Just Before the Midterms, Trump Turns a Trade War Into a Canadian Betrayal to Rouse His MAGA Base

There is no mystery in Canada's tariffs. They were announced, published, and implemented in public. What is remarkable, however, is the American president's attempt to turn a documented trade dispute into a story of Canadian deception just before the Midterms.

By Yiannis Damellos and Mars Strangelove Jr.

October 5, 2026

President Donald Trump made an extraordinary claim Monday before leaving the White House for a campaign rally in Nebraska: Canada had been charging the United States tariffs that “nobody knew about” — except him.

“We caught them in the act,” Trump told reporters. He offered no tariff schedule, no dollar figure, and no specific Canadian measure that had supposedly escaped everyone else's attention. He simply said Canada had been “ripping us off for years” and that Canadians “have to be honest.”

There is just one problem with the story.

The tariffs aren't secret.

Canada announced its latest counter-tariffs publicly on Aug. 25. Ottawa said that, beginning Sept. 8, it would impose 15%, 25% and 50% tariffs on specified U.S. goods covering approximately $27.6 billion in imports. The Canadian government published the affected products and rates.

Then came the paperwork — the kind of paperwork that is particularly difficult to hide.

On Sept. 7, the Canada Border Services Agency issued a customs notice explaining exactly how the new surtaxes would be collected. The following week, the Canada Gazette formally published the United States Surtax Order (2026), identifying the products, rates and legal authority. The Canadian customs agency now openly tells travelers and importers that the 15%, 25% and 50% surtaxes apply to specified U.S.-origin goods.

So who was supposed to be unaware? Not Ottawa. Not Canadian customs. Not Canadian importers. And certainly not Washington.

The U.S. Trade Representative's own data show that the United States and Canada conducted $872.3 billion in goods and services trade in 2025. The U.S. imported $381.9 billion in goods from Canada while exporting $333.6 billion. The United States also ran a $27.7 billion services surplus with Canada. This is not an obscure relationship conducted in a back room somewhere in Ottawa.

Trump's broader statement that Canada “does all their business with us” while “we do very little business with them” is therefore misleading as well. Canada is deeply dependent on the U.S. market — 72% of Canadian goods exports went to the United States in 2025 — but the relationship is hardly one-way. Canada was the second-largest U.S. goods-and-services trading partner, and it supplied about 64% of U.S. crude-oil imports by quantity in 2025.

There is a legitimate dispute here. Canada has imposed tariffs on American products. But those measures did not materialize mysteriously. Canada imposed countermeasures in response to U.S. tariffs, and Ottawa has repeatedly documented that chronology. In 2025, Canada imposed 25% tariffs on $30 billion of U.S. goods after Washington imposed tariffs on Canadian exports; Canada subsequently removed most of those measures in September 2025, leaving tariffs on steel, aluminum and automobiles in place.

The current escalation followed another round of U.S. tariffs. On Aug. 22, Washington imposed 50% tariffs on $27.6 billion worth of Canadian goods under Section 338. Canada responded with its own published counter-tariffs beginning Sept. 8. Even the Canadian government's formal regulatory record describes the measures as a response to the new American tariffs.

There is therefore a crucial distinction between a tariff dispute and a secret tariff conspiracy. The first is real. The second is unsupported by the public record. And that makes Trump's choice of language worth examining. His remarks came when a reporter asked whether he would resume negotiations with Canada before the U.S. midterm elections. Trump said he was in no hurry, accused Canada of dishonesty, and immediately returned to the language of Americans being cheated by their northern neighbor.

We cannot know what was in the president's head when he said it. Nobody knows where these flashes of inaccuracy come from — call them exaggerations, inventions or whatever you like. But we can examine what the rhetoric does. It takes a complicated dispute involving tariffs, quotas, automobiles, dairy, alcohol, steel, aluminum, and the North American trading system and reduces it to a much simpler story: Canada is dishonest. Canada is ripping America off. Trump discovered it. That is powerful political language for his intended audience because it turns a technical trade argument into a grievance story — and grievance stories are easier to campaign on than customs schedules.

Yet, for us Canadians, there is another uncomfortable question. What happens when the president of the United States repeatedly describes America's closest trading partner not as a competitor with whom Washington has a dispute, but as a country that is “ripping us off” and cannot be trusted?  The danger is not merely economic. Words matter in international relations because they can transform an argument over policy into an argument over national character. Once a dispute becomes “us” against an allegedly dishonest “them,” facts become secondary to identity.

And here the facts are remarkably inconvenient. The Canadian tariffs are public. The American tariffs are public. So are the customs notices. The trade statistics are public, and the negotiations also are public. The only thing that appears to have been missing was the secret.

Ultimately, the real question isn't whether we have been secretly taxing America, but rather why a public dispute over tariffs was turned into a narrative about a hidden betrayal by Canada, just weeks before the elections. Perhaps the answer lies in the fact that he is losing support in Michigan and other states that have been financially affected by his trade war with Canada. Well, tough luck, Mr. President. Here in the True North, we don't bet on political deception when we make deals with our partners. And for sure we don't use them as an alibi for our poor judgment.