The mystery of Canadian ire, revealed

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Pete Hoekstra doesn’t understand why Canadians are so upset. The U.S. ambassador seems to think this nation a bunch of inexplicable malcontents for reacting as it has to President Donald Trump’s threats and bluster. After all, other nations got tariffed as well.

“You’ve got folks who are doing everything they can to get the Canadian public to rally against America,” he said in an interview with Radio-Canada that aired this week. “It just, that doesn’t make any sense.”

It would appear that Mr. Hoekstra hasn’t been paying attention. So in the interest of being good hosts – even to a guest who seems keen to channel his boss’s aggressive boorishness – allow us to explain why a popular graffito in the country now depicts a crossed-out U.S. flag with the words “There is no enemy like a friend betrayed.”

For decades, Canadians and Americans enjoyed the world’s longest undefended border. The countries were sometimes at odds, but ties gradually deepened. The two long-standing allies protect North America together and a continental free-trade agreement – which is up for review this summer – interwove the two economies. Billions of dollars in goods and services cross the border daily.

So it came as something of a shock when Mr. Trump started musing about annexing Canada. Did the 51st state comments start as a joke? Possibly. But he backed up his talk with the blunt force of economic coercion. Pressure tactics included harmful tariffs on steel, aluminum and copper. Automobiles and parts were tariffed. Emergency tariffs were imposed in response to a hugely exaggerated fentanyl smuggling problem.

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To be clear, these are unlike the tariffs Mr. Trump put on other countries. In fact, the best hypothesis behind his “Liberation Day” tariffs is that they were based in part on the size of the U.S. trade deficit with each specific target country.

So it’s not particularly relevant for Mr. Hoekstra to note that other countries got tariffed as well. With Canada, Mr. Trump added a host of additional attacks. And these tariffs on Canada stayed in place even after the United States Supreme Court struck down Mr. Trump’s Liberation Day levies.

Look at the whole picture and it’s clear that Mr. Trump would like to weaken Canada economically, which would make it easier for him to assert authority over the country.

According to a Globe and Mail analysis, he is obsessed with Canada, mentioning the country publicly dozens of times a month. And the grievances get weirder and weirder. In February he threatened to block the opening of the Gordie Howe Bridge, trying to extort a half-ownership of the new crossing even though Canada paid its entire cost.

This economic hardball is happening at a time when Mr. Trump is busy explicitly threatening the sovereignty of other countries in the Western Hemisphere.

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After all, although four months is an eternity in the Trump media cycle, readers may remember January. That was when Mr. Trump started rattling sabres at Greenland, which he had attempted to buy in his first term. He insisted that he must have Greenland before settling for a framework deal for negotiations that reportedly include the U.S. seeking sovereignty over land for bases.

Also in January, Mr. Trump showed off a map showing Greenland and Canada, as well as Venezuela, emblazoned with a U.S. flag motif. This was less than three weeks after U.S. forces invaded Venezuela and abducted its leader.

Even before they found their country on the same map as targets for national decapitation and land grabs, it was hardly paranoid for Canadians to recognize the threat Mr. Trump posed to this country.

Canadians clearly see that the U.S. President’s motives are anything but friendly. And their reaction to his bullying has been wholly reasonable. They began shunning U.S. goods. Cross-border travel to the U.S. plunged. Many provinces removed U.S. alcohol from government-run stores.

One of these actions – to be precise, these reactions – seems to bother Mr. Hoekstra particularly. He has repeatedly brought up the alcohol boycott and called it “totally unfair” in the Radio-Canada interview. Apparently, in his world, whatever Mr. Trump does to kneecap Canada is fine while whatever Canada does in response is illegitimate.

This is what an angry neighbour looks like, Mr. Hoekstra. And if you are still confused about how it happened, you need look no further than the Oval Office for an explanation.