I have never understood the need to make an enemy out of a friend. Nations will disagree, of course. Good neighbors sometimes argue over lumber, milk, fish, cars, pipelines, water, or which side is carrying more of a shared burden. That is what negotiations, treaties, trade panels, elections, and plain old diplomacy are for. What serious countries do not do—at least not if they care about their own people—is humiliate a trusted ally, threaten its sovereignty, slap taxes on the goods their own citizens buy, and then call the resulting damage a victory.
Yet that is where Donald Trump has taken the relationship between the United States and Canada. The repeated “51st state” posturing, the belittling language, the tariff threats, the bridge threats, and the continuing effort to treat friendship as weakness are not signs of strength. They are absurd, reckless, and profoundly un-American. They diminish the United States in the eyes of a country that has stood beside us in war, in grief, in disaster, in trade, in science, in space, and in the everyday life of thousands of border communities.
I say that as an American who loves this country and who believes that patriotism should ask us to be better than this. Respect for Canada does not subtract one ounce from our love of the United States. In fact, defending this friendship is an act of American patriotism, because the partnership has made both countries safer, more prosperous, and more humane.
The longest border—and one of the deepest relationships
The map tells only the beginning of the story. Canada and the United States share a 5,525-mile border, including Alaska. But the real relationship lives in the waterways, power lines, railroads, pipelines, factories, family trees, tribal and First Nations homelands, hockey rinks, universities, military commands, concert halls, fishing grounds, and small towns that do not stop being connected when a politician gives a speech.[2]
The numbers are enormous because the partnership is not an abstraction. In 2025, two-way trade in goods and services totaled $872.3 billion. Canada remained the largest destination for American exports and the third-largest source of American imports. More than three-quarters of Canadian goods exports went to the United States, while nearly half of Canada’s goods imports came from us.[4] Those figures do not describe two remote economies engaged in an occasional transaction. They describe a single continental production system with a border running through it.
A car part may cross the border several times before the finished vehicle reaches a showroom. Canadian crude feeds American refineries designed for it; in 2025 the United States imported an average of 3.9 million barrels a day from Canada. Electricity moves both directions across regional grids. Farmers, foresters, paper mills, hospitals, universities, trucking companies, tourist towns, and manufacturers rely on relationships built over decades.[6]
Our security is just as connected. Created in 1958, the North American Aerospace Defense Command is not a temporary coalition or a ceremonial promise. It is a permanently integrated Canadian-American command defending the same continent and monitoring the same approaches. A 2023 partnership statement also laid out joint work on NORAD modernization, critical minerals, semiconductors, clean energy, public health, migration, and space—including cooperation connected to the International Space Station and Artemis II.[1]
There are human memories behind the institutions
In December 1917, after the Halifax Explosion devastated much of the city, Boston and Massachusetts mobilized aid almost immediately. Nova Scotia still sends Boston a Christmas tree each year in remembrance. In 1980, Canadian diplomats helped six Americans escape revolutionary Iran in what became known as the “Canadian Caper.” On September 11, 2001, when American airspace closed, communities across Canada opened airports, schools, halls, homes, and hearts to stranded travelers. Thirty-eight transatlantic flights landed at Gander alone.[8][9][15]
These stories matter because they reveal the character of the relationship when no one has time to stage-manage it. In the worst moments, Canadians and Americans have repeatedly behaved like neighbors in the fullest meaning of that word. They showed up.
We have also learned how to turn recurring problems into durable institutions. The 1909 Boundary Waters Treaty created the International Joint Commission to prevent and resolve disputes over shared waters. The commission has since handled more than one hundred matters referred by the two governments—from competing canals in Alberta and Montana to water levels, pollution, and the competing demands surrounding Niagara Falls.[7] It is quiet, patient, practical work—the exact opposite of governing by insult.
A friendship built one agreement—and one act of trust—at a time
Rush–Bagot Agreement
The two countries sharply limit naval armaments on the Great Lakes and Lake Champlain, beginning the long demilitarization of the border.
