Trump’s Wakeup Call to Canada – Oil & Gas is Critical to our Economy

On the bright side, at least President Donald Trump’s threat to impose 25% tariffs on Canadian oil and gas, might have alerted some Central Canadians to the critical importance of oil and gas to the national economy. Trump’s tariff pronouncements may also have forced the Laurentian Elite to rethink the wisdom of allowing anarchy to reign in our immigration system and border management.

Any nation hoping to be a serious player in the areas of international trade and diplomacy needs to meet several critical criteria. Without them a country can have difficulty marketing its goods and services to the world and in retaining meaningful economic and political sovereignty. One of the key criteria is for a country to have a good measure of control over its borders. But there are other elements critical to having effective sovereignty and independence. Having access to versatile, readily transportable energy commodities like oil and gas is one of those essentials. Accordingly, oil and gas are considered strategically important industries.

Lacking any of the major building blocks of strategic economic sovereignty, like the steel and aluminum industries and a thriving manufacturing sector, as well as highly developed transportation sector and the energy industries needed to support all the other sectors can leave a country vulnerable to domination by others. The vulnerabilities can lead to economic and political crises for a country during trade wars, international disputes leading to trade sanctions and embargoes, shooting wars and big natural disasters. A lack of strong trade and military alliances can make matters even worse.

It’s not like there wasn’t a mountain of evidence underlining the strategic importance of oil and gas in the last few years. How smart was it for Angela Merkel to allow Russia, a state run by a psychopath and his team of criminal oligarchs, to control a major portion of its energy supplies? The Ukraine gets it. After its war with Russia began, the Ukrainian government allowed Russian gas to be piped across its territory to Eastern Europe for nearly two years. This was because they realized messing with a commodity critical to bordering states such as Hungary, Slovakia and Romania was politically hazardous.

It is true that a country can still have a thriving economy even if it is missing one or two items from the basket of strategically important industries. Singapore, for example, needs to import fossil fuel but is still considered one of Southeast Asia’s economic tigers. But this is only possible because Singapore is so good at most everything else. It has several other economic engines that perform exceptionally well.

Looking back several decades reminds us that Japan risked entering a World War to obtain the petroleum they needed. To get it, the Japanese concluded they needed to conquer parts of Indonesia. (Similarly they wanted Southeast Asia for its rubber.) They knew these were actions the US wouldn’t tolerate, but they decided they had to do them anyway.

While we’re on the topic of World War II, it is instructive to recall Hitler fought it with one hand tied behind his back. Germany had no oil of its own and gasoline refined from coal and the oil available from their Romanian ally were never enough. That’s why the German’s placed such great hopes in capturing Russia’s Caspian oil fields in 1943. Similarly, Hitler invaded Norway to ensure access to Swedish iron ore—another strategic commodity Germany lacked.

Canada’s oil revenues along with the taxes and royalties collected from those revenues are derived almost entirely from the oil we export to the US. Our export revenues for 2022, following the worst of the covid years, were $123 billion. They accounted for 15.8% of all Canada’s exports and 6.6% of GDP. The following year saw exceptionally high oil prices globally. That year the value of oil Canada’s oil production hit $139 billion and accounted for 7.1% of GDP. Pull even half of those revenues out of the Canadian economy for very long and we’re in economic depression territory.

So, thanks for the wakeup call president Trump. The fact Trump has indicated he will postpone his final decision until February 1, is of some comfort. Danielle Smith has met with him at Mar-a-Lago to make the case against tariffs on Canadian crude. Smith is among the most knowledgeable and capable people there are when it comes to oil and gas production and trade. We couldn’t hope for a better advocate for the producing provinces. She’s certainly a cut above Justin Trudeau and anyone else in his cabinet. Let’s hope Smith she managed to convince Trump how imposing tariffs would harm the economies of both countries.

