President-elect Donald Trump has shaken the Canadian political establishment with his recent post threatening to enact a 25 percent tariff on all goods coming into the U.S.

The provincial premiers, already hearing earfuls from worried business leaders, immediately called for a meeting with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to answer questions about how Canada was planning to respond.

The USMCA free trade deal was due to be reviewed in 2026. As such, both Canada and Mexico have had teams working behind the scenes strategizing the best way to handle the review. Trump has just thrown a spanner in the wheels of those plans, by essentially threatening to rip up the trade agreement his own administration negotiated.

Until recently, the question in Canada was whether or not to pursue a renewal of the USMCA trilaterally, or whether Canada might be better off going it alone and aiming to secure its place in a bilateral agreement with the U.S. Certainly, reviewing an agreement is preferable to starting anew, but now Canada may not get a say in the matter. If Trump does impose tariffs, USMCA is effectively dead in the water.

Trump has threatened to impose the tariffs ostensibly in retaliation for Canada and Mexico’s failure to secure their parts of the border from fentanyl traffickers and illegal migrants. While Canadian immigration policy has indeed led to a wave of migrants streaming across the northern U.S. border, it’s at orders of magnitude smaller than........

© The Hill