In The Weekly Wrap Sean Speer, our editor-at-large, analyses for Hub subscribers the big stories shaping politics, policy, and the economy in the week that was.
Trump’s wealth-destroying, freedom-killing tariffs have finally arrived
As I write this week’s edition of The Weekly Wrap, we can anticipate that the Trump administration will impose tariffs on Canada over the weekend—even if we don’t yet know their precise details. If Prime Minister Justin Trudeau follows through with his own promise, we’ll also soon learn the details of Canada’s retaliation. By the time that you’re reading this, there’s a good chance that we’re in a trade war with the United States.
Canada and the U.S. have dealt with various trade irritants over the years. Think softwood lumber or Buy America or the digital sales tax or whatever. But for most of my life, the flow of trade between our two countries has been mostly unimpeded. By virtually any measure, this has been a hugely beneficial arrangement for both of us. In 1988, when we first entered into a bilateral free trade agreement, two-way totalled about $150 billion. Today it stands at just over $920 billion. Millions of jobs on both sides of the border depend on it.
The success of Canada-U.S. free trade has been a catalyst for a broader movement around the world in favour of breaking down trade barriers and opening markets to free trade. It’s not precisely accurate to say that Brian Mulroney and Ronald Reagan gave us modern globalization. But their early leadership makes them formative figures in the era of peace and prosperity that post-dates the end of the Cold War.
The past 40 years haven’t been unblemished. The rise of populism has exposed the extent to which some in our societies were harmed by the free flow of people and goods across global borders. There’s a good case in hindsight that business and political elites underestimated these harms. There’s an even stronger case that they misread the ambitions and intentions of China’s Communist Party when they (wrongly) welcomed it into the global trading system.
But we also shouldn’t overstate things. We’re richer than we would have been if Mulroney and Reagan hadn’t negotiated a free-trade deal. The overwhelming reaction to the tariff threat (discussed in more detail below) is a sign that most of us instinctively understand this. We know that we’re better off because of it.
In light of what’s to come, I could write about the futility of retaliatory tariffs or the economic and cultural problems with the growing consensus in favour of pandemic-style relief payments to Canadian businesses and households. It will be important to litigate those issues in the coming days. But today I can’t quite bring myself to do it.
Trump’s tariffs aren’t just a threat to Canada’s economy. They’re a threat to the principles of free trade and free markets. They’re a threat to the ideas that have shaped conservative political economy for decades.
They propose to have bureaucrats and politicians intrude themselves into the free exchange between Adam Smith’s butcher, brewer, and baker—or the Canadian forester and the American homebuilder. The invariable result is for all parties to be poorer and less free.
On a more personal level, I grew up in an Americanophile’s home and inherited from my father an admiration for America’s conception of commerce, entrepreneurship, and personal responsibility. I’ve always believed that anti-Americanism is among the ugliest parts of the Canadian character.
I’ve since spent the better part of the past five years living here in the U.S. I even have an American child for goodness’ sake. I view myself fundamentally as a North American.
It’s crummy therefore that not only has the Trump administration proactively targeted Canada for tariffs, but it’s penalized us more than China. This is a far cry from When Irish Eyes Are Smiling.
It’s unclear what’s going to happen over the coming days and weeks. But it does feel like we’re living through a big moment. Something has changed. I don’t know if we’ll ever quite go back.
We’re all free traders now
Previous editions of the Weekly Wrap have warned about the rise of Canadian economic nationalism in the face of Trump’s tariff threats. As in the past, one can envision the imposition of American tariffs leading to calls for putting up our own barriers to shield Canadian businesses and workers from global competition. I still think that, on balance, that’s the most likely scenario. And a bad one.
But one can make an alternative argument that the public’s alarm about losing preferential access to the U.S. market is a sign that free trade arguments have won. Canadians have been imbued with an inchoate sense that tariffs and other forms of protectionism are harmful to their livelihoods. Even a poll commissioned by the Canadian Labour Congress—no friend of free trade or free markets—found that 8 in ten Canadians believe that impending U.S. tariffs will produce economic harm.
If Trump’s tariffs are bad, then ostensibly tariffs more generally are damaging to individuals and the economy as a whole.
Even if one accepts that we’re prone to cognitive dissonance on these issues, it at least seems like an opportunity. There’s a chance to connect the dots for Canadians between their instinctive opposition to Trump’s tariffs and the broader case for economic freedom.
If tariffs and protectionism generate economic loss, then we ought to scrutinize how our own system of protectionism—including tariffs, subsidies, quotas, and other barriers to free exchange—creates its own harm.
To be clear, this isn’t an argument for a surrender to the Trump administration so much as a chance to use the extraordinary reaction that they’ve induced as a learning opportunity. A means to communicate to Canadians that their instincts are right: they personally understand the benefits of free trade and free markets even if they don’t always think in those terms.
It’s a cruel joke that human nature is such that we often only realize the value of things after their taken from us. The overwhelming reaction in Canada—on both the Left and the Right—to Trump’s tariffs affirms the old axiom. Just as we’re on cusp of losing it, we’re all free traders now.
Ontario Conservative Leader Doug Ford meets with supporters during his campaign launch in Windsor, Ont., Jan. 29, 2025. Dax Melmer/The Canadian Press.
Doug Ford is—unfortunately—reading the room right
As Ontario embarks on a provincial election campaign, there’s a strong sense that Doug Ford and the Progressive Conservatives will convincingly win their third election in a row. If so, it will cement him as one of the country’s most electorally successful Conservative politicians over the past several decades.
There will however invariably be a gap between his electoral accomplishments and his generally underwhelming (from a conservative viewpoint) governing record.
It raises an interesting question about Ontario’s political culture, including among conservatives. Despite Ford’s failure to deliver a strong conservative policy agenda, there’s been virtually no agitation on his political Right.
There have been no major defections from his cabinet or caucus, no grassroots movements to challenge him, and the last election saw two right-wing insurgency parties combine for less than 5 percent of the vote.
This absence of a right flank in Ontario isn’t new either. In the three federal elections between 1993 and 2000, the Reform Party and the Canadian Alliance won a total of just three seats in the province and consistently underperformed in Ontario relative to their national averages.
Ontario conservatives’ mix of apathy and pragmatism seemingly tilts them in a more institutional direction than outright agitation.
Maybe it’s the influence of traditional Toryism in the province. Maybe Ford’s personal populism has co-opted the voters who might otherwise be inclined to protest. Or maybe too many of us are dependent on the state for anything too radical.
Whatever the explanation, it’s safe to assume that Ford is counting on Ontario conservatives to fall into line. If the past is prologue, he’s likely to be proven right.
Sean Speer is The Hub's Editor-at-Large. He is also a university lecturer at the University of Toronto and Carleton University, as well…
