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Opinion: I wish Americans could see Trump the way Canadians do

'It becomes more clear by the day that Trump is a danger to us all,' writes our American guest columnist.

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I wish my fellow Americans could see Donald Trump as clearly as Canadians do.

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On Feb. 19, news organization Politico published survey results that Canadians considered the United States to be the greatest existing threat to peace — topping even Vladimir Putin’s Russia.

The poll showed 69 per cent of Canadians agree that the U.S. tends to create problems for other countries rather than solve them, and 57 per cent said Trump is looking around the world for a fight.

Eight days after Politico published its results, Trump joined Israel in attacking Iran, a war lacking clear need, justification or strategy whose worldwide consequences are only beginning to unfurl.

We will all be affected in both predictable and unexpected ways, and more so the longer the war continues.

Right now, despite Trump’s spasmodic and wishful pronouncements of victory, the end is not in sight. The Strait of Hormuz is largely shut down from its normal transit of a fifth of the world’s oil, spiking prices. We know too well that fuel costs and availability affect prices of almost everything else.

Iran maintains leverage in the fight as long as it merely poses a threat to global commerce. “Even after the heavy damage to Iran’s military, the regime … has powerful incentives to pursue continued conflict, and it retains a variety of tools to sustain a war of attrition,” Nate Swanson, the former director for Iran at the U.S. National Security Council, wrote in Foreign Affairs.

Unless the strait is quickly reopened, which experts deem unlikely to impossible, the world could see broad shipping disruptions and supply shortages.

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The Trump administration has proved over and over that it cannot see around the next corner for the obvious consequences of its disruptive choices. The president seemed shocked that his illegal tariffs would lead Canada and other countries to turn away from the U.S. and seek new trade alliances, and the administration appeared ill-prepared for Iran’s ability to disrupt oil shipments.

We have an all-too-recent template from which to evaluate what could come next if shipping remains fractured: The inflationary spikes brought by the logistics chaos of COVID-19.

The Bank of Canada on March 18 said: “Since the outbreak of the conflict in the Middle East, global oil and natural gas prices have risen sharply, and this will boost global inflation in the near-term. In addition to energy supply disruptions, transportation bottlenecks stemming from the effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz could impact the supply of other commodities, such as fertilizer.”

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Opinion: I wish Americans could see Trump the way Canadians do Columnists

Opinion: I wish Americans could see Trump the way Canadians do

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The Canadian Press news agency reports concern about rising grocery prices. “This war comes at a terrible time when it comes to agriculture,” said Fen Osler Hampson, an international affairs professor at Carleton University in Ottawa. “This is going to have all kinds of knock-on effects.”

Banking, pharmaceuticals, electronic components, aerospace and many other industries have Tier 1 suppliers in the Mideast.

Similarly, the auto industry, battered in 2025 by Trump’s erratic trade and tariff “policies,” faces added costs. Detroit-based Automotive News reports that “aluminum, semiconductor parts and plastics — crucial elements to keep the global auto industry flowing — have ties to the Middle East. Uncertain supply and rising costs are putting the auto industry on edge.”

And Michigan’s Anderson Economic Group notes that “at least six times since the 1970s, an event such as this has caused a sharp drop in auto sales. Three times since 2008, we’ve seen a drop of 12% or more.”

An oil price spike should boost U.S. sales of electric vehicles, but Trump politicized automotive technology, knocking automakers off their path toward EVs, which would be a hedge against the inevitability of periodically rising gas prices. His demagoguery, then, made us more vulnerable to the oil price shock that his war created. It’s as if he doesn’t have a plan. Or a clue.

To sum up the trajectory of an unresolved war, the world is less safe and is headed toward yet more economic turmoil brought on by the ego and ignorance of an unhappy, shallow man whom my fellow Americans have chosen twice to lead us.

Your prime minister, Mark Carney, was right in his quickly famous Davos speech: “We are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition.” Trump has changed the world for the worse, upending alliances and trading partnerships that have delivered relative peace and unprecedented prosperity since World War II.

As the consequences of his choices pile up and reality doesn’t conform to his ill-informed, toxic world view, it becomes more clear by the day that Trump is a danger to us all.

Randy Essex retired last year from the Detroit Free Press after a 45-year newspaper career working across the U.S.

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