The trade deficit with Canada that’s upset Trump so much is due to crude the U.S. buys at a discount for the Midwest. ‘It’s the only oil they can use’

Canada might seem an unlikely target for a U.S. trade war .

No country on Earth buys as much from the United States as its northern neighbor.

For American farmers, Canada is second only to Mexico as an export market.

A North American trade pact — negotiated by President Donald Trump during his first term — means that most American products enter Canada duty-free.

Rankings of the world’s most open economies usually put Canada near the top.

But when Trump looks at Canada, he says, he sees a predator out to cheat the United States and strangle its industries.

America has been “ripped off for 50 years by Canada,” the president declared Saturday when asked if he was considering pulling out of the three-way agreement he signed with the leaders of Canada and Mexico in late 2018.

Relations between the U.S. and Canada have deteriorated since their latest trade talks collapsed Aug.

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Trump has goaded Canada’s leaders with personal attacks and portrayed the longtime U.S. ally as weak.

After alienating the Canadian public last year by repeatedly floating the idea of making Canada the 51st state, he signed an executive order last month directing the federal government to change Lake Ontario’s name to “Lake America.” Each side blamed the other for the failed negotiations.

Trump slapped 50% tariffs on $20 billion worth of Canadian products three weeks ago to protest what he described as discrimination against U.S. auto, dairy and alcoholic beverage exports.

When Canada’s government retaliated Tuesday with tariffs of its own, the president moved to ban imports of the dairy byproduct whey, most alcoholic beverages and motorcycles and mopeds from Canada, though he said several products, including toilet paper, bedsheets and fishing rods, would be removed as tariff targets.

Landing on the list of nations with allegedly unfair trade policies is a jarring turn of events for Canada, a country that built its economy around international commerce.