A border defined; shared waters protected
The modern boundary commission takes shape, followed by the Boundary Waters Treaty and International Joint Commission.
Boston answers Halifax
American relief moves north within hours of the catastrophic Halifax Explosion, beginning a remembrance still renewed each Christmas.
Continental defense becomes permanent
The Ogdensburg Agreement creates the Permanent Joint Board on Defense while the Second World War threatens North America.
Founding allies in NATO
Canada and the United States help establish the transatlantic alliance.
NORAD is established
The countries create a binational command for continental aerospace warning and defense—still unique in the world.
The Auto Pact integrates manufacturing
Vehicle production begins to operate on a continental scale, laying groundwork for today’s deeply connected supply chains.
The Canadian Caper
Canadian diplomats help six Americans escape Iran using Canadian passports, an extraordinary act of courage and friendship.
Free trade and Arctic cooperation
The countries sign a landmark free-trade agreement and agree to manage Arctic voyages through cooperation and consent.
NAFTA takes effect
North American trade expands dramatically, connecting farms, factories, services, and consumers across the continent.
Operation Yellow Ribbon
After the September 11 attacks, Canadian towns shelter tens of thousands of passengers aboard diverted aircraft.
USMCA/CUSMA replaces NAFTA
A modernized agreement, negotiated under the first Trump administration, preserves the core continental trading system.
A renewed partnership agenda
The two governments commit to closer work on clean energy, critical minerals, semiconductors, defense, health, migration, and space.
A manufactured rupture
Tariffs, retaliation, annexation rhetoric, and threats to shared infrastructure turn routine disputes into a full political and economic crisis.
Timeline background: Council on Foreign Relations, International Joint Commission, Parks Canada, Royal Canadian Air Force, and the 2023 U.S.–Canada partnership fact sheet.[2]
A tax and a tantrum
Tariffs are routinely described as if a foreign government writes a check to the United States. That is not how they work. A tariff is collected from the American importer at the border. The importer may absorb part of the cost, pressure a supplier for a lower price, pass the cost to customers, or do some combination of the three. But it is an American business that pays the tax first, and Americans who live with the consequences.
That is why a tariff on Canadian lumber can raise costs for American homebuilders; a tariff on components can punish an American factory; and a tariff on energy can reach a family through gasoline, heating oil, transportation, or electricity. Canada can retaliate against American farm equipment, appliances, agricultural products, steel, paper, and electronics—which is precisely what it has done. The border does not protect either side from the other side’s pain because our economies were built to work together.
Two-way U.S.–Canada goods trade, 2015–2025
Exports plus imports, in billions of U.S. dollars. Even after a 6.1% decline from 2024 to 2025, the goods relationship remained larger than it had been in every year before 2021.
View the chart data
| Year | U.S. exports | U.S. imports | Two-way goods trade |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2015 | $280.9B | $296.3B | $577.2B |
| 2016 | $266.7B | $277.7B | $544.5B |
| 2017 | $282.8B | $299.1B | $581.8B |
| 2018 | $299.7B | $318.6B | $618.3B |
| 2019 | $292.8B | $318.6B | $611.4B |
| 2020 | $256.2B | $270.0B | $526.2B |
| 2021 | $309.6B | $357.3B | $666.9B |
| 2022 | $359.1B | $437.4B | $796.5B |
| 2023 | $354.4B | $418.0B | $772.4B |
| 2024 | $350.6B | $411.8B | $762.4B |
| 2025 | $333.6B | $381.9B | $715.5B |
The deficit story leaves out half the ledger
When politicians cite the 2025 goods deficit with Canada, they often stop before mentioning services. The United States imported about $48.3 billion more in Canadian goods than it exported. But America exported about $27.7 billion more in services than it imported. Put the two together and the net U.S. deficit was roughly $20.6 billion on $872.3 billion in total trade—about 2.4 percent.[4]
What the 2025 balance actually shows
Billions of U.S. dollars. Left of center is a U.S. deficit; right of center is a U.S. surplus.
