In some U.S. states, Trump’s trade war has made Canada an election issue

In Maine, it’s the importance of Canadian concrete and road salt. In New Hampshire, it’s the disappearance of Canadian tourists. In Michigan, it’s Labatt beer and the weirdness of a trade war waged against an unassuming neighbour. In Minnesota, it’s the rising cost of construction materials imported from Canada. In Montana, it’s the cost of fertilizer. In Idaho, it’s worries about dairy exports to Canada.

Across the continent-spanning sweep of the U.S. northern border, Canada is on the lips of candidates and voters as they near an election that will determine the balance of the country’s legislative power.

Not for many decades – if ever – has this country occupied such an important place in the political debate south of the border. The introduction of Canada to American political conversation was, initially, the work of President Donald Trump, who accused Canada of shipping fentanyl into the U.S., slapped increasingly punitive tariffs on Canadian goods, mocked Canadian leaders and sneered at Canadian sovereignty.

Now, candidates across the country are running to check the President’s power by taking control of Congress. States that border Canada will elect eight U.S. Senators this year, nearly a quarter of the total. In some, candidates are pointing to Mr. Trump’s treatment of Canada as one reason why voters should turn against the President and his Republican party.

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Earlier this week, U.S. Ambassador to Canada Pete Hoekstra warned Canada against interfering in U.S. politics.

But it is American politicians, strategists and voters who have made Canada into an unlikely character in this campaign – a U.S. ally, neighbour and trading partner singled out by the Trump White House in ways that have injured the economic well-being of some Americans and made others uncomfortable.

“Folks aren’t happy about it. Not at all,” said Todd Achilles, an independent who is challenging incumbent Republican Jim Risch for a U.S. Senate seat in Idaho.

Last year, nearly 40 per cent of Idaho exports went to Canada, “so it’s a hugely important market for us,” Mr. Achilles said in an interview.

On the campaign trail, Mr. Trump’s treatment of Canada has “become a punchline,” he said – a dark joke that conveys something deeper, as voters take stock of the direction their country has taken.

It’s a question, he said, of “what have we become? That this is the state of things in America right now: We’re buying diesel from the Russians and we’re prohibiting trade with Canadians?”

Those questions do not trouble voters in every part of the country. In Montana, nearly 60 per cent of Republican voters said they had been hurt by tariffs but nonetheless feel the dispute with Canada is warranted, according to polling by American Pulse Research and Polling with NonStop Local, a regional television network.

Montana’s Republican candidate for Senate, Kurt Alme, has made this a campaign message, telling Q2 News, that Canada has “not played fair with us for far too long. And somebody needed to stand up and push back to try to get a level playing field.”

Even for Americans that balk at skirmishes with Canada, it’s not clear that concern will loom large over the ballot box, said Paul Young, a New Hampshire Republican strategist who is founder of Novus Public Affairs.

“I would say, from an economic standpoint, we don’t think of Canada as a crucial trade partner.”

Mr. Trump’s escalating tariffs, however, have thrust Canada into what has been the least-liked of White House priorities. Polling by HarrisX and the Center for American Political Studies at Harvard shows tariffs rank lowest in popularity among 14 key policies pursued by this administration. For voters, inflation is the top election concern – and they see Mr. Trump’s tariffs as the top reason for that inflation.

That has brought Canada into the very heart of the current American political debate.

“The question of tariffs, which is the crux of the rift with Canada and vice versa, is very closely tied in the voter’s mind with the problem of inflation, and obviously the affordability crisis that people are going through,” HarrisX founder and chief executive Dritan Nesho said in an interview.

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Other polling has shown that roughly 60 per cent of Americans would choose a positive relationship with Canada over protectionist policies, while nearly two-thirds judge trade between the two countries to be fair. Americans rank Canada’s favourability just behind that of their own country, its military and the broader concept of free enterprise.

“At least from an Alaska perspective, Canadians are up there with firefighters and nurses and schoolteachers among people we like,” said Jim Lottsfeldt, an Anchorage campaign strategist who has worked with both parties.

Mr. Trump’s fights with Canada, he said, have helped to undermine the broader Republican agenda.

“His mistreatment of Canada is very much part of why we think he’s just out of step with us.”

On the eastern seaboard, meanwhile, Canada holds potent personal importance. In Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine, as much as a third of the population traces ancestry to French, French-Canadian or Acadian roots.

Those connections have historically held political salience. In 1972, the presidential primary campaign of Edmund Muskie, a Maine Democrat, was derailed partly by a letter that alleged he had spoken against “Cannooks” – a misspelling of a slur used at the time for Americans of French-Canadian descent. The letter was later declared to be a forgery, a dirty trick deployed by the Richard Nixon campaign, but Mr. Muskie failed to secure the Democratic nomination.

A half-century later, long-standing relationships with Canada remain important, said Jim Demers, a Democratic strategist in New Hampshire who began his career in politics as a volunteer for Mr. Muskie’s campaign.

Since Mr. Trump’s return to office, the drop in Canadian tourists has hurt local businesses.

“It weighs very heavily economically in our state,” he said.

“And I think most people feel like it just doesn’t need to be this way.”

In New Hampshire, the Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate, Chris Pappas, has served in the U.S. House of Representatives, where he introduced legislation last year to exempt small businesses from tariffs. The measure failed, but its introduction underscored the political value for Democrats in fighting import levies.

In previous years, even a minor mention of Canada in a U.S. federal election made for “giant national news,” noted Scotty Greenwood, the founder of Ottawa Street Strategy, a geopolitical risk and government relations consultancy.

“Canada was never relevant.”

This year marks a notable shift, although Ms. Greenwood doubts thoughts of Canada alone will sway many U.S. voters. “If you dislike Trump’s views on Canada, you probably dislike his views on a whole bunch of others, also,” she said.

Yet in at least one critical Senate race, Canada has come to occupy an unusually important place. In the closely-fought U.S. Senate race in Michigan, Democratic candidate Abdul El-Sayed has condemned Mr. Trump’s “disastrous” tariffs.

Until recently, Mr. El-Sayed’s Republican opponent, Mike Rogers, supported Mr. Trump’s trade policies.

A few weeks from the election, however, Mr. Rogers released a new commercial in which he stands, Labatt beer in hand, and declares, “Here in Michigan, we know that Canada is not the enemy.”

“We need to end this tariff war,” he continues, “now.”