There is an obvious way to prevent being in this sort of situation in the future – diversify our export opportunities by building more pipelines to tidewater. In my last column I focused on the difficulties involved in getting a pipeline built to the Atlantic coast. The challenges identified focused on the barriers thrown up by Quebec’s politicians and environmentalists. Trump’s ongoing tariff pronouncements suggest it would be in Canada’s national strategic interest to use whatever legal measures are required to sweep those barriers aside in both Quebec and British Columbia to get new tidewater pipelines built.

There is plenty the federal government can do to override the demands of municipalities, special interest groups and provincial governments in support of high national purposes and in emergencies. Section 91 of the constitution gives parliament broad, albeit somewhat vague, powers to do what needs to be done “to make laws for the peace, order and good government of Canada” in all matters not exclusively the jurisdiction of the provinces. And, you would think that if the heavy hand of the Emergencies Act can be used to prevent horn honking and traffic snarls in Ottawa, it could be employed to prevent the environmentally sanctimonious from blocking projects critical to our economic and political sovereignty. Of course doing any of this will require voting the Liberals out of office.

Sorry premier Ford, retaliatory tariffs and export taxes can’t be the only tools employed; especially when they cause self-inflicted wounds. Unfortunately, until we have more export opportunities for oil and gas we may need to limit our counter attacks on Americans to misleading travel directions and poor restaurant service.

Related Topics:#EnergyNow.CA #JimWarren CanadaUSTrade CanadianEconomyOilAndGas canadianenergy TrumpTariffs TrumpWakeupCallToCanada

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Canada Caves: Carney ditches digital services tax after criticism from Trump

Published on June 30, 2025

Todayville

From The Center Square

By Brett Rowland

Canada caved to President Donald Trump demands by pulling its digital services tax hours before it was to go into effect on Monday.

Trump said Friday that he was ending all trade talks with Canada over the digital services tax, which he called a direct attack on the U.S. and American tech firms. The DST required foreign and domestic businesses to pay taxes on some revenue earned from engaging with online users in Canada.

“Based on this egregious Tax, we are hereby terminating ALL discussions on Trade with Canada, effective immediately,” the president said. “We will let Canada know the Tariff that they will be paying to do business with the United States of America within the next seven day period.”

By Sunday, Canada relented in an effort to resume trade talks with the U.S., it’s largest trading partner.

“To support those negotiations, the Minister of Finance and National Revenue, the Honourable François-Philippe Champagne, announced today that Canada would rescind the Digital Services Tax (DST) in anticipation of a mutually beneficial comprehensive trade arrangement with the United States,” according to a statement from Canada’s Department of Finance.

Canada’s Department of Finance said that Prime Minister Mark Carney and Trump agreed to resume negotiations, aiming to reach a deal by July 21.

U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said Monday that the digital services tax would hurt the U.S.

“Thank you Canada for removing your Digital Services Tax which was intended to stifle American innovation and would have been a deal breaker for any trade deal with America,” he wrote on X.

Earlier this month, the two nations seemed close to striking a deal.

Trump said he and Carney had different concepts for trade between the two neighboring countries during a meeting at the G7 Summit in Kananaskis, in the Canadian Rockies.

Asked what was holding up a trade deal between the two nations at that time, Trump said they had different concepts for what that would look like.

“It’s not so much holding up, I think we have different concepts, I have a tariff concept, Mark has a different concept, which is something that some people like, but we’re going to see if we can get to the bottom of it today.”

Shortly after taking office in January, Trump hit Canada and Mexico with 25% tariffs for allowing fentanyl and migrants to cross their borders into the U.S. Trump later applied those 25% tariffs only to goods that fall outside the free-trade agreement between the three nations, called the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement.

Trump put a 10% tariff on non-USMCA compliant potash and energy products. A 50% tariff on aluminum and steel imports from all countries into the U.S. has been in effect since June 4. Trump also put a 25% tariff on all cars and trucks not built in the U.S.

Economists, businesses and some publicly traded companies have warned that tariffs could raise prices on a wide range of consumer products.

