Not many in the U.S. have raised their voices in defence of Canada over the past three months – at a time when the American president has repeatedly said he will force Canada to its knees economically in order to annex it – but a few have.
One of the earliest of those was the United Steelworkers union (USW), which represents thousands of workers on both sides of the Canada-U.S. border.
Back in February, when Donald Trump slapped tariffs on steel and aluminum, the American USW said, pointedly: “Canada is not the problem”.
Canada, the USW said, “plays by the rules” – unlike such countries as China and Mexico, which “flood the market” with steel and aluminum, produced cheaply by low-wage, non-union labour.
More recently, on March 10, Steve Schmidt, a former senior advisor to the late Republican Senator John McCain, published an impassioned polemic condemning Trump’s “assaults against Canada.”
Schmidt is outraged at the silence of his fellow Americans, especially politicians who represent border states, such as the governors and senators from Michigan and New York.
“The overwhelming majority of Americans find Trump’s bluster around Canada to be incomprehensibly asinine,” Schmidt writes. “But they do not take his threats seriously – which is a mistake. It is well past the hour when the White House gangster should be taken both literally and seriously.”
He then adds: “The failure to fiercely object to Trump’s insanity from the first instance only encourages more of his aggression. No sane person should think Donald Trump possesses the capacity for restraint. Would Donald Trump imprison journalists and kill his opposition if he could? The answer is yes. and only a fool would debate the point.”
Scary stuff.
But Schmidt reserves much of his opprobrium for saner U.S, politicians who should know better than to cower before the U.S.’s first openly fascist leader.
He namechecks such Democratic Party luminaries as governors Pritzker of Illinois, Newsome of California, and Evers of Wisconsin, and senate minority leader Chuck Schumer.
Those politicians, he says, should be standing tall, shoulder to shoulder with Canadian leaders. But they’re not.
“Canada is being squeezed by MAGA maliciousness on one side, and the pathetic weakness of the Schumer Democrats on the other. They are bound on one side by menace, and on the other with fecklessness. It is an awful situation.”
“There is silence everywhere from everyone about something every American should be shamed by, and ready to scream in the street to Trump that ‘you will dare not do this in our name.’ “
Motion in U.S. Senate to block legally dubious tariffs
More recently, at least one major mainstream Democratic party figure has pushed back – however mildly – against the Trump tariffs that target Canada. That figure is Virginia senator Tim Kaine. He has introduced a measure in the Senate that would block the “unjustified tariffs”, to use Kaine’s words.
Since a U.S. president does not have the power to impose tariffs for normal economic reasons – that’s Congress’ prerogative – Trump is relying on the 1977 International Emergency Powers Act (IEPA).
The IEPA does not specifically mention tariffs or trade, but does give the president the right to “regulate commerce” in the defence of national security.
That’s why Trump has resorted to the ridiculous ruse of fentanyl and migrants to target Canada. Kaine notes that the president has cavalierly betrayed his true motives for punishing tariffs by constantly blathering about annexing Canada.
The Virginia senator is relying on U.S. legislation passed a year prior to the IEPA. It gives any senator the right to force a vote in the senate to block a president’s “abuse of emergency powers.”
Tim Kaine is making such a vote happen. In addition to his Democratic colleagues, he has the unlikely support – so far – of one Republican, libertarian and isolationist Rand Paul of Kentucky.
The Republicans have a majority of 53 in the Senate, meaning Kaine would need three more Republicans to defect from their party for his measure to pass. That is not likely.
In a normal world, Mitch McConnell, Rand Paul’s Kentucky colleague, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, and Susan Collins of Maine – all of whom have expressed disapproval of much of what Trump has done – would be on Kaine’s side.
But this is not a normal world.
When push has come to shove, the handful of Republican critics of Trump have proven to be even more supine than their too-often-cowed Democratic colleagues. So don’t hold your breath waiting for three additional Republican defectors this time.
On the other side of the coin, while the American USW has defended Canada, the giant U.S.-based United Auto Workers union (UAW) shows little international working-class solidarity when it comes to this country.
UAW gets in bed with Trump; Unifor resists
The UAW is 100 per cent in favour of Trump’s auto tariffs, with no exceptions or qualifications.
The UAW states that profitable mega-corporations have used low-cost labour in Mexico to undercut unionized American auto works. That practice has resulted in the closure of many U.S. auto plants and the loss of thousands of jobs.
In the UAW’s words:
“Every time an autoworker dares to ask for fair pay, a decent retirement, healthcare, or work-life balance, the automakers threaten their job by exploiting a broken trade system that is set up to intimidate and threaten workers on both sides of the [U.S.-Mexico] border.”
The American auto industry union goes on to say it is heartened by Trump’s recently-announced auto tariffs, but never once mentions Canada.
In Canada, most auto workers are unionized. They enjoy similar pay and benefits to their U.S. counterparts.