And even that net figure is not a score. Trade is not a football game in which imports are points for the other team. Americans import Canadian crude because our refineries need it. We import lumber because Americans build homes. We import components because American workers turn them into finished products. We export machinery, vehicles, farm products, digital services, financial services, travel, entertainment, and expertise because Canadians value what Americans produce. A serious trade policy asks whether the rules are fair and whether ordinary people benefit. It does not assume that every import is a defeat.
Current events · As of September 24, 2026
How quickly an avoidable dispute became a trade war
- After talks failed, the United States imposed 50% duties on roughly US$20 billion in selected Canadian exports. Canada announced dollar-for-dollar retaliation. Canadian officials said the American terms were economically unfair and intruded on Canadian sovereignty.[12]
- Canadian countertariffs of 15%, 25%, or 50% took effect on C$27.6 billion in American goods, including products tied to steel, agriculture, appliances, paper, and electronics.[10]
- A White House proclamation went further, scheduling an import ban on certain Canadian products for September 29 unless circumstances change. The same products had already faced 50% duties since August 22.[11]
- As Canada pursued closer ties with Europe, Trump threatened tariffs against the European Union over a proposal for deeper Canadian association. The predictable result of telling Canada it cannot rely on us is that Canada looks for partners it can rely on.[14]
Retaliation in the mirror
The September 2026 actions show why escalation is so difficult to contain: one government’s tariff becomes the other government’s justification for another tariff.
U.S. goods targeted by Canada
Countertariffs at 15%, 25%, or 50%, depending on the product.
Canadian goods cited in the matching action
The Canadian government described its response as dollar-for-dollar retaliation.
Legitimate disagreements do not justify contempt
None of this means Canada is perfect or that every Canadian policy should be accepted without question. The two countries have genuine disputes over dairy-market access, softwood lumber, government purchasing, digital regulation, agriculture, alcohol distribution, energy policy, intellectual property, and other issues. Friends can drive a hard bargain. Allies can bring cases under USMCA. Governments can demand enforcement and negotiate new rules.
But an argument over dairy quotas is not a license to threaten annexation. A dispute over cars does not justify treating an international bridge as a hostage. A complaint about procurement does not give an American president the right to tell a sovereign democracy whom it may trade with or how it should protect its culture. The method matters because trust is itself an economic and security asset. Once businesses no longer know whether a signed agreement will survive the next social-media post, they delay investment, redesign supply chains, and look elsewhere. Once Canadians conclude that dependence on the United States can be weaponized against them, diversification stops being a political slogan and becomes national insurance.
That damage is already visible in a place I find especially telling. The Canadian government page devoted to the United States–Canada relationship now leads visitors through countertariffs, relief programs, employment support, export assistance, and instructions for businesses and workers caught in the trade war.[3] Compare that with the 2023 partnership fact sheet, which spoke of semiconductors, clean energy, critical minerals, health security, defense, and space exploration.[1] In three years, the public face of the relationship moved from building the future together to helping people survive the damage we are doing to one another.
That is not strength. It is strategic vandalism.
From Maine, this is not theoretical
Here in Maine, Canada is not a distant foreign policy topic. New Brunswick and Quebec are part of our daily geography. Our families cross the border. Our French and Acadian histories cross the border. Our forests, rivers, fisheries, roads, tourism, music, and commerce cross the border. Campobello Island sits beside us in Passamaquoddy Bay. Roosevelt’s summer home there is preserved not as an American monument planted on Canadian soil, but as an international park jointly administered by both countries. Old Orchard Beach has welcomed generations of Quebec visitors. The border is part of who we are.
In 2025, Canada accounted for 69 percent of Maine’s imports and 41 percent of its exports. More than 80 percent of the state’s heating oil and gasoline came from Canada. Those are not numbers that can be bullied away. They mean that a trade war can reach a Maine household through its furnace, its fuel tank, its job, its grocery bill, or the Canadian visitors a local business was counting on.[13]
The same truth appears in Michigan, New York, North Dakota, Montana, Washington, Alaska, and communities all along the border. A national leader may speak as if Canada were a chess piece. Border states know better. Canada has a face, an accent, a license plate, a cousin, a customer, a co-worker, a favorite vacation, and a road home.
