issue whose full complexity is debated, difficult to grasp even by experts, and not captured here. Nonetheless, Trump’s rationale for attacking Iran is arguably sound, or at least honest, based on history. In the case of the Section 338 tariffs imposed on Canada however, whose rationale is unsound, the ‘problem’ of discriminatory trade practices they address is effectively not real, making them a distraction. 

Unlike the domestic examples, impacts of such an international-level distraction are consequential. With such closely-knit economies, Canadians may find themselves in greater financial precarity due to increased costs. This alone is troubling, but even more so is Ottawa’s response. 

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney subsequently imposed roughly equivalent tariffs on U.S. goods including metals, clothing, and also dairy products, amounting to approximately $20 billion USD. He announced that Canada will reduce economic reliance on the U.S. moving forward. 

Proportional retaliation is to be expected in trade wars. Carney seeks to prove that Canada will not be complacent, and such a response can be an effective strategy of deterrence and protection from further dispute. Additionally, despite close relations between the two countries, Canadians are worried about their connectedness to Trump’s U.S., expressing concerns about a peaceful order in North America and beyond. Carney is showing audiences at home and abroad that Canada is taking care of business. 

One can give Carney credit while acknowledging the dangerous precedent set by legitimizing a Trumpian distraction. At a larger scope, this indicates to Trump that he sets the standards for what other leaders focus on, and when that includes responding to a made-up problem, it’s no longer null. While Carney’s response was reasonable and decisive, progression of this dispute demonstrates the power of Trump when his objectives vis-a-vis distractions make their way into international politics since Carney has no choice whether to respond. 

Carney’s actions also face criticism. While many laud his defence of Canadian sovereignty, others point to potential ulterior motivations for him to escalate engagement with Trump despite negative economic and social impacts. Whether Carney’s retaliation is necessity or opportunity, Trump initiated this dispute that now threatens proper focus on issues Canadians face at home, just as his domestic spectacles have distracted from issues Americans face at home. 

Now, Americans and Canadians bear costs, and there is a new, impactful issue that continues to warrant response from leaders. Focus is detracted from pressing domestic and existing international matters, potentially leading civilians to feel even more underserved by their governments. This is the kind of sentiment that increases appeal for populist movements, especially if they see themselves as “expendable” under current leaders. As far-right reign grows around the world, such as across Europe and Latin America, people could become more attracted to movements that easily become authoritarian. 

In the interest of democratic order and empowerment, it’s imperative that leaders and their governments maintain focus on what is impacting people in real time while searching for the unprecedented balance of protecting themselves while smartly assessing Trump’s whims to prevent confusing games and serious threats alike.