Canadians aren’t used to being hated by the United States. Stereotyped, sure. Ignored, absolutely. But hated?
We got a taste of it during Donald Trump’s first term. There were tariffs and lies and lots of weirdness then, too. But it seemed to be more between chummy adversaries, rather than outright enemies.
Well, something happened in the intervening four years. Between rounds of golf and trial dates, Mr. Trump seemed to nurture a white-hot animosity toward Canada, for reasons that escape any balanced mind. The MAGA hordes dutifully hopped on the bandwagon, all riled up over the latest scapegoat to be served up to them.
It’s been bewildering to suddenly be staring at the sharp end of American wrath. Trying to make sense of it has mostly been a waste of time, especially when you consider how often the U.S. President fails to make good on his threats. We’re still waiting on an increase to the global tariff rate to 15 per cent that, more than a month ago, Mr. Trump insisted would be “effective immediately.”
Chart nerds that we are, we set out to visualize Mr. Trump’s anti-Canada turn graphically. We pored through transcripts of Mr. Trump’s public appearances and social-media posts to see if the data can give contours to what we have all felt the past year.
A mystifying fixation
Mr. Trump talks about Canada. A lot. This was the case through his first term as well, but much of that chatter surrounded the renegotiation of the North American free-trade agreement, which involved more than a year of intense talks.
Then Joe Biden took over and Canadians went back to being an afterthought while being assured how special we are. Mr. Biden only mentioned Canada a few times a month during his four years as president, with the exception of a trip to Ottawa in March, 2023.
“We’ll find no better partner, no more reliable ally, no more steady friend,” Mr. Biden said in an address to Parliament during his visit. “Today I say to you, and to all the people of Canada, that you will always, always be able to count on the United States of America. I guarantee it.”
That guarantee turned out to be worth about as much as a degree from Trump University.
Mr. Trump returned to the Oval Office in 2025 with Canada on the brain, mentioning the country as many as 85 times a month in public appearances. But why? Even some of Mr. Trump’s pals at Fox News were perplexed. “One of the nastiest countries to deal with is Canada,” Mr. Trump told a puzzled Laura Ingraham last March.
The Trump rage gauge
Trump 1.0’s Canada fixation wasn’t always as hostile as it would eventually become.
“America is deeply fortunate to have a neighbour like Canada,” he said in 2017. A couple years later he called it a “great honour” to host then-prime-minister Justin Trudeau at the White House, when the USMCA was in the process of being ratified, which Mr. Trump called “the best and most important trade deal ever made by the USA.”
But the numbers show Trump 2.0 hasn’t had much nice to say about Canada. The data we used for this was provided by Roll Call Factba.se, including transcripts of Mr. Trump’s speeches and social media posts. These were then fed into Google Gemini Flash 2.0, a large language model that has been tested for sentiment analysis.
The result is a sentiment index that measures Mr. Trump’s attitude toward Canada at any point in time. It shows a mostly positive relationship from 2017 to 2020, save for the odd spat, such as when Mr. Trump threatened to cut Canada out of the continental trade pact.
The trendline has pointed downward since Mr. Trump’s second inauguration, especially on social media, where lunacy shines the brightest. The index hit a new low in February when he posted a threat to block the opening of the Gordie Howe Bridge unless Canada compensated the U.S. “for everything we have given them.”
He went on to warn that the Chinese could somehow ban hockey being played in Canada and “permanently eliminate the Stanley Cup,” proving there’s no line he won’t cross.
The threat-o-meter
Does it feel like Mr. Trump has insulted you personally 720 times in the year-plus since he took office? Because that’s how it’s gone down, by our count.
Between speeches and Truth Social posts, he’s been a wellspring of ill will, from which a constant supply of threats, complaints, accusations, insults and taunts has flowed northward. His political weapon of choice – the tariff. More than 200 times since last January, Mr. Trump has threatened tariffs when speaking about Canada.
Almost as often, Mr. Trump has accused Canadian industries of unfair dealings and harming American interests. The auto sector, forestry, steel and aluminum, dairy and banks are all frequent targets.
There were well over 100 complaints about security on the Canadian border, which is apparently wide open to terrorists and fentanyl. Another common refrain is that Canada would “cease to exist” without America’s patronage and protection. Or that we, for years, have been “ripping off” or “taking advantage” of the world’s foremost economic superpower.
And a total of 69 times he has threatened Canada with annexation, either by calling us the “51st state,” referring to our leaders as “governor,” or saying the “imaginary” border could simply be erased. A little more than once a week, on average.
Think about that – 159 years since Confederation and not one sitting U.S. president issues a direct challenge to Canada’s existence. Now it happens more often than garbage day.
The credibility chasm
When you’re a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail. And Mr. Trump threatens great hammer blows with tiresome regularity.
His starting position coming into his second term was a blanket 25-per-cent tariff on all Canadian goods flowing to the U.S. These are separate from the industry-specific tariffs that have been slapped on Canadian softwood lumber, autos, steel and aluminum.
He bumped the general tariff rate up to 35 per cent last summer over the non-existent fentanyl problem. Another 10-per-cent increase was threatened over a Government of Ontario ad that accurately represented Ronald Reagan’s opposition to tariffs. Opponents to a U.S. takeover of Greenland, Canada among them, would get you another 10 per cent. Then, after an agreement to expand trade access between Canada and China was struck in January, Mr. Trump went nuclear, threating a 100-per-cent tariff on all Canadian exports to the U.S.
But with Mr. Trump, there’s the rhetoric and then there’s reality, and vast expanses can separate the two. Because his tariffs exclude USMCA-compliant trade, the effective tariff rate on Canadian goods has never exceeded 5 per cent, according to the Penn Wharton Budget Model. In January, it sat at just 3.25 per cent, which does not sound at all menacing in an all-caps tweet sent out in the middle of the night.
Right back atcha
At first, we all thought he was trolling us. “I’m really not trolling,” Mr. Trump said last April. “The only way this thing really works is for Canada to become a state.”
It’s unclear if he knows that not being American is a key part of the Canadian identity. So when the threat of annexation materialized to Canadians’ horror, the national mood soured on the U.S. with tremendous speed.
In mid-2024, before Mr. Trump first floated the idea of tariffs on Canadian goods, 41 per cent of Canadians had an unfavourable view of the U.S., according to the Angus Reid Institute. That number has since peaked at 74 per cent, as of last month.
Less than one-quarter see the U.S. as a friend or ally – a drop of 50 percentage points since 2023. Many Canadians have sworn off American liquor or travel, which Mr. Trump has reportedly called “mean and nasty.”
As Pierre Trudeau said about another polarizing U.S. president, we’ve been called worse things by better people.
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The Decibel podcast
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Commentary
Andrew Coyne: MAGA’s plan for Canada is not annexation, but dismemberment
Jeff Rubin: Enough is enough. Canada must fight tariffs with tariffs
Andrei Sulzenko: As middle powers forge a future without the U.S., Canada walks a tricky path