Trumpism Is Backfiring

Ezra Klein opens by arguing that Canada reveals the transformation of America’s international image under President Donald Trump. In August, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney walked away from trade talks with the Trump administration despite the potential economic damage, saying Canada was becoming stronger and less dependent on the United States. Trump has threatened new tariffs and repeatedly suggested that Canada should become the “51st state.” The two countries are now moving toward a January 1 deadline for massive new tariffs. Chrystia Freeland, a former Canadian deputy prime minister, finance minister and foreign minister, says the shift in Canadian public opinion is dramatic. A Canadian poll found that 41 percent of Canadians now regard the United States as an enemy, while a Pew poll found that more Canadians view China favorably than the U.S. In 2023, Canadians saw America as an ally and China as an adversary; Freeland attributes the reversal to Trump’s tariffs and attacks on Canadian sovereignty. She says the issue is no longer merely a trade dispute: Canada believes its national independence is being challenged.

Asked how Trump’s second administration differs from his first, Freeland says Trump himself has not fundamentally changed. During the first term, he imposed the Section 232 steel and aluminum tariffs on allies, insulted foreign leaders and refused to endorse a G7 statement supporting the rules-based international order. Freeland recalls being present when Trump threw candies at Angela Merkel as he left the meeting. Merkel, she says, handled him as she had handled Vladimir Putin: calmly, rationally and without either flattering or provoking him. Freeland rejects the strategy of trying to win Trump over with extravagant praise or symbolic gifts. During the first North American trade negotiations, she repeatedly used the line, “We do not escalate and we do not back down.” Her recommended approach is to remain steady: do not suck up to Trump, do not let him bully you, and do not raise the emotional temperature. She says the current administration is different because Trump’s staff are more likely to treat him as a historical figure whose impulses should be accelerated, while the Republican Party and Congress appear less willing to restrain him.

Freeland acknowledges that a trade war is asymmetric: Canada’s economy is smaller and more dependent on trade, so the pain will be greater for Canadians. But she argues that tariffs on Canadian goods also directly damage the United States, especially because Canada mostly exports intermediate goods used by American companies. She describes aluminum as “electricity in solid form.” Since Quebec produces aluminum with inexpensive hydroelectric power, a 50 percent aluminum tariff effectively makes a large amount of electricity 50 percent more expensive. The Canadian aluminum exported to the U.S., she says, embodies electricity equivalent to more than 450 data centers or roughly half a dozen Hoover Dams. Other examples include softwood lumber, which becomes houses and tables, and potash, which becomes fertilizer for American farmers. Canada is also the United States’ largest market—larger than China, Japan and the United Kingdom combined—so Canadian retaliation can matter even though Canada is smaller. Freeland explains that Canada’s strategy is to avoid taxing intermediate goods that its own manufacturers need, target easily substitutable products, and apply pressure to politically important U.S. constituencies. In 2018, Canada targeted Smucker’s jam, made in Ohio; Senator Sherrod Brown eventually asked Canada to ease off because his constituents were being hurt. A Republican Senate candidate in Michigan has since filmed himself drinking Labatt beer while criticizing the tariff war.

Freeland says the first-term conflict did escalate more than Americans may remember. The night before Canada imposed dollar-for-dollar retaliation, Trump called Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, threatened the destruction of the Canadian economy and demanded that Trudeau fire Freeland, whom he called a “nasty woman.” Canada held its position, and the countries ultimately reached a new agreement. Trump called the resulting deal the best trade deal ever; it was also supported by Nancy Pelosi and Sherrod Brown. Freeland attributes the resolution partly to Republican allies and officials who retained independent power, including John McCain, Chuck Grassley and U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer. Lighthizer had tense exchanges with Freeland but understood that the United States needed a trade agreement with Canada. Klein argues that Trump’s first-term negotiations still centered mainly on trade, whereas the second term is more explicitly about dominance, tribute and Canada’s refusal to become an American state. Freeland agrees that the drive for domination was always present but says it has now become explicit. In her formulation, Trump’s Washington offers other countries a choice between becoming a vassal or fighting to be treated as an equal; Canada has chosen the latter.

