The Power Switch Canada is Ready to Flip

Ontario’s threat to withhold electricity and critical minerals reveals the foolishness of attacking America’s closest ally.

While the Trump Administration is playing checkers, Canada has us in a position for checkmate on trade.

Imagine waking up on a freezing Michigan morning with no power because Canada cut off its supply to your home during a trade war started by the President of the United States. That’s a possibility for 1.5 million American households and businesses after recent negotiations fell apart. Even if the power kept flowing, you still could be waiting to see if the nation to our north makes it more expensive by restoring a 25 percent surcharge on its electricity exports.

Ontario Premier Doug Ford has put these potential measures on the table, threatening to stop the delivery of electricity and critical minerals essential to U.S. daily life, manufacturing, and national defense if the trade fight worsens between the two nations. Canadians, he said, are preparing to make sacrifices in an “economic war” with America.

For generations, the United States and Canada have stitched together their power grids, auto plants, and defense industries on the assumption that neither country would use those connections to threaten the other. Donald Trump has broken that assumption.

This is where Trump’s treatment of our allies has brought us. Trump has turned our closest friend into a country ready to flip the switch on our economic partnership. Canada now sees dependence on America as a liability and America’s partial energy dependence on Canada as its best defense.

The escalation comes after negotiations with our northern neighbor collapsed on Friday. Canada said Washington changed the terms at the last minute in ways that were unfair and threatened Canadian sovereignty. The United States then imposed 50 percent tariffs on about $20 billion in Canadian goods. Then Canada announced dollar-for-dollar return fire beginning next month. Trump followed on Monday by threatening 50 percent tariffs on Canadian cars, trucks, and auto parts.

Decades in the Making, Undone in Days

Our closeness with Canada did not happen because generations of American presidents were too weak to squeeze more concessions out of Ottawa or because unfettered hostility was the way business was done. President Franklin Roosevelt and Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King began formal cooperation on continental defense in 1940 when Nazi Germany controlled much of Europe. In 1956, we agreed to integrate parts of our defense production and two years later we created NORAD, a command post in which Canadian and American personnel still work together to defend our regional airspace.

That trust also shaped how the two countries built their economies. Auto parts cross the border several times before a finished vehicle rolls off the line. Canada supplies most of the crude oil the United States imports and nearly all of its imported natural gas. We built that system over decades because each country became safer and more prosperous when it could rely on the other.

Trump’s fight with Canada is especially reckless given how hard Washington is working to loosen China’s grip on critical minerals. The Pentagon needs secure supplies for aircraft, missiles, munitions, and electronics, and Canada can provide many of those materials from across the border. Yet Trump is driving Canada to seek other customers while claiming to make America more self-sufficient. If more Canadian resources begin flowing toward Europe or Asia, the United States will have fewer reliable options and China will gain leverage.

Trump has returned us to the older, harsher model of power politics that seeks to reset the global economic order to a time when might made right. His administration has sought limits on Canada’s ability to negotiate trade agreements with other countries and he has repeatedly suggested absorbing Canada as the 51st state. In response to Trump’s dismissal of Canada’s economic viability and encouragement for Canadian businesses to move south, Ford has accused Trump of wanting to reduce Canada to a “vassal state.” Prime Minister Mark Carney reached a similarly grim conclusion after the talks failed: “America has changed,” he said, and Canada will “not return to our old relationship.”

Other allied governments are watching what is happening in our hemisphere and probably fearing that if the United States is willing to threaten Canada, a country with which we share a continent, a military command, and hundreds of billions of dollars in annual trade, then a treaty or trade agreement elsewhere offers other countries around the world little reassurance. Nations will begin cultivating other markets and building systems that can function when Washington turns hostile or walks away from the negotiating table.

The Long Way Back

American foreign policy with our closest allies has become hostile almost by default, jeopardizing our global standing in the process. Canada has drawn ire here at home for threatening to flip a switch on electricity outputs, all while the Trump administration has flipped the script on what it means to depend on America.

Those decisions may outlast the current president. For example, America’s soybean trade with China shows how quickly the damage can become lasting. When Trump’s first trade war led Beijing to cut its purchases of American soybeans, Chinese buyers found other suppliers. American farmers have not fully recovered the lost business even after the confrontation eased. Once governments establish new supply relationships, they rarely abandon them simply because Washington changed course.

Canada will still be next door after Trump is gone. For our work with them and our allies around the world, the real damage is to our credibility, which can’t as easily be flipped back on.