{"id":104667,"date":"2026-06-26T13:03:24","date_gmt":"2026-06-26T13:03:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/104667\/"},"modified":"2026-06-26T13:03:24","modified_gmt":"2026-06-26T13:03:24","slug":"the-canada-u-s-relationship-is-strained-must-we-wait-for-trump-to-leave-to-mend-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/104667\/","title":{"rendered":"The Canada-U.S. relationship is strained. Must we wait for Trump to leave to mend it?"},"content":{"rendered":"

A bridge can be symbolic, a connection between two places, one reaching out to the other. That’s why the delay and strife over the opening of the Gordie Howe Bridge between Canada and the U.S.<\/a> isn’t just an inconvenience for drivers \u2014 it is a good representation of the state of the relationship between the two countries.<\/p>\n

The Gordie Howe Bridge was set to open in June, but was delayed at the last minute. It has been the target of U.S. President Donald Trump, who contends that it shouldn’t open until the U.S. is “fully compensated for everything we have given (Canada),” despite Canada footing the entire bill for the bridge.<\/a><\/p>\n

The uncertainty over the bridge is indicative of Canada’s current relationship with the U.S., which St. Xavier University professor and U.S.-Canada relations research chair Asa McKercher told Yahoo Canada is currently in a “holding pattern.”<\/p>\n

“Will this bridge indeed open as it’s supposed to or not?” he asked. “Will there actually be a renewal of the CUSMA agreement or not?… It’s kind of which way the wind is blowing. That’s what I mean by holding pattern.”<\/p>\n

Canada’s relationship with the U.S. has hit tumultuous times since Trump entered office again for his second term at the beginning of 2025, with the president referring to Canada as the “51st state,”<\/a> and the prime ministers as its governors since November 2024.<\/p>\n

Along with that rhetoric has come hints of Trump’s plans for Canada. In January 2025, he said he wouldn’t use the U.S. military to annex the country, but instead will use “economic force.” Given that the U.S. is by far Canada’s largest trading partner, making up about 75 per cent of the country’s trade, Trump has a sizeable tool at his disposal, implementing tariffs against Canada’s steel, auto and lumber industries, sometimes as punishment. Trump was no fan of an ad by the government of Ontario which used a Ronald Reagan speech deriding tariffs<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Canada has had a stable and productive relationship with the U.S. since the end of the Second World War, expanding economic ties with the free-trade agreement NAFTA in the 1990s, but the two countries were not always so friendly to each other. McKercher said that Canada was essentially formed as a way to better defend against takeover by the U.S. in the 19th century, when the U.S. had its eyes on Canada’s west and Quebec.<\/p>\n

“Resistance to America was a deep-seated part of Canadian identity,” McKercher said. “The threat of invasion was something that many Canadians took very seriously.”<\/p>\n

OUR CANADA: Canada keeps slipping in world happiness rankings. Why are we so sad? <\/a><\/p>\n

How should Canada move on with antagonistic U.S. relationship?<\/p>\n

Now, the question is how Canada moves forward with an antagonistic president south of the border who openly talks of annexing the country, and has put up road blocks in attempts to work together. The Gordie Howe Bridge is potatoes compared to the bigger files between the two countries, which include renegotiating the free-trade deal CUSMA and co-ordinating defence of the continent as both China and Russia eye the Arctic.<\/p>\n

Those are tough challenges for Canada when facing a hostile U.S. administration. What also makes them especially difficult is the mercurial nature of Trump himself, with his government acting beyond reason. That includes the U.S. breaking the terms of the current CUSMA deal to apply tariffs to Canada, as Carney has pointed out. The U.S. used an emergency act over the alleged trafficking of fentanyl from Canada to the U.S. to justify its tariffs, but U.S. Customs and Border Protection data has shown that less than one per cent of the fentanyl in the U.S. has come from Canada.<\/p>\n

“Can you make a deal with someone who breaks deals all the time?” McKercher asked. “This is the fundamental question.”<\/p>\n

“Can you make a deal with someone who breaks deals all the time?”<\/p>\n

A post-Trump U.S. could be the solution<\/p>\n

There is the chance that the U.S.’s current stance on Canada is primarily linked to Trump, and all Canada has to do is wait out his second term, set to end in 2028, for sanity to return. McKercher said that Canada’s relationship with the U.S. isn’t necessarily completely poisoned, and Canadians have warmed up to the country in the past after turbulence, such as going from the George W. Bush presidency to Barack Obama.<\/p>\n

For now, Carney has committed to ignoring Trump’s 51st state rhetoric, saying that he won’t react to every social media post the president makes.<\/a> Former diplomat Colin Robertson told Yahoo Canada that Canada can bring in the American ambassador from time to time and tell him that there is a red line, that you don’t interfere in Canadian politics. That interference could come to the forefront with the upcoming referendum on separatism in Alberta, Robertson said. U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said he thinks the U.S. should “let (Alberta) come down into the U.S.”<\/p>\n

“No administration has ever done anything like that,” Robertson said. “I do think that (the U.S.) are interfering and I think they will interfere going forward.”<\/p>\n

He noted that U.S. money could be spent on an Alberta separatism campaign, similar to how American money flowed to the Freedom Convoy during the COVID-19 pandemic protests.<\/p>\n

The secret for a peaceful future? Canadians and Americans remain friends<\/p>\n

Robertson believes that Trump truly wants to annex Canada and he will keep looking for ways to make that happen, whether by weakening Canada economically or breaking the country’s unity through Alberta separatism.<\/p>\n

What could hold the relationship together is the interpersonal connections between Canadians and Americans that go beyond the two countries’ governments. Though fewer Canadians are visiting the U.S.<\/a>, Canadians and Americans are friends and family and that will continue despite Trump’s rhetoric. He calls it the “hidden wiring” of the relationship.<\/p>\n

“That will help us weather this storm,” Robertson said. “That’s what will keep the relationship solid going forward.”<\/p>\n

Our Canada is Yahoo Canada’s series examining top-of-mind issues and how to move forward, according to leading experts in the country. <\/p>\n

OUR CANADA: Canada keeps slipping in world happiness rankings. Why are we so sad? <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A bridge can be symbolic, a connection between two places, one reaching out to the other. That’s why…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":104668,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[17,162,31974,111,12261,37516],"class_list":["post-104667","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-canada","tag-canada","tag-donald-trump","tag-gordie-howe-bridge","tag-mark-carney","tag-relationship","tag-the-relationship"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104667","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=104667"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104667\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/104668"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=104667"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=104667"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=104667"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}