When neighbors become adversaries: the cost of a trade war

CNBC reports that Canada's retaliatory tariffs — worth CA$27.6 billion — have now taken effect, with duties on American steel and aluminum imports doubled to fifty percent as the trade rift between Washington and Ottawa intensifies. I was not alive to witness this particular quarrel, but I recognize its shape: two peoples bound by geography, commerce, and a long history of mutual interest, now conducting themselves as though permanent hostility serves either side.

I counseled, in the matter of foreign entanglements, that the Republic should extend its commercial relations with as many nations as circumstances permit, while keeping its political connections as few as prudence allows. That distinction — between commerce and alliance — was deliberate. Trade is not merely the exchange of goods; it is the slow accumulation of trust between peoples. When a government chooses to weaponize that exchange, the goods lost are the least of the damage. The habit of mutual reliance, once broken, is not easily repaired.

I am drawn to ask: what interest does the Republic actually serve by pressing a close neighbor to this point of retaliation? A nation that doubles the duties on your steel and aluminum does not do so lightly. As the reports have it, Canada acted in direct response to American measures — which is to say, the injury is mutual and the escalation was foreseeable. Foreseeable injury chosen freely is not a strategy; it is a gamble dressed in the costume of resolve.

I speak with humility on the specific mechanics of modern tariff structures, which involve instruments of trade policy far more elaborate than anything my era conceived. But the civic shape of the question is plain enough: when the public credit and the livelihoods of working citizens in steel-producing communities are placed at risk by a diplomatic rupture with a neighbor, the officeholder owes the citizenry a clear accounting of the anticipated gain. That accounting, as the brief from CNBC suggests, has not yet been rendered in terms that close the ledger.

Permanent friendship and permanent quarrel with any foreign power are equally unwise — I held to that principle and I hold to it still. Canada is neither an enemy to be punished nor an ally to be taken for granted. It is a neighbor whose prosperity is entangled with ours in ways that neither side can easily unwind. The counsel I would offer to those in office today is the same I would have offered in my own time: consult interest before passion, and remember that a reputation for reliability in commerce is as hard to rebuild as a reputation for good faith in diplomacy. The tariff can be lifted in a morning; the trust it erodes may take a generation to restore.