Donald Trump’s Tariff-Mongering Has Unified Canada. He Has No Idea What He Has Unleashed.

Trump’s tariffs have Canadians stepping up to protect our country’s sovereignty. The right choices now will put us on a path to a green economy and healthy, caring, resilient communities.

This Hour Has 22 Minutes/YouTube

It took an autocratic, bumbling sociopath, a convicted felon and proudly confessed repeat sexual predator, to get it done. But credit where due, as long as it’s suitably backhanded: Donald Trump is doing a great job of unifying Canadians.

It’s a very good bet that he has no idea what quiet, persistent determination and resolve he has unleashed.

Soon enough—maybe just soon enough—our attention will turn from the outrage of a 25% U.S. tariff to the optimism of solutions that are within our control. And when that happens, we may soon look back on this moment as the historic pivot point where we finally began freeing our economy from fossil fuels, once and for all.

Trump isn’t known for thinking things through. Or for, y’know, thinking. But if his brain stem superpower is to sniff out any weakness he perceives and exploit it to the max, he’s about to be disappointed.

This weekend, Canadians are discovering (or, for many of us, rediscovering) that when you’re up against a schoolyard bully and finally push back, the sheer surprise can stop them in their tracks. Even if they don’t back down right away, the newfound sense of power—that there’s a win to be had if we all stand together—is yours to keep.

But in this fight, it’s still a toss-up whether we’ll win or lose the bigger battle. As we set out to protect Canada’s economic security, we can either chase the fast-fading mirage of a growing, thriving oil and gas sector, or seize the moment to build the green economy the vast majority of us want.

You won’t hear that practical, affordable alternative from the foreign-owned oil and gas companies that dominate Canada’s oilpatch—some of the same fossil interests that invested nearly $500 million in Trump’s re-election—or from the provincial politicians they’ve bought and paid for.

“Oil interests and their political mouthpieces have been quick to capitalize on this crisis with calls to fast-track B.C.’s liquified natural gas (LNG) exports to Asia and even resurrect long-dead pipelines like Energy East or Northern Gateway,” Climate Action Network Canada wrote Friday, in its response to the tariff announcement. But “while this industry plays the ‘Made in Canada’ patriotism card when it benefits them, the reality is that Canada’s oil and gas industry is largely U.S.-owned [pdf].”

So ultimately, “these projects are backed by billionaires and Wall Street investment firms who are close allies of and donors to Trump [and] eager to embrace Canada as the 51st state and prioritize the interests of their majority-U.S. financiers and shareholders.”

Which means that, as the tariff war plays out, and the ensuing propaganda wars pick up speed, we’ll all have to listen closely for the legitimate solutions that support our sovereignty, build up our communities, and drive down our climate pollution along the way.

And then we’ll have to distinguish those solutions from the dead-end traps that do the opposite.

Fighting Back with Humour—But Nobody’s Laughing

As any of us should have expected, the first onslaught in the fight against the Trump tariffs was humour. (Spelled with the ‘u’. Because of course it is.)

A hilarious Buy Canadian sketch by CBC’s This Hour Has 22 Minutes, possibly held over from a past trade war, has gone semi-viral over the last half-week.

“Americans choose most expensive way possible to discover what goods made in Canada,” headlined The Beaverton.

And Charlie Angus, the Northern Ontario Member of Parliament who’s helping to circulate the Pledge for Canada sign-on, had this to say about the unique tag for Elon Musk’s swasticars that he came up with during a Jan. 31 media conference:

Did I actually refer to Elon Musk's Telsa as a "douche panzer"? And at the parliament of Canada's press gallery?

I wonder how that term slipped out. But yes, I'd hammer him with tariffs.

I don't like fascists.

But it would be a grave tactical error to assume that anyone is laughing at the chaos Trump is trying to foment because it’s funny. We’re mocking it because it’s absurd.

Polite, open-hearted Canadians booed the American anthem at two hockey games this weekend, one in Ottawa and the other in the heart of oil country in Calgary. ABC and Fox News picked up video of the loud moment in Ottawa. (As a matter of policy, our news organization only links to legitimate, verified sources, so we don’t publish links to Fox.)

A Real and Present Danger

But laughing and booing are just the start. We face a real and present danger, we’re taking it seriously, and we need our allies in the U.S. to take it seriously, too.

Shauna Sylvester, founder and lead convenor of Urban Climate Leadership, says most of the people she knows in the U.S. don’t seem to be following the tariff story.

If they are talking about anything it’s Trump’s reference to Canada becoming the 51st state, which they see as a funny and empty threat meant to divert attention and feed the 24/7 news cycle. But those few who are following the situation will know that Trump has declared war on its closest neighbour, partner, and friend. We are facing a new form of Manifest Destiny wrapped in economic aggression.

