{"id":183223,"date":"2026-08-26T00:10:10","date_gmt":"2026-08-26T00:10:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/183223\/"},"modified":"2026-08-26T00:10:10","modified_gmt":"2026-08-26T00:10:10","slug":"the-whole-world-is-watching-as-canada-stands-up-to-trump","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/183223\/","title":{"rendered":"The whole world is watching as Canada stands up to Trump"},"content":{"rendered":"

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

U.S. President Donald Trump looks toward Prime Minister Mark Carney as they raise their glasses during a toast at a working dinner in Gyeongju, South Korea, in October, 2025.Adrian Wyld\/The Canadian Press<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not sure anyone has quite wrapped their mind around the significance of what just happened. Or at least, not in Canada we haven\u2019t. <\/p>\n

But the rest of the world has taken note. A sampling of the headlines:<\/p>\n

Canada walked away from Trump: Could the EU ever do the same?<\/a> <\/p>\n

Europeans should learn from Canadian courage<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Canada Digs In as More Countries Stand Up to Trump<\/a>. <\/p>\n

The Moose That Roared<\/a>.<\/p>\n

And it\u2019s true. Canada was already the only country other than China to have responded to Donald Trump<\/a>\u2019s tariffs with retaliatory tariffs<\/a> of its own. It is now the only country to have outright defied the President, refusing to yield to American demands or agree to U.S. tariffs.<\/p>\n

Contrast this with how other countries have responded to American threats. Japan, which relies on the U.S. for 3 per cent of its GDP, nevertheless agreed<\/a> to a 15-per-cent baseline U.S. tariff \u2013 down from the 25-per-cent tariff it was facing otherwise \u2013 while committing to invest US$550-billion in the U.S., increase purchases of U.S. energy and agricultural products, and provide greater access for American cars.<\/p>\n

Trump made new trade deals with countries around the world. Here\u2019s how they played out<\/a><\/p>\n

The European Union, with an exposure to the U.S. similar to Japan\u2019s and an economy two-thirds the size of the U.S.\u2019s, likewise buckled, making a long list of concessions<\/a> \u2013 no tariffs on U.S. industrial goods, wider access for U.S. agricultural products, and increased purchases of U.S. energy, AI chips, and defence equipment, in addition to US$600-billion in investment \u2013 \u201cin return for\u201d agreeing to U.S. tariffs of 15 per cent. <\/p>\n

Similarly craven postures were adopted by South Korea (U.S. exports: 7 per cent of GDP) and Britain (2 per cent of GDP), for similarly meagre rewards. <\/p>\n

Even China cut a deal, albeit on more favourable terms<\/a>.<\/p>\n

And yet it is Canada, of all places, that walked away, rather than pay Donegeld: Canada, with an economy one-twelfth the size of America\u2019s, and dependent on U.S. trade for fully 20 per cent of it. Little wonder it has caught the world\u2019s attention. It is a remarkably nervy bit of bluff-calling.<\/p>\n

Of course, you could argue we had no choice. If our exposure to the U.S. is greater, so are the stakes. The Trump administration\u2019s trade policy toward other countries is primarily mercantilistic: It seeks some combination of more tariff revenue and less import competition. Toward Canada it is openly imperialistic. It wants to use tariffs and other economic measures to force us, in Mr. Trump\u2019s words, to \u201cfall into line,\u201d if not to surrender our sovereignty altogether.<\/p>\n

Trump mulls renaming Lake Ontario to \u2018Lake America\u2019 as trade war escalates<\/a><\/p>\n

When your back is against the wall, it tends to stiffen the spine. Perhaps Mr. Trump expected Canada to fold like the others, but the extravagance of the U.S. demands made that impossible. It is difficult to see how any government, of whatever party, could have accepted the terms presented to us, not least because there was no guarantee we would receive anything in return: as it has since been reported<\/a>, the U.S. reserved the right to raise tariffs in future to whatever level they please, notwithstanding anything in the deal.<\/p>\n

So we are headed for heavy weather. It is highly unlikely that Canada will give in, no matter what punishment is meted out to us. And yet it is hard to see how the Trump administration could yield, either, precisely because of the admiring notice we have been getting elsewhere. It is true what they say: In defying Mr. Trump, we are setting an example for the rest of the world. Therefore it is likely he will try to make an example out of us. <\/p>\n

This is about much more than trade, in other words, more even than our existence as a sovereign state. Fate has assigned us the role, as it has other nations from time to time, of a kind of Horatius at the Gate,<\/a> the one who \u201ckeeps the bridge\u201d when all the rest have fled. <\/p>\n

Our fight, it is no exaggeration to say, is the civilized world\u2019s fight. It is a fight for reason and comity in the affairs of nations, against an administration whose worldview, and behaviour, is increasingly that of an aggressive dictatorship, in all its crudeness and its thuggery. <\/p>\n

Mr. Trump, as the Prime Minister has said, aims to \u201cbreak us,\u201d a phrase with historic echoes<\/a>. He has to now, or others will follow our lead. If he succeeds, then the world will be governed by nothing but force in the end, in trade as in other matters. But if we prevail, then \u201cbroad and sunlit uplands\u201d<\/a> must surely await.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Open this photo in gallery: U.S. President Donald Trump looks toward Prime Minister Mark Carney as they raise…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":183224,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[98],"tags":[3679,3118,3680,111,3119],"class_list":["post-183223","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mark-carney","tag-andrew-coyne","tag-column","tag-coyne","tag-mark-carney","tag-opinion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183223","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=183223"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183223\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/183224"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=183223"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=183223"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=183223"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}