Klein and Freeland argue that coercive U.S. policy is encouraging countries to reduce their dependence on America. Canada is pursuing closer ties with China and discussing whether it could become an associate member of the European Union. Freeland says Canadian interest in Europe began during the first Trump administration, after Canada and the EU concluded CETA, a trade agreement that on paper goes further than USMCA because it includes mutual access to government procurement. She and EU Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmström even used a Lord of the Rings code: Washington was Mordor, Europeans were elves and Canadians were hobbits. Freeland says the postwar American system worked because the U.S. helped make its allies stronger and more prosperous rather than treating them as potential vassals. America invested in the reconstruction of Germany and Japan, listened to allies and treated their prosperity and security as mutually beneficial. Under Trump, countries are trying to disentangle themselves economically and militarily. Europe, Canada and Ukraine are seeking alternatives to Starlink, while countries may hesitate to buy F-35s whose operation is controlled by the Pentagon. Freeland calls this a strategic gift to China: citizens of long-standing U.S. allies increasingly see America as a greater threat than China. Klein cites a 98-country Democracy Perception Index in which the U.S. was the fifth-worst perceived country, just ahead of Iran and two places behind Russia, while China was viewed favorably overall.

Freeland agrees that Trump has been extraordinarily beneficial to China but warns against accepting Chinese propaganda that presents China as a benign, rules-based alternative. China did undermine the global trading system through intentional overcapacity and supply-chain dominance, she says, and it seeks to change the status of Taiwan. It has also used economic coercion against countries: it punished Norway after the Nobel Peace Prize went to a Chinese writer by restricting salmon exports, punished Lithuania over its relationship with Taiwan, and detained two Canadians after Canada arrested Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou under its extradition treaty with the United States. The hosts distinguish China’s predictable authoritarian coercion from Trump’s erratic behavior. Klein says countries may prefer dealing with a predictable predator because they know what it wants and what its likely response will be, even though that system is a regression toward older, bloodier geopolitics. Freeland says China resembles what an effective Trump administration would like to become: a predatory hegemon that is skilled at mercantilism and at running a rent-seeking, kleptocratic state. She fears that America itself could shift from a broadly rules-based market economy toward a kleptocracy in which political connections determine who prospers. The danger is not only international. A corrupt system can enrich individual rent seekers while making the country poorer, less free and less secure.

Klein and Freeland compare America’s business leaders with the Russian oligarchs Freeland observed after the Soviet Union’s collapse. Russia’s oligarchs believed they could control Vladimir Putin, whom they saw as less sophisticated than themselves, but Putin eventually consolidated power over them. Freeland says that should caution American plutocrats who think they can control Trump. Klein argues that many business leaders did not necessarily believe they could control Trump; they believed they could do business with him, especially after opposing the Biden administration’s taxes, regulations, antitrust efforts and progressive cultural politics. They disagree somewhat about what motivated Silicon Valley and other wealthy executives. Klein says many were reacting less to working-class populism than to progressive employees and institutions that challenged their status, demanded statements such as Black Lives Matter endorsements, or organized internally. Freeland says status resentment mattered, but so did material interests: progressive politics could lead to taxes, regulation and antitrust enforcement. Both see a feedback loop in which capitulation is rewarded. Companies that accommodate Trump may receive government contracts or favorable treatment, while companies that resist can be labeled supply-chain risks. Freeland thinks the tide may be turning, pointing to Jamie Dimon’s September 28 Wall Street Journal call for a major U.S.-European economic agreement. Klein says the real test will be whether business leaders openly call Trump corrupt and harmful, rather than merely advocating better trade policy without criticizing him.

Freeland says Canada does not need a completed agreement before January 1; it needs the United States to pause additional tariffs while both sides negotiate. A plausible broader agreement would have America acknowledge that trade with its allies is mutually beneficial and then work with the EU, the U.K., Canada and other partners on a common, serious approach to China. She says this should not be framed simply as punishment of China, but as a way for allied economies to prosper without dangerous dependence on Beijing. She also wants the other democracies to retaliate collectively against U.S. tariffs rather than merely issue statements of solidarity. Canada, Mexico, the EU, Japan, South Korea and Australia could match American tariffs dollar for dollar while remaining open to negotiations. Within the United States, she wants American businesses—especially the auto industry—and more Republicans to tell the White House that the policy is damaging. Freeland points to Grassley’s resistance during the first Trump administration and says polling showing Americans favoring Canada’s counter-tariffs suggests that such resistance could be popular. She closes by recommending Ursula K. Le Guin’s “The Dispossessed,” Iain M. Banks’s “The Player of Games” and Margaret Atwood’s “Book of Lives,” saying science fiction is useful for thinking about AI, geopolitical disorder and what it means to be human.