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“For us this is not a trade war,” Jamieson Greer said last week.

It’s a statement at odds with how Canadians have viewed the ongoing trade dispute with the United States. It’s not the first time that Greer, Donald Trump’s chief trade negotiator, has made those remarks; he’s also not the first senior American official to dispute the idea that Canada is in a trade war with the United States.

The United States hit us with tariffs; we hit them back with tariffs. In fact, we didn’t just hit them back with tariffs: we banned the sale of American booze in most provinces, banned American companies from many government contracts, and our elected officials encouraged people not to travel to the United States.

Canadians clearly see themselves as being at war with the United States, even if the Americans don’t.

A response framed as protection, not aggression

“For us this is not a trade war. We have domestic supply chains we’re trying to protect and support — that’s what we’re trying to do. It’s not Canada-specific; we’re doing this globally,” Greer said in response to a question from a Canadian journalist as he visited the Iowa State Fair.

With new tariffs looming over Canada — duties on an additional $28 billion worth of goods, with British Columbia, Ontario, and Quebec businesses being the hardest hit — Greer was framing this as a response to Canadian actions.

“If you look at what was put out, the legal basis for those duties, the policy basis for those duties — are related to measures that Canada took against the United States,” Greer said.

“So I’ve got two countries in the world that have retaliated against the United States for trade measures: the People’s Republic of China and Canada. That’s not the kind of company you really want to be running in.”

China probably isn’t the company we want to be keeping, but it is who the Carney government is cozying up to in response to Trump’s tariffs. We have agreed to import 49,000 Chinese electric vehicles, rising to 72,000 in a few years’ time, and we have signed a strategic partnership document with them.

The road less travelled

Over the past couple of days, as the prospect of a deal to avoid new tariffs and lower existing ones has looked less and less likely, I’ve been wondering what would have happened if we had taken the road less travelled.

I’m talking about pivoting toward the United States and away from China instead of doing the opposite.

Trump’s top advisers, in this administration and his first one, have all been hawks on China, wary of their economic prowess. Peter Navarro co-authored the book Death by China more than a decade ago, and Robert Lighthizer’s book No Trade Is Free spends a great deal of time on how America should counter China.

A paper released by Stephen Miran in November 2024 laid out what would become Trump’s tariff policy, and China played a central role in that paper.

Almost all of Trump’s actions on the tariff file have been about strengthening the United States, bringing manufacturing back to that country, and countering China. If Canadian elected leaders had leaned into helping Trump with countering China instead of pivoting to China, we might be in a different place now.

Instead, we allowed the reflexive anti-Americanism that is always just below the surface to rise to the top, overtake our political discourse, and fuel an elbows-up mentality that continues to threaten the trading relationship that so many Canadian jobs depend upon.

Strategy over reflex

Saying that perhaps we should have taken a different path isn’t about surrendering or kissing up to Trump — it’s being strategic for our workers.

It’s worth reminding Canadians that we need this deal more than the Americans do. Our exports to the United States equal roughly 20% of Canada’s GDP, while their exports to us equal less than 1.5% of their GDP.

Pivoting toward the United States, while also continuing to try and expand trade with Europe, Asia, and South America, would have been the wise move. Embracing China at the exact moment the Americans view Beijing as their foremost economic and national-security rival is folly.

Seems we’ve chosen folly and don’t know where to turn now.

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