Nobody wants this trade war with Canada

LONDON, Ontario — President Donald Trump seems dead set on escalating his trade war with Canada.

And no one is really sure why.

On Monday, Trump threatened another round of 50 percent tariffs on top of the ones he just implemented — this one targeting Canada’s auto industry, which is so deeply integrated with its American counterpart that large duties would do major damage on both sides of the border.

By Tuesday morning, he had begun musing about renaming Lake Ontario “Lake America” to spite Canadians.

And throughout all of this, he and Vice President JD Vance had renewed their “jokes” about absorbing Canada as the 51st state.

But who is this even for? While the White House’s behavior infuriates Canadians — it is palpable on the ground here in Canada — it’s unusual by Trump standards in that nobody seems to want this conflict but him.

Even the most fringe, or unpopular, foreign policy ideas he’s pursued typically have think tanks devoted to pushing them, or a loyal ally to please, or a voting bloc to rile up before the midterms.

But unlike, say, Trump’s conflicts with Iran, or Cuba, or China, it’s hard to find a highly-visible corner of conservatism that’s the driving force behind a nationalist campaign against Canada.

When I reached out to trade experts, political scientists, and in-the-know Republicans of the pro- and anti- Trump persuasion to try to trace the origins of Trump’s trade war, they had trouble pointing to anything solid.

As one veteran GOP lobbyist put it, there doesn’t seem to be any ideological, business, or Congressional coalition devoted to egging on the trade fight.

Even people sympathetic to Trump’s economic nationalism seem confused: Michael Lind, a populist pundit who last year penned a piece titled “ Why tariffs are good ,” has just written a follow-up titled “The madness of Trump’s Canada trade war.” And while there are some affected industries — autos, steel — they don’t seem to be main characters: United Auto Workers, which backed some prior tariffs, came out strongly against the proposed auto tariffs.

The politics don’t make much sense either.

American voters have long disapproved of Trump’s tariffs on Canadian-made goods, and the current escalation threatens to be the largest and most economically damaging yet.

Republicans sound anxious about its impact on the midterms; several key Senate races are in states right on the Canadian border, and any tariff-related price spike there could supercharge Democrats’ core midterm message about affordability.