Trump has said he wants to use tariffs to restore manufacturing jobs lost to lower-wage countries in decades past, shift the tax burden away from U.S. families, and pay down the national debt.

A tariff is a tax on imported goods paid by the person or company that imports them. The importer can absorb the cost of the tariffs or try to pass the cost on to consumers through higher prices.

Trump’s tariffs give U.S.-produced goods a price advantage over imported goods, generating revenue for the federal government.

Brett Rowland

Investigative Reporter

Business

Trump on Canada tariff deadline: ‘We can do whatever we want’

Published on June 29, 2025

Todayville

From The Center Square

By Brett Rowland

President Donald Trump appears unconcerned about an upcoming tariff deal deadline after abruptly ending all trade talks with Canada as his bid to overhaul world trade continues.

Trump is nearing the end of a self-imposed 90-day deadline to strike deals with nearly every U.S. trading partner as he works to reorder global trade by giving America a competitive advantage through tariffs on foreign goods.

Trump now says that the deadline could be extended past July 9 or even accelerated.

“We can do whatever we want. We could extend it, we could make it shorter. I’d like to make it shorter,” Trump said Friday at the Oval Office. “I’d like to just send letters out to everyone ‘Congratulations, you’re paying 25%.'”

On April 2, Trump announced reciprocal tariffs on nearly every nation that trades with the U.S. Seven days later, he paused those higher tariff rates for 90 days to give his trade team time to cut deals with key trading partners. That 90-day deadline ends July 9 and thus far Trump has brought home two deals: A limited trade pact with the United Kingdom and a trade truce with China.

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick told Bloomberg that new deals are on the way, and those could serve as models for others.

“We’re going to do top 10 deals, put them in the right category, and then these other countries will fit behind,” Lutnick said.

He said the U.S. was “close to the finish line” with India. Lutnick also said he had made an offer to the European Union.

Trump’s decision to suspend trade talks with Canada with just days left before the deadline underscored the flexibility of the president’s trade deadline.

“These are very complex negotiations and we are going to continue them in the best interests of Canadians,” Candian Prime Minister Mark Carney said Friday while leaving his office, according to local reports.

Canada has invariably been one of the top two trading partners for the United States for years. In 2024, Canada was the top destination for U.S. exports and the third-largest source of U.S. imports. On the other side, Canada exported 75% of its goods to the United States and imported almost half of its goods from the United States.

U.S. total goods trade with Canada was an estimated $762.1 billion in 2024, according to the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative. U.S. goods exports to Canada in 2024 were $349.4 billion. U.S. imports from Canada in 2024 totaled $412.7 billion. The U.S. goods trade deficit with Canada was $63.3 billion in 2024.

Services trade with Canada, exports and imports, totaled an estimated $140.3 billion in 2023. Services exports were $86.0 billion, and services imports were $54.3 billion. The U.S. services trade surplus with Canada was $31.7 billion in 2023, according to the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative.

Trump put a stop to the talks on Friday.

“We have just been informed that Canada, a very difficult Country to TRADE with, including the fact that they have charged our Farmers as much as 400% Tariffs, for years, on Dairy Products, has just announced that they are putting a Digital Services Tax on our American Technology Companies, which is a direct and blatant attack on our Country,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.

Trump said the digital services tax was a copy of a European Union proposal.

Earlier this month, the two nations seemed close to striking a deal.

Trump said he and Canada Prime Minister Mark Carney had different trade concepts between the two neighboring countries during a meeting at the G7 Summit in Kananaskis, in the Canadian Rockies.

Asked what was holding up a trade deal between the two nations at that time, Trump said they had different concepts for what that would look like.

The tariffs have frustrated Canadian leaders and residents. Tensions between the two neighboring countries have been high. And cities on both sides of the U.S.-Canada border have been affected.

Trump has repeatedly suggested that Canada join the U.S. as its 51st state. He previously called former Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau “governor” regularly.