Great wars often begin over what seem like small stakes. So began—and so proceeds—the American trade war with Canada. Before the guns of February sounded in 2025, commencing President Donald Trump’s protectionist campaign against American trading partners worldwide and a group of islands inhabited exclusively by penguins, more than 99 percent of cross-border trade between the two (mostly) English-speaking nations of North America went on duty-free. In the aftermath of Trump’s dredging up this summer of a heretofore unused section of the Smoot-Hawley Act and the Canucks’ threatened retaliations, set to go into effect September 8, “the latest American tariffs cover about 5% of the goods the US imported from Canada last year, while Canada’s tariffs cover about 6% of the goods the US exported to Canada” (per CNN). This, as the Cato Institute’s Scott Lincicome notes, is not, economically speaking, a catastrophic conflict. And yet, peace is unlikely soon to be concluded, despite the geopolitical drama-mongering of government officials and breathless coverage in the press.
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