Canada trade ties run deep in Republican strongholds. But will it matter to Trump?

WASHINGTON, D.C. — It makes sense that states along the Canada-U.S. border are feeling the pinch of the trade war, whether it’s Michigan’s heavily integrated automotive manufacturing or Maine’s lumber trade. But a new analysis by Advancing American Freedom (AAF) shows that Canada also plays an important economic role in deeply red Republican states like Montana and North Dakota.

Canada accounts for 62 and 55 per cent of Maine and Vermont’s international goods trade, according to AAF, and a whopping 77 per cent in North Dakota and Montana, states President Donald Trump carried by 36 and 20 percentage points, respectively, in 2024.  

The nature of the exposure is different for Montana and North Dakota, says AAF policy analyst Kat Miller. “Canada buys about … 82 per cent of everything North Dakota sells abroad,” she said, while “88 per cent of everything Montana buys from abroad comes from Canada.” But dependence is not the same as tariff exposure: mineral fuels account for 80 per cent of North Dakota’s exports to Canada, according to Miller, and are exempt from Canadian countertariffs.

Either way, with the U.S. midterm elections looming, the tariff impact in deep-red states raises the question of whether it makes them pressure points for the White House — or whether Republican loyalty makes that trade exposure easier for Trump to ignore. 

In recent days, Republicans seeking midterm votes have publicly spoken out against the tariffs. 

“Canada is not China. It is our neighbour, our friend, our closest ally, and our biggest trading partner,” said Maine’s Sen. Susan Collins during a Senate debate on Oct. 6. 

“I have been strongly voting against the tariffs with Canada, but I’ve also been working behind the scenes,” she added.

In Michigan, U.S. Republican Senate candidate Mike Rogers has also spoken out. Having originally defended Trump’s tariffs, Rogers launched a campaign ad against them on Oct. 7.

“Here in Michigan, we know Canada is not our enemy,” he said. “We need to end this tariff war now.”

Those appeals come from competitive Senate contests, and it is less clear whether dependence on Canada is generating similar pressure from safer Republican areas.

But Richard Stern, vice president of the Plymouth Institute for Free Enterprise at Advancing American Freedom, says a lot more is happening behind the scenes.

“A lot of the private conversation is trying to push to stop this war with Canada,” he said. “A lot of them privately are putting pressure on this … and are going to the Commerce Department, Treasury, White House and saying, ‘Look, you’re really hurting Americans here. Knock it off.’”

So will these efforts and the impact on even redder states have some leverage over Trump?

“I think it does matter,” said Christopher Hernandez-Roy, acting director and senior fellow at the Americas Program of CSIS in Washington, referring to currently Republican states with exposed economies to Canada. “In fact, this has always been part of Canada’s playbook, which is to lobby with state and local governments that are Republican that are trade dependent with Canada.”

“Whether it’s sufficient to … nudge the president is another matter altogether,” he added, noting that it “doesn’t necessarily mean that the president is gonna change his tune.”

Christopher Sands, director of the Center for Canadian Studies at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, also noted that such red-state dependence would normally be a channel to the president through their senators. 

“In a normal presidency, yes, because it means there’s somebody who the president knows who can pick up the phone and have a conversation … and say, ‘We really need to do this for my voters who are your voters, too,’” he said.

The caveat: this is not a normal presidency. Sands pointed to how much Trump has ignored Congress over the past two years.

“This president hasn’t worked Capitol Hill that much … (Trump) seems to write off the whole institution as irrelevant,” Sands said.

The tariffs themselves help reflect how Trump is imposing policy without Congress, so trade watchers are skeptical that Republican senators and representatives will have much pull with Trump.

“In terms of trade policy, it’s very executive-driven these days,” said Alfredo Carrillo Obregon, a trade policy analyst at the Cato Institute in Washington.

“Even if Congress did (push back), it probably wouldn’t have made a difference,” he said. 

Even AAF, a conservative think tank and policy advocacy organization, doubts that Republican candidate pushback and the potential damage to deep-red states by the trade war will sway Trump.

“It does not seem like Trump seems to care … whether tariffs are popular or not or whether people are being harmed or not,” Stern acknowledged.

Sands also expressed dismay at the president’s apparent indifference to the electoral costs his tariffs and spat with Canada may bring.

“His indifference to the fate of his party in Congress is … pretty unusual,” he said.

While many believe Trump will stick with his tariff agenda, whatever the cost to the GOP, election polling shows that a majority of Americans — amid today’s affordability crisis — oppose the tariffs.

“You don’t get very far in American politics by telling people, ‘I’ve got your vote in the bag, and I don’t care about you,’” Stern said.

The question for Nov. 3 is whether that opposition will translate into votes. As for what he hopes voters know heading into election day, Stern said he and his colleagues have been trying to educate Americans about tariffs.

“What I would like voters … to pull out of all this at the end of the day is to understand that tariffs are taxes,” he said. 

“They’re not taxes on foreigners; they’re taxes on your own people, your own industries, your own businesses, and that this is not the solution.”

National Post

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