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TOP STORY
While the U.S. trade war has demolished whatever Canadian goodwill existed for U.S. President Donald Trump, it’s also not playing well among Americans.
Although Trump cruised into his second term with record-high approval ratings, they’ve declined in large part due to his imposition of punitive tariffs on Canada and Mexico.
At the time of Trump’s January inauguration, he was enjoying a higher approval rating (just under 52 per cent) than at any other point in his political career: Many pollsters noted it as the first time they had ever recorded his approval rating at higher than 50 per cent.
But as of the most recent polling aggregation published by the website RealClearPolling, Trump’s approval has now dropped to net zero; 48 per cent approve of him, and 48 per cent disapprove.
Those same polls all find that the decline is almost entirely due to Trump’s handling of the economy, including the ongoing trade war with Canada.
An Emerson College poll published on Tuesday found widespread disapproval on virtually everything related to Trump’s trade war, including its impact on the U.S. economy and on U.S.-Canada relations.
Of respondents, 46.1 per cent thought Trump was making the economy worse, against just 28.3 per cent who thought he was making it better. On tariffs, 52.7 per cent thought the policy was making the economy worse, against 36.9 per cent who thought they were helping. On the subject of U.S.-Canada relations, 47.2 per cent of respondents disapproved of Trump’s actions, while 37.3 per cent approved.
U.S. voters “believe tariffs will hurt economic growth,” read an accompanying statement by Spencer Kimball, executive director of Emerson College Polling.
Beginning last week, Trump made good on longstanding threats to impose blanket 25 per cent tariffs on Canadian imports, although he has subsequently offered temporary exemptions, including on autos.
All of these tariffs have ostensibly been levied as a border security measure. The U.S. president does not retain unrestricted powers to levy tariffs, and can only do so in the event of a “national emergency.” As such, a White House backgrounder on the Canadian tariffs framed them as a response to the “extraordinary threat posed by illegal aliens and drugs, including deadly fentanyl.”
This is at odds with how Trump himself has framed the motive for the tariffs, with grievances ranging from Canadian dairy protectionism to the country’s minimal contribution to continental defence to Canada’s continued existence as a country.
“The only thing that makes sense is for Canada to become our cherished Fifty First State. This would make all Tariffs, and everything else, totally disappear,” wrote Trump in a Tuesday morning Truth Social post.
All the while, the trade war has been noticeably bad for the U.S. economy. In an instant, a quarter that had been forecast by the Federal Reserve to experience rapid growth is now being projected as one in which the economy will shrink.
The value of the U.S. dollar has been in a dramatic slump, and stock market indexes ranging from the Dow Jones to the S&P 500 have been in steep decline since the beginning of the tariffs.
American unease about tariffs stands in sharp contrast to other planks of the Trump agenda, some of which are proving to be extremely popular.
This is particularly true of Trump’s immigration policies, including the mass-deportation of illegal immigrants.
According to the same Emerson College poll cited above, 48.1 per cent liked Trump’s immigration policy, against 40.3 per cent who didn’t.
IN OTHER NEWS
The current trade war has featured so many empty threats, tariff pauses and exceptions that it can be hard to keep it all straight. At the precise moment this newsletter goes to press, the status is this:
The U.S. is still imposing blanket 25 per cent tariffs on Canadian imports, but there are now temporary exceptions for items that are compliant with the terms of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA). However, that reportedly only covers about 38 per cent of Canadian exports to the U.S. (although there’s some confusion on that).
It’s now become Canada’s turn to threaten punitive tariffs in order to get the attention of its neighbour. Ontario Premier Doug Ford threatened this week to impose a 25 per cent surcharge on exports of electricity to the U.S. as retaliation for Trump’s tariffs on Canada. Trump initially reacted with an angry social media post threatening a doubling of tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminum, writing “why would our Country allow another Country to supply us with electricity, even for a small area?” But as of Tuesday night, the threat appears to have worked in Ford’s favour; U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick called up the premier and got him to back off the threat in exchange for a meeting in Washington, D.C., to “discuss a renewed USMCA.” Although, if you’re on Team Trump, the whole saga was an unadorned U.S. victory against a rebellious Canadian subnational leader.
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