Since his return to office, U.S. President Donald Trump has signed an unprecedented number of executive orders — 54 in just over two weeks — surpassing any president's actions within the first 100 days since Harry Truman.
His sweeping actions have triggered legal battles, raising alarms among scholars about potential constitutional violations. While the courts wrestle with these challenges, the economic fallout is already hitting Canada. The chaotic on-again, off-again tariffs on Canadian products, including aluminum, steel and others, are looming threats keeping Canadian industries and businesses bracing for impact.
Canadian politicians must wake up. Trump’s tariffs are about dominance, not trade. They are economic tools designed to weaken Canada and make it increasingly dependent on the U.S. Trump is using tariffs as a tool of coercion to shield American jobs, pressure trade partners, and feed the new U.S. sovereign wealth fund. But make no mistake, the ultimate target isn’t just Canada’s economy, it’s our sovereignty. Greenland, Mexico, and Panama are feeling the same pressure.
The reality is stark.
The U.S. economy remains fragile after an incomplete recovery from the 2008 financial crisis and later COVID-19 pandemic. The economy is weighed down by a $36 trillion national debt, a persistent $1.4 to 3 trillion annual deficit since 2020, and rising borrowing costs.
De-dollarization is gaining traction, global competition is intensifying, and American wages have stagnated, while the cost of living skyrockets. With tax hikes off the table — Trump will not increase taxes on the super-rich or his MAGA base — he is desperate for new revenue sources and Canada’s wealth is firmly in his crosshairs. Despite Democrats and several Republican politicians opposing tariff wars with allied nations, Trump’s team seems to have its own agenda.
But what does a tariff war with Canada really mean? It goes beyond tariffs on steel, aluminum, timber, cars, and oil. The true prize is Canada’s most strategic assets: critical minerals, fresh water, agricultural land, and the Arctic territory.
These resources aren’t just economic assets — they are the foundation of Canada’s environmental security and global standing. These are assets that any superpower would covet, especially in a world increasingly defined by resource scarcity and geopolitical competition.
This is a reality that shocks business-as-usual politicians: natural resources are limited and becoming scarce because they are either not renewable or because they are over-exploited. The U.S. is not invulnerable to their oil, gas, minerals, and fresh water running out.
Critical Minerals: The Backbone of the Clean Energy Transition
Canada is home to vast reserves of lithium, cobalt, nickel, and rare earth elements — resources essential for electric vehicles, batteries, and clean-energy technology. The U.S. has already designated Canada as a “domestic source” under the Defense Production Act, essentially absorbing our critical minerals into their industrial base. Without a national strategy to safeguard these resources, Canada risks becoming a mere supplier to American industry, forfeiting its chance to lead the green economy.
Fresh Water: The Next Oil
Water scarcity is escalating, and many regions in the U.S. are running dry. With droughts ravaging key agricultural regions, Trump and his acolytes are eyeing Canada’s vast freshwater reserves — 20 per cent of the world’s total. While no formal water export agreements exist, pressure is mounting. Weakening Canada’s economy through tariffs makes it harder for us to resist demands for water access. Once the tap is opened, it will not be closed.
Agricultural Land: Controlling Canada’s Food Supply
As food security becomes a global crisis, Canada’s farmland is an increasingly valuable asset and U.S. agribusiness giants are expanding their footprint. As of 2023, U.S. direct investment in the Canadian agriculture, forestry, hunting, and fishing sectors was about $1.8 billion, with a significant focus on crop production. A weakened Canada will struggle to set independent agricultural policies, jeopardizing our ability to feed our own population while ensuring corporate interests dictate food production.
The Arctic: A Geopolitical Battlefield
As Arctic ice melts, a new frontier of economic and military significance is emerging. Canada claims the Northwest Passage as sovereign territory, but the U.S. insists it’s an international waterway. A Canada, economically shackled to the U.S., will find it harder to uphold the rights of Indigenous Peoples in the Arctic, protect the environmental integrity of the Arctic, and defend our nation’s Arctic sovereignty. If we lose control of the Arctic, we lose control of our northern future.