In an e-interview with The Energy Mix Weekender, she had solid advice on the steps Canadians can take in the six months before the tariffs are expected to drive our economy into a recession.

Local governments need to look at their collective buying power to transition more quickly to clean energy and reinforce economic development that supports the health and resilience of their communities. We need to consider how we create circles of care around those businesses and industries that are going to be hardest hit and advocate for programs that support their employees.

We need to promote local businesses through Buy Canadian initiatives. We need to use our networking power to support mutual aid networks like those that were created through COVID. And we need to support our provincial and federal civil servants and leaders as they work to support our communities and industries.

‘Freedom Wines’: Canadians Are Stepping Up

Already, the signs of a unified Canadian response are breaking out everywhere. (Fast enough that this delayed edition of The Weekender is bound to be out of date by the time you read it.)

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau led off Saturday night, with a pitch-perfect response to the tariff announcement that combined determination and resolve with an appeal to “the most successful economic, military, and security partnership the world has ever seen.” His overall message to Americans: We didn’t ask for this. But we can’t and won’t back down.

At least five provincial governments—Newfoundland and Labrador, Nova Scotia, Ontario, Manitoba, and British Columbia—pulled U.S. alcohol off their liquor store shelves. B.C. Premier David Eby targeted the boycott at Republican-held “red state” wines and “directed the B.C. government and Crown corporations on Saturday to buy Canadian goods and services over American ones,” CBC reports.

"The Americans are bigger, but if we don't stand up for ourselves, they will just keep coming back for more," Eby said.

And MP Angus urged:

Time to turn off the taps. Not a single bottle of American wine, beer, or bourbon should be sold anywhere in Canada.

From here on, I will only drink "freedom" wines from Canada, France, or Spain. As for American beer? It's shit anyways.

Our local city councillor and Planning and Housing Committee chair, the inimitable and indomitable Jeff Leiper, announced he was cancelling a trip to a conference in the U.S. Citing the “entirely spurious reasons” for Trump’s “incalculably damaging” action, Jeff wrote on LinkedIn:

I had planned to attend NACTO (National Association of City Transportation Officials)’s Designing Cities conference in DC this year but I can’t in good conscience spend Ottawa taxpayers’ money in the U.S. right now. I hope my colleagues and peers across the country will join me in staying home and refraining from U.S. travel for a while.

And former Bank of Canada governor and UN climate finance envoy Mark Carney—who will become prime minister, at least briefly, if he wins his current run for the federal Liberal leadership—told the BBC that Canadians didn’t ask for this fight, but we’re ready for it.

“President Trump probably thinks that we in Canada will cave in,” Carney said. “But we’re going to stand up to a bully. We’re not going to back down. We’re united, and we will retaliate.”

Sure, we’re seeing the odd traitor—like the snowboarder-turned-tech-bro who now runs Canada’s second-biggest publicly-traded company—parrot Trump’s line that the tariffs are about the supposed flow of fentanyl and illegal immigrants from Canada to the U.S. But it’s easy enough to quantify the less than 1.5% of total illegal migration that U.S. agents documented and the 19.5 kilograms (43 pounds) of fentanyl they seized at the Canadian border last year. That’s almost exactly the weight of one 19.1-kilo curling rock, according to our friend and sharp-eyed reader Gavin Pitchford. (Another online source puts total fentanyl seizures at 4,437 grams. So, one-fifth of a curling rock per year?)

You’d think math wouldn’t be so hard for the CEO of Shopify. But I guess that’s just where we are right now.

A Rude Shock for American Voters

You know things are getting weird when we’re forced to agree with the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal, best known for persistently denying the reality and urgency of the climate crisis. But once again, backhanded credit where due: “If a North American trade war persists,” the editors write, “it will qualify as one of the dumbest in history.”

What the WSJ isn’t saying out loud is that the tariffs will be a rude shock for any U.S. voter who believed Trump’s claim that he would make life more affordable—remember when he promised to cut grocery prices on Day One?—rather than driving up the cost of everything.

Now, the tariffs will make the goods Americans import more expensive, while the necessary countermeasures from Canada, Mexico, and China will put American jobs and household incomes at risk. In contrast to his election campaign pitch, Trump wasn’t bothered.

“It will all be worth the price that must be paid,” he wrote, in an all-caps rant on his ironically-named Truth Social platform.

How widely will the pain be felt?

Based on 2016 data, the World Economic Forum identified 33 U.S. states—including six of the seven swing states in last year’s election—that count Canada as their biggest export trade partner, and 15 for which we’re the biggest source of imports. A more recent map from Visual Capitalist has Canada as the biggest import partner for 23 states, including a big swath of Republican-voting red states.

