TORONTO—Canadians are calling BS on Donald Trump’s claims that his trade war is about fentanyl or stopping illegal border crossings. From coast to coast to coast, the labor and people’s movements say they see it for what it is: pure economic aggression.
In perhaps the most succinct summary of the threat, the Communist Party of Canada (CPC) laid out the stakes in a statement issued on Tuesday, just hours after the U.S. president’s 25% tariffs came into effect.
“Trump’s drive to annex Canada is about gaining control over its vast energy and mineral resources, forests, lumber, fresh water, food production, and land—most of which are on the unceded territories of Indigenous Peoples,” the CPC declared. “It is also about securing control of the Arctic, its emerging trade routes, and U.S. militarization of the region, particularly in relation to Russia.”
They pointed out the similarity between the threats Trump is making against Canada and those he’s issued against other peoples and countries. From the Panama Canal to Greenland to Ukraine, the geostrategic interests of U.S. imperialism and the demands of the capitalist class for access to resources have been primary motives. All of it is “illegal under the United Nations Charter and international law,” the party said.
It’s not just the Communists sounding the alarm, though. So existential is the threat to the Canadian economy that nearly all sectors of the population are expressing their outrage at Trump’s attacks.
From booing the “Star-Spangled Banner” at sporting events and boycotting American imports to municipal resolutions banning U.S. contractors and protests at the U.S. embassy, working-class Canadians are making their voices heard. The CPC calls it “people’s sovereignty in action” and says Canada’s political leaders better be listening.
Compelled to respond to Trump, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has imposed retaliatory tariffs on U.S. imports, and Ontario Premier Doug Ford is busy removing American booze from the shelves of his province’s government-run liquor stores. They and other politicians are appealing to consumers to “Buy Canadian.”
The CPC says it’s going to take more than a tit-for-tat, however, to truly guarantee the country’s sovereignty in the face of the imperialist onslaught coming from south of the border.
Elizabeth Rowley, leader of the CPC, emphasized that point at a recent cross-border solidarity meeting with Communists from the U.S. and Mexico. She noted that Canadian workers have already faced disastrous consequences from U.S. trade policy but that with the latest tariffs they should prepare for “mass layoffs, plant closures, bankruptcies, and permanent unemployment and poverty.”
Nearly two-thirds of Canadian trade is tied up in U.S. commodity circuits and supply chains, leaving the country’s industries and workers particularly vulnerable to Trump’s tariff attacks. The CPC says past free trade agreements like the U.S.-Canada Free Trade Agreement (FTA), NAFTA, and USMCA—and the mainstream ruling class political parties’ support for them—are to blame.
“The free trade agreements have so deeply integrated Canada’s economy with U.S. policies that the impact of these tariffs will trigger a deep recession, affecting U.S. industries and workers as well,” the party’s Tuesday statement said.
In trade wars, workers are often caught in a difficult position, put under pressure to support “their” capitalists. In such moments, cross-border solidarity and transnational resistance movements become all the more necessary, but making those connections isn’t a fast or easy process.
Though Canadian workers are rightly focused on the immediate threat to their jobs and economy due to U.S. aggression, unions and the left are also making the case that trade wars are bad for workers everywhere.
Marty Warren, the United Steel Workers union’s National Director for Canada, called Trump’s tariffs “a direct attack on workers and communities.” Warren said, “These kinds of reckless trade measures don’t work and hurt workers, destabilize industries, and create uncertainty across the economy on both sides of the border.”
The USW’s International President, Dave McCall, agrees. “Canada is not the problem, and these tariffs will only hurt workers on both sides of the border,” he said. “Instead of reckless trade wars, we need policies that strengthen manufacturing and protect good jobs in both countries.”
Unifor, Canada’s largest private sector union and bargaining agent for workers in the auto industry, said Trump has “seriously misjudged the resolve and unity of Canadians” and “misjudged how damaging this trade war will be for American workers” in the form of higher prices and job losses.
Though none have directly responded to it yet, Canadian unions are no doubt disappointed by the thumbs-up given to Trump’s aggressive actions by the United Auto Workers in the U.S. The UAW issued a statement Tuesday saying, “We are glad to see an American president take aggressive action on ending the free trade disaster that has dropped like a bomb on the working class.”
While rightly condemning the disastrous results that corporate-controlled free trade has brought, the UAW focused its fire on the “cheating” perpetrated on the “American worker, the American consumer, and the American taxpayer.” The union declared that it looks forward to “working with the White House to shape the auto tariffs in April to benefit the working class.”
Rowley and the CPC say workers should not be fooled by the claims of Trump and other ruling class representatives pretending that they’re standing up for workers. She argued in a recent op-ed that “the corporate free traders promised thousands of