Eric Van Rythoven: As Nobel-prize winning economist Paul Krugman explains, the U.S. imports economically vital goods from Canada like oil, lumber, electricity and aluminum, for which there is no cheap and accessible domestic substitute. Tariffs on these goods means higher costs for American consumers and businesses in an already inflationary environment.
Foreign governments are acutely aware of these economic problems, and the role they will play in the upcoming U.S. midterm elections. As American foreign policy scholar Paul Musgrave argues, this creates incentives for countries to use time as a weapon against the U.S.
For Iran, this could mean keeping oil prices high in order to punish Republicans in the midterms. For Canada, it means leaving Republicans to defend a bitterly unpopular trade war.
The point is not that Canada can defeat the U.S. — it can’t. But it can cause enough pain in the right place, and at the right time, to make a trade war politically costly.