And of course, those impacts have a lot to do with oil and electricity exports from Canada to the U.S. Heatmap has details on the risks for U.S. refineries and power utilities if the trade war deepens.

Small wonder that the CNN TV network declared the tariffs a $1.4-trillion gamble with the U.S. economy.

This strategy has the potential to upend the thing many voters care about the most: the economy and the cost of living.

…[The tariffs] could backfire, lifting already-high consumer prices at the grocery store, rocking the shaky stock market, or killing jobs in a full-blown trade war.

“Only Trump can fix it,” his campaign insisted. Too true. But evidently not in the way they wanted people to think.

The Shock Everyone Needed?

There’s no silver lining here, and none of us should be trying to reach for one.

But the depth, breadth and unusually high volume (oh, those boos) of Canadians’ reaction to the tariffs could be the beginning of something different. Of building the future of health, resilience, mutual aid, and clean energy that authors like Shauna Sylvester and Conor Curtis envision, rather than the fossil-dependent dead end the U.S.-based industry has in store for us.

This could also be a pivotal moment of promise and change for anyone in the U.S. who hasn’t fallen all the way down the MAGA/QAnon rabbit hole.

Author Anne Lamott insists the U.S. resistance is out there, but it will not be rushed.

“Along with half of America, I have been feeling doomed, exhausted, and quiet,” she writes. “A few of us, approximately 75 million people, see the future as a desert of harshness.”

But that “stark desert is dotted with growing things”—from individual acts of compassion and kindness, to “the profound caring for victims of the fires, and providing refuge for immigrants and resisting the idea that they are dangerous or unwanted, and reaching out to queer nieces, siblings, and strangers and helping resist the notion that their identities are unworthy, let alone illegal.”

All small acts, for now. “But one thing that characterizes deserts is the stillness, until the wind blows. And, boy, when it blows, it’s like an organ,” Lamott says. “How or when will the wind start up? How could we know? But it always does.”

Bill Clinton-era labour secretary Robert Reich compares the nightmare now afflicting his country to the racist brutality that brought about the U.S. Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act…and the muckraking journalists whose investigative reporting in the era of the robber barons brought on an age of more progressive policies.

“The Trump regime will harm many innocent people. It already has.” But “there will be a reckoning,” Reich writes. “When we see and absorb its horrors, there will be mass outrage, and we will mobilize against it. Not all of us, of course, but the great majority.” And so, he urges his readers: “Be well. Be safe. We will prevail.”

---

Mitchell Beer traces his background in renewable energy and energy efficiency back to 1977, in climate change to 1997. Now he and the rest of the Energy Mix team scan 1,200 news headlines a week to pull together The Energy Mix, The Energy Mix Weekender, and our weekly feature digests, Cities & Communities and Heat & Power.

---

Chart of the Week

Ember

---

Trump’s Tariff Threats Could Prompt Canada to Break Free from Oil

Oil Companies, Investors Talk Down Trump’s ‘Drill, Baby, Drill’ as Prices Stay Low, Exploration Budgets Shrink

Global Green Energy Trade Will Continue Without Trump, Bypass the U.S., Analysts Say

World’s Biggest Pumped Storage Project Hits Full Capacity in China

Massive California Battery Fire Raises Safety Concerns, But Experts Call it an Outlier

Ontario Smart Thermostats to Cut Peak Demand by 200 MW This Summer

Hydrogen Projects Delayed, Cancelled as ‘Hype’ Meets Reality

Batteries Offers Best, Cheapest Path to Energy Resilience for Rural Ottawa, Report Finds

New Guide Helps Cities Put Nature on the Balance Sheet as ‘Essential Infrastructure’

---

The fracking frenzy in B.C and Texas is leading to record-breaking earthquakes (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation)

Trump opened the ‘valve’ on California water. It will probably be wasted. (Washington Post)

Record surge of clean energy in 2024 halts China’s CO2 rise (Carbon Brief)

Trump’s offshore wind assault threatens factory jobs in GOP districts (Canary Media)

Shell to post lower 2024 profit after year of faltering oil demand (The Standard)

China's new energy storage capacity exceeds 70 million KW (Xinhua)

Heat pumps keep widening their lead on gas furnaces (Canary Media)

Australian researchers set world record with kesterite solar cell (PV Magazine)

Indigenous Environmental Network Celebrates Milestone While Acknowledging Unjust Practices in Arctic Geoengineering (Indigenous Environmental Network)

Spain warns far right is exploiting anger over climate disasters (Financial Times)

‘Catastrophic’ 2023 lake outburst in India driven by glacial melt and permafrost thaw (Carbon Brief)

Man Struggles To Measure Wind Speed Amid 190km/h Gusts In Ireland (NDTV)