Lack of global response will hinder any Canadian retaliation to Trump’s tariffs

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Clow said that while the world should have stuck together 18 months ago, it would be the wrong approach for Canada to unilaterally retaliate now.


“The ship has kind of sailed here,” he said. “For Canada to now move on its own and implement a whole bunch of retaliatory tariffs, I think, would leave us even more exposed to further escalation and further pain from the Trump administration.”
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In a July 26 open letter to Carney, Conservative MP Shuvaloy Majumdar (Calgary Heritage, Alta.), his party’s critic for Canada-U.S. relations, called on the Liberal government to tell Canadians what their plan is to deal with the White House in the face of increased tariffs threats.


Clow said that he doesn’t foresee allies wanting to work together on retaliatory tariffs to blunt American levies as Trump seeks to rebuild the tariff wall that was struck down by the Supreme Court’s IEEPA decision.


He said Canada still has leverage, and there are areas where it can get creative compared to a dollar-for-dollar retaliation, citing looming defence decisions.

The U.S.-manufactured F-35 is in competition with Sweden’s Gripen to become Canada’s next fleet of fighter jets.

Silence of the middle powers​


Clow said the global response to the tariffs in Trump’s second term is very different from what it was the first time around, when a collection of the U.S.’s major trading partners retaliated.

“That went a long way to cause domestic political reaction and economic reaction in the United States that caused the administration to have to tread carefully in what they were doing,” he said. “I believe it ultimately limited how far they could go.”

Tariff threats weren’t the only time that Canada found itself lacking in support. When Trump was reiterating threats to absorb Canada as a “51ststate,” many of this country’s allies were silent on the issue. At the G7 foreign affairs ministers’ meeting in March 2025, Italian Foreign Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Antonio Tajani said it was “not his job” to condemn Trump’s threats, as previously reported by The Hill Times.

“When those threats were coming, many of our European allies were either silent or said very little,” Clow said. “Particularly, in their own perceived interest, they thought, ‘We don’t want to earn the ire of Trump and get involved in a fight that’s not ours. Very clearly, the Europeans learned [that] Trump’s ambitions go beyond Canada, and I think they woke up to that a year later with all the Greenland threats.”
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Silence of the Middle Powers! Oh, my sides! Europe didn’t rush to aid Canada? But Canada’s the most European non-European country!
 
Upvote 7
If we learned today the US has decided to officially annex Canada, I would expect nothing but platitudes from “middle powers.” We’re on our own guys, and a toe to toe tariff war will leave us economically devastated. This whole elbows up thing is retarded but we can’t ignore the fact that Trump is quite irrational.
 
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