Premiers talk tactics for a game of tariff chicken

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It was a big day for tactical metaphors. Newfoundland Premier Andrew Furey compared Canada’s energy exports to the United States, and the potential threat of blocking them to counter threatened U.S. tariffs, with the queen in a game of chess.

“We don’t need to expose our queen this early,” Mr. Furey said as he entered a first ministers’ meeting in Ottawa. “The opposition needs to know that the queen exists but they don’t need to know what we’re going to do with the queen.”

Doug Ford, after talking about his new hat (It says Canada Is Not For Sale), spoke about poker. “You’re in a card game, you don’t show the opposition your cards. If you have some aces, you hold on to those aces.”

But no matter what metaphor the premiers prefer, Canada is not blessed with tactical options in a contest of subtle strategies. The queen will at best be used as a painful sacrifice.

The game is chicken. Canada is in a pickup truck and U.S. president-elect Donald Trump is driving a train. The closest thing to good news is that smashing into a pickup might derail a train.

That’s where the tactics of chicken come in. The only goal is to make Mr. Trump feel that the damage to the train won’t be worth it.

In Mr. Trump’s first term, the Canadian government lobbied Americans to persuade them that ripping up the continental free-trade deal would cause them to lose business, and jobs. Now, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and the premiers are warning it will cause prices to go up. They want the Trump administration to believe Americans would feel prices rise, fast. One sure way is prices at the pump.

Even before Wednesday’s first ministers’ meeting, Alberta Premier Danielle Smith had shot down the idea of blocking oil exports that had been floated by the federal government. She’s quite right: that would take the pain caused by U.S. tariffs and double it. Canadian oil is exported mostly via pipelines that end in the U.S., so if it isn’t shipped there, it won’t be shipped at all, and billions in income will be foregone.

But there is another option: placing countertariffs on Canadian energy, including Alberta oil and Quebec hydroelectricity.

That idea is presumably based on the assumption that Mr. Trump will exempt energy from tariffs to avoid a sudden spike at the pumps – so Canada might impose export tariffs that would make U.S. gas prices rise. For all the misery that inflation caused the U.S. since 2022, it was the hike in gas prices that caused outgoing U.S. President Joe Biden the most pain.

Natural Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson was in Washington on Wednesday, telling a U.S. audience that Mr. Trump’s tariffs could see Midwest gas prices rise by 75 cents per gallon. Export tariffs could have a similar impact.

At a press conference with the premiers, Mr. Trudeau didn’t say precisely what tactics he has in mind, but he made it clear he wants to do something that will have a rapid impact. “What is it we can do that will result in the lifting of those tariffs as quickly as possible?” he said.

Ms. Smith still objects to countertariffs, as she made clear in a statement after she refused to sign on to the joint declaration of premiers and the Prime Minister. They would have a negative impact on Alberta’s oil sector, too.

But Mr. Trudeau framed it as a matter of regional fairness, suggesting Alberta might have to bear some of the burden to defend Ontario’s auto sector. No wonder Mr. Ford had gone into the meeting stressing the importance of Canadian unity.

Still, it is undeniably true that playing chicken with Mr. Trump will mean risking a lot of damage.

Extensive retaliatory tariffs on U.S. goods could see inflation take off again in Canada, and perhaps take time before they really hurt U.S. companies. Tariffs on Canadian goods will cause prices to rise for some U.S. customers; Quebec Premier François Legault argued that U.S. customers won’t be able to replace Quebec aluminum, so they will just pay more.

But the game is chicken. There aren’t a lot of grandmaster’s gambits. The only tactic is to make Mr. Trump worry that Americans will feel too much pain, and fast.