What repairing the relationship should look like
The good news is that this relationship is bigger than any president or prime minister. Governments can damage it, but they cannot erase two centuries of lived connection. Repair, however, will require more than a friendly photograph and a carefully worded communiqué. Trust was broken in public and must be rebuilt through visible, dependable action.
- End the annexation talk and affirm Canadian sovereignty without qualification.The United States should make clear—in words and conduct—that Canada’s independence, culture, institutions, and democratic choices are not bargaining chips.
- Negotiate a mutual stand-down from the emergency tariffs.Remove the latest punitive measures on a coordinated timetable, with transparent rules for any narrow national-security exceptions.
- Restore USMCA/CUSMA as the place where disputes are settled.Use consultations, evidence, neutral panels, and predictable review instead of surprise proclamations and personal threats.
- Protect the supply chains that keep both countries working.Create durable safeguards for autos, energy, lumber, agriculture, critical minerals, semiconductors, medicine, and cross-border infrastructure.
- Invest in the institutions that manage a shared continent.Strengthen NORAD, the International Joint Commission, Great Lakes protection, wildfire cooperation, public-health preparedness, Arctic security, and emergency response.
- Put border communities and Indigenous nations at the table.Washington and Ottawa do not experience the border the way Maine and New Brunswick, Michigan and Ontario, Washington and British Columbia, Alaska and Yukon, or cross-border Indigenous peoples do.
- Rebuild the human relationship.Encourage travel, student exchange, cultural projects, tourism, sister communities, and the thousands of ordinary encounters that turn treaties into friendship.
Repair also requires honesty from Americans. We should not ask Canadians to pretend this did not happen. The threats were heard. The insults were remembered. Investment decisions were changed. Travel habits shifted. Canadian businesses began looking for markets that could not be closed on a presidential whim. A restored relationship must give Canada reasons to trust us again, not lectures about why it should.
And perhaps, if we are wise, we will not merely return to where we were. We will build something stronger: a partnership that recognizes the economic realities of a shared continent, the sovereign equality of both countries, the need to involve border communities, and the simple fact that cooperation is not surrender. It is how mature democracies multiply their strength.
Canada is not our enemy. It is our neighbor, our ally, our partner, and our friend. We are safer, stronger, richer, and better when we act like it.
Sources and further reading
Editorial note: Current-events information is accurate as of September 24, 2026. Trade measures and negotiations can change quickly; dated items below should be rechecked when this article is updated.
- “Fact Sheet: Strengthening the United States–Canada Partnership”, American Presidency Project, March 24, 2023.
- “U.S.–Canada Relations”, Council on Foreign Relations interactive timeline, updated through 2026.
- “Canada–United States relations”, Government of Canada, updated September 18, 2026.
- “Canada”, Office of the United States Trade Representative.
- “Trade in Goods with Canada”, U.S. Census Bureau.
- “Lower crude oil prices reduced U.S.–Canada energy trade value in 2025”, U.S. Energy Information Administration, July 29, 2026.
- “The Boundary Waters Treaty of 1909”, International Joint Commission.
- “The Halifax Explosion”, Parks Canada.
- “History of 9 Wing Gander / Canadian Forces Base Gander”, Royal Canadian Air Force.
- “List of products from the United States subject to counter-tariffs effective September 8, 2026”, Government of Canada, Department of Finance.
- “Excluding Certain Canadian Products from Importation into the United States…”, The White House, September 8, 2026.
- “Canada to retaliate for U.S. tariffs, worsening ties after talks fail”, Reuters, August 22, 2026.
- “As Canadian tariffs bite, Republicans search for a winning message”, Reuters, September 17, 2026.
- “Canada and EU should ally to protect democracies, Carney says…”, Reuters, September 17, 2026.
- “Tree for Boston”, Government of Nova Scotia.