Corporations do not locate in Canada because of cheap labour and weak legal protections for workers. Canadian workers do not, in any way, undercut their fellow workers in the U.S.
In Canada, Unifor represents the majority of auto workers. Decades ago, Canadian workers were represented by the U.S.-based UAW.
In 1984, the Canadian branch of the UAW declared its independence, to become the Canadians Auto Workers (CAW), which, in 2013, merged with other Canadian unions, to become today’s Unifor.
Unifor’s position on tariffs is miles apart from that of the U.S. union of which it was once a part. Unifor explains the Canada-U.S. auto relationship this way:
“Trump has included Canada in the U.S. auto tariff despite having the most highly integrated and tightly woven supply chain between any two countries in the world; and a trade relationship that is in near-perfect balance.”
Unifor’s president Lana Payne adds: “President Trump fails to understand the chaos and damage this tariff will inflict on workers and consumers in both Canada and the United States.”
UAW also upbraids Trump’s attacks on free speech
Ironically, while the UAW is cozying up to Trump on tariffs it is expressing firm opposition to the president on another big bone of contention: Trump’s attacks on academic freedom.
In addition to auto and aerospace workers, the UAW represents workers on some U.S. campuses, including that of Columbia University in New York City.
That university just fired the Columbia local UAW president Grant Miner, in what the national UAW describes as “an assault on freedom of speech.”
Miner is a PhD student who took part in campus demonstrations against the war in Gaza. He was among a number of students who briefly occupied a Columbia building. Miner’s local also went on strike at the outset of the last round of bargaining.
The UAW connects Miner’s firing to the Trump administration’s attacks on Columbia and other world-renowned U.S. universities.
Trump threatened to withhold $400 hundred million of federal funds if the university did not accede to his demands, which included strictly limiting protests and effectively muzzling the department of Middle Eastern studies.
To the chagrin of at least some in the U.S. Columbia gave in to the president’s demands.
For the UAW, Miner’s firing is part of the university’s new kow-tow-to-Trump policy.
“The shocking move,” the UAW says, “is part of a wave of crackdowns on free speech against students and workers who have spoken out and protested for peace and against the war on Gaza.”
The union adds, ominously: “If they can come for graduate workers, if they can arrest, deport, expel, or imprison union leaders and activists for their protected political speech, then they can come for you.”
And so, a major U.S. union thinks it can support a president who is in the process of installing an authoritarian regime – because they believe that same president’s tariffs narrowly serve some of their members’ interests.
History has shown it can be fatal to think you can cozy-up to dictators to get some economic benefit – all the while rhetorically opposing their anti-democratic policies. It does not work.
When it comes to authoritarian leaders, fence-sitting is a painful, untenable position.
Need for a progressive defence of sovereignty in Canada
Here in Canada, the election campaign proceeds apace.
Opposition leaders try to stick to their messages, with little success.
Jagmeet Singh, for instance, had an event focused on affordable housing at the end of the first week of the campaign. But neither he nor any other opposition party leader can make much headway in the shadow of bully Trump.
Of all the opposition parties, the NDP is in the most danger. Its voters seem to be rushing, lemming-like, into the arms of the reassuring, solid and competent new Liberal leader, Mark Carney.
But what if New Democrats were to consider a new approach, one which, if it did not win them votes, might at least have some impact on the national conversation about Canada’s sovereignty?
Nobody with any clout has yet raised the idea of aggressively using the federal state, and all of its financial power, not only as an enabler of the private sector, but as an engine for Canadian economic innovation and increased productivity.
There was a time when federal Crown corporations manufactured airplanes, vaccines, nuclear reactors, and military equipment. There was also a Crown oil and gas corporation, a Crown airline, and a Crown railway.
All were owned by the Canadian people, not by any private interest, which cared only about its profits and not the public good.
Maybe it is time to reinvent that model.
NDP MP Niki Ashton once proposed a Crown corporation for the development of green energy. That would be a good place to start. But there is much more the federal government could do.
Business-oriented Mark Carney will not be thinking in that way. Nor will free-enterprise fundamentalist Pierre Poilievre.
But it might be time for Jagmeet Singh and his New Democrats to get off their rhetorical left-populist, “we’re on your side” message track. (In any case, that pitch does not seem to be breaking through in the current political climate, despite the NDP’s best efforts.)
New Democrats should seriously consider trying something outside-the-box.
They should adopt an approach that would be, in its way, bolder and more original than the usual campaign talk – even if such a strategy is not what professional consultants tend to recommend.
The NDP could put some solid, credible and progressive economic innovation and growth policies on the table, policies to confront the new and unprecedented challenges this country faces.
Those policies should focus on how to fully harness the power and wealth of the Canadian state, not only to resist the unprecedented existential threat we now face, but to build a more prosperous and egalitarian society for the future.
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