‘We’re in this for the long haul’: Canada must brace for ‘new reality’ beyond U.S. electoral calendar, says CLC’s Bruske
Although the tariff trade war between the United States and Canada is creating the political tension among the voters who Republicans will need to retain the U.S. Congress in November, this country’s labour leaders are bracing for impacts that will outlast this fall’s American midterms and beyond President Donald Trump’s tenure in office, says Canadian Labour Congress president Bea Bruske.
“We're in this for the long haul,” Bruske told The Hill Times last week following her meeting with Prime Minister Mark Carney (Nepean, Ont.), alongside several other labour leaders from Canada’s Building Trades Unions, the United Steelworkers, Unifor and Teamsters Canada, among others.
Bruske said the “general consensus” among those at the Sept. 1 meeting was that Canada “can’t expect a magic solution” to the current trade dispute with the U.S., regardless of the outcome of either the upcoming November midterms or the 2028 presidential election and Trump’s expected departure from office.
“This trade relationship has taken decades to build up and has been assaulted; you don't come back from that quickly,” Bruske said. “Every single leader in that room reiterated that we know a bad deal when we see one, and walking away was absolutely the right thing to do … we do not want a bad deal that we're going to get stuck in forever.”
Prior to the meeting, Carney told reporters that American negotiators pushed for concessions that would have caused key sectors such as the automotive, dairy, and cultural industries to either become U.S. subsidiaries or be “wiped out” entirely—issues he said contributed to his decision to pull out of negotiations last month.
“Of course, we’re not going to accept those terms,” Carney said outside of the Prime Minister's Office on Sept. 1, adding that Canada is willing to return to negotiations, but only when the Americans "stop doing memes, stop throwing shade, stop trying to be tough," and are ready to have a “serious” discussion.
Following the collapse in negotiations, the U.S. imposed 50-per-cent tariffs on more than $27-billion worth of Canadian products on Aug. 22. On Aug. 24, Trump threatened to raise auto tariffs to 50 per cent in the new year.
Canada’s retaliatory counter-tariffs came into effect on Sept. 8, applying rates of 15, 25, and 50 per cent to more than $27-billion worth of American goods, including dairy products, agricultural equipment, pulp and paper, and electronics. The measures also double duties on American aluminum and steel to 50 per cent, with steel and aluminum together accounting for approximately 31 per cent of the value of the entire list.
Canadian politicians have made no mystery of the intent and timing of the tariffs, with analysts noting that the initial list of targeted industries focuses the biggest hits on important swing states.
On Aug. 25, Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne (Saint-Maurice–Champlain, Que.), alongside Industry Minister Mélanie Joly (Ahuntsic-Cartierville, Que.) and several other ministers, unveiled Canada’s list of retaliatory tariffs, and more than $7-billion in support for affected Canadian industries and workers. Those measures include a $1.5-billion funding boost to the Regional Tariff Response Initiative, $2-billion to the Canada Strong Diversification Fund, and $3.5-billion to provide “rapid” responses to affected workers and employers, in part by extending employment insurance benefits.
Champagne said Canada’s latest round of tariffs is a “proportionate, targeted, and strategic” response that is “all about fairness.” Joly added that Canada is targeting products to affect “specific states,” and that Canada is “being smart and strategic in order to apply political pressure, and I think it's the right thing to do right now.”
Carney’s framing of the date on which those tariffs took effect, calling it “the Tuesday after Labour Day,” has also been seen as a pointed reference to the upcoming November midterms—with the Sept. 7 holiday marking the unofficial start of the final American campaign sprint—as was his questioning of what message Trump’s tariffs “send to workers in Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky, and Alabama,” who he said “depend absolutely on Canada, their largest consumer market.”
On Aug. 27, Finance Canada dropped seafood and fish products from the list after industry pushback, but that hasn’t stopped the state’s incumbent Republican Senator Susan Collins from publicly criticizing her president’s trade policy.
Collins, who is currently fighting a heated midterm race against the Democrat Troy Jackson, told Politico that “imposing new tariffs on Canada is a mistake,” and that it could potentially cost her the election. Jackson has described the tariffs as a “betrayal to [Maine’s] working families,” and that Collins had “completely failed” to stop them.
In Michigan, Democrat candidate Abdul El-Sayed accused Trump of “escalating a trade war with Canada for his own vanity," and his Republican opponent Mike Rogers of being a “rubber stamp” for the president’s trade policies.