The Endgame: Canada at a Crossroads
Trump’s tariffs are not just about trade — they are about leverage. By making Canada economically vulnerable, Trump is laying the groundwork for a deeper, unspoken goal: greater U.S. dominance, a clear expansionist approach. Once Canada’s assets are in the hands of Trump and his oligarch friends, integration — whether formal or de facto — becomes harder to resist.
The idea of Canada as the 51st state may sound like fiction, but history shows that economic coercion often leads to political realignment. If we allow Trump’s policies to continue unchecked, Canada risks losing not just economic independence, but its national identity.
The Path Forward: Defending Canada’s Future
Canadian leaders must act decisively. That means diversifying trade beyond the U.S., strengthening domestic industries, and establishing a sovereign wealth fund to protect our resources. Critical minerals, fresh water, and farmland must be safeguarded — not just for economic reasons, but because they are vital to environmental stability, health, food security, and long-term sustainability.
Arctic sovereignty must be reinforced through military and diplomatic means. Canada must invest in national security and cyber defense and allow for more interprovincial trade and energy independence, while forging direct partnerships with friendly U.S. states, and stronger alliances with global partners, including Latin America, Europe, and Asia.
Canadians must recognize what’s at stake. This isn’t just about trade — it’s about sovereignty. The time to increase our self-sufficiency and resilience, to create new alliances, and solidify our democratic system is now. Otherwise, the map of North America may look very different in the years to come.
The Honourable Rosa Galvez is a civil-environmental engineer and an independent senator for the province of Quebec.
Comments
Yup.
We won't be a colony like Puerto Rico, we'll be a neo-colony.
The "wake up" is appropriate, because this has always been the goal. Trump is simply "out" about it.
This is all very true, but ends up a bit of a nothing-burger. Senator Galvez calls the alarm--an alarm Justin Trudeau already explicitly called, and then calls for . . . mainly, doing what everyone has already agreed to do--diversify trade and so forth, plus some vague calls to "safeguard" some stuff. I'm not sure "Wake up and go do what you're already doing!" is much of a wake-up call.
We should perhaps be aware that American-owned firms already own huge chunks of our resources and farmland and pretty much everything else . . . the one thing that REALLY strikes me as weird about Trump's whole push is, he's all about trying to steal a bunch of stuff that . . . American corporations already stole ages ago. It's not like shoulder-charging a door he thought was locked but is actually open, so much as it is shoulder-charging a door that the junior members of his criminal gang are ALREADY INSIDE. And we're busy adding some bars and an extra lock to the door, while ignoring the gangers already in our house stealing our stuff.
So moving past platitudes, what could we actually DO about this situation? For starters, we need to get out of our minds the idea that "free markets" can help us in any way here. Free markets, free trade, and in particular free INVESTMENT, got us here in the first place. Markets don't care about sovereignty, if anything they're actively against it. We need a few kinds of non-market intervention.
First, we need industrial policy, to build Canadian firms and Canadian production, by building infrastructure, by picking some winners and sheltering them from international competition, by funding relevant education and research, by working out all the requirements for those firms to succeed and making sure they have them, whether in terms of supply chain or whatever.
Second, if the private sector is not interested in making the winning firms we need, the government needs to establish new Crown corporations to do what needs doing, buying existing firms and repurposing them where that's more effective.
Third, we should establish firm rules about foreign investment and control of Canadian companies, the way China did when they were industrializing.
Fourth, in cases where strategic Canadian resources or infrastructure are controlled by foreign, and in particular American, interests we should nationalize them.
Fifth, given the current situation of the world, all these actions should be informed by the need to decarbonize our economy; ideally this should add up in part to a Green New Deal. Partly to hold up our end in doing something about climate change, partly because that is where technology is going and if we don't do it we're going to end up trying to sell buggy whips to people who just moved on to the automobile, partly just to spite Donald Trump and his efforts to hold back the tide of energy transition.
As a coda, we should bring expertise back in-house to the Canadian government and stop hiring American multinationals as consultants to give us advice. They do not have our interests in mind, they're always going to do things like advise us to privatize more stuff and sell it off cheap to Americans (who are probably also paying them). Decisions should be made by Canadian civil servants working for the citizens of Canada.
We may not be able to do all this stuff thoroughly, but this is the direction our policies should be pointing.
You have nailed the issue being foreign ownership of Canadian resources - mainly US companies. A focus on Canadian ownership is key. Great comment!