President Donald Trump is so desperate to punish Canada that he’s willing to trigger catastrophic losses for American businesses, including a sector that has been key to his campaign victories.
Farmers have consistently been among Trump’s biggest supporters, with nearly 78 percent of voters in rural, farm-dependent counties backing his re-election effort in 2024, Investigate Midwest reported.
But now, the president is considering blowing up his own North American trade deal to get back at Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, with domestic farming one of the key industries that would bear the brunt of the collateral damage, The New York Times reported.
Trump, 79, signed the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) during his first term, hailing it as a signature economic achievement that replaced the North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).
With the agreement scheduled for a mandatory review this summer, the U.S. has been pressuring Canada to concede to various demands, including opening up its dairy sector and restocking U.S. liquor, which was pulled from the shelves in some provinces in retaliation against Trump’s tariffs on Canadian products.
But Trump is also angry with Carney, who has responded forcefully not just to Trump’s trade war, but to his threats to annex Canada and make it the 51st U.S. state.
The Canadian prime minister received a standing ovation at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, where he said the U.S.-led global world order was over and urged “middle powers” to work together instead of competing for favor “in a world of great power rivalry.”
Instead of reviewing the U.S.M.C.A., Trump is reportedly leaning toward scrapping it altogether and negotiating separate, individual agreements with Mexico and Canada, according to the Times.
For companies that have structured their business around the U.S.M.C.A., which governs trillions of dollars of trade, abandoning the agreement could be devastating, with farmers and automakers particularly hard hit.
“There’s no real advantage to it — it’s irrelevant,” Trump said of the agreement in January. “Canada wants it. They need it.”
U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer also said last month that Trump was “inclined to leave” the U.S.M.C.A.
Some experts think the tough talk is designed to get concessions from Canada, but Canadian officials told the Times the government is not expecting a full renewal of the agreement, and are preparing for the potential breakup of the U.S.M.C.A.
The officials also said Carney’s team questions whether Canada could trust any fresh trade agreements with Trump, given that he imposed tariffs on Canadian and Mexican products despite the existing agreement.
The Daily Beast has reached out to the White House for comment.
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