In an interview with Fox News on Aug. 31, Rogers said he supported Trump’s goals, and dismissed any potential negative effects they may have on his race.
"I think [Canadians] think that the Republicans are going to lose in the midterms, and then that the Democrats are going to open up the borders again and absolutely undercut the people who build cars and car parts right here in Michigan," Rogers said.
Trump losing public relations battle at home, says Abacus Data’s David Coletto
A recent survey from Abacus Data polling American residents in five important swing states suggests that support for Trump’s trade war is doing more harm than good to his party's electoral prospects.
The poll of 2,500 registered voters—conducted Aug. 26-28 in Iowa, Michigan, Ohio, Maine, and South Carolina—found Trump underwater in every state, including three he carried in 2024, with approval of his trade policies lagging his overall approval by six to 12 points in each state. Among likely voters, Democrats lead in every state except South Carolina, where Republican candidate Darline Graham Nordone leads by 13 points.
In an interview with The Hill Times, Abacus Data CEO David Coletto said that while trade with Canada won’t be a primary determinant of the upcoming midterms, “it’s adding evidence to the list of things that people are unhappy about.”
“It's very clear from our research that Americans in those five states think these tariffs and the trade war will increase their cost of living. It's not going to create or protect many jobs in those states, and the vast majority want the relationship to go back to the way it was before Trump entered the White House,” Coletto said. “All of that points me to the fact that, at least right now, the Trump administration isn't winning the public relations battle against Canada in its own backyard.”
While Republican candidates such as Rogers and Ohio Republican Senator Jon Husted have embraced Trump’s trade policy, Coletto noted that most voters in all five states said a candidate’s support for the policies would make them less likely to earn their vote, averaging 39 per cent across all five, with a net disapproval of 23 points in Maine and Michigan. Those two states also held the most positive views of Canada and Canadians, with at least two-thirds support for both in each state, averaging 71 per cent and 81 per cent, respectively.
Coletto said that, due to those states’ close trading relationships with Canada, Trump will have difficulty convincing the majority of voters that “Canada is the enemy,” and the cause of their economic anxiety.
“I think Trump still has a sizeable minority of people who listen and agree and follow everything he says,” Coletto said. “But I do think there's a growing number of Americans who might trust Mark Carney's word on this more than their own president’s.”
Despite the size, economic, and military power differential between Canada and the U.S., “I think this shows we've got political leverage,” Coletto added.
Bruske said she supports using “every single piece of leverage” available to Canada, but added that this country needs to be prepared for a “new reality” beyond any date on the electoral calendar, and that “the worst is yet to come.”
“There's already been almost two years of living with this uncertain footing about what's going to come next, and that's meant less investment by employers in their manufacturing plants, less investment in new job creation, and so we're already seeing those impacts,” Bruske said.
Bruske called the government’s $7-billion support package a “good starting point,” but said it should be expanded to include wage subsidies and work-sharing programs, higher EI benefits beyond the current 55 per cent, and a requirement that companies preserve jobs in those communities in exchange for support. She added that as the trade war’s impacts increase, there should be commensurate increases in those supports, as well as added improvements to support “the entire community.”
“Workers need to see some certainty, because our reliance on the U.S. has hurt us in so many ways,” Bruske said.
Retaliatory tariffs ‘well designed’ to limit economic damage, but pain will compound: Jaffery
KPMG chief economist Ali Jaffery told The Hill Times that the newest U.S. tariffs are unlikely to inflict serious harm on the Canadian economy, estimating they will shave between 0.3 and 0.5 per cent off the country’s annual GDP. However, the longer the broader trade war continues, the greater and more permanent those impacts will become, he said.
Jaffery said that Canada’s current retaliatory measures are “fairly well-designed,” with "a lot of scope for substitution" for the targeted products to be swapped with domestic goods, and “won’t have significant implications for either inflation or the GDP.”
Since the trade war began in early 2025, KPMG estimates that Canada has already permanently lost one to 1.5 per cent of GDP, representing roughly $30-billion to $50-billion in economic activity. If Trump follows through on his next Jan. 1 deadline, Canada’s economy could permanently shrink by another 1 to 1.5 per cent by the end of 2027, Jaffery said.
“We can withstand this; it just depends on what we're willing to lose here,” Jaffery explained. “We can endure the pain, but we'll end up with a smaller economy than we would have.”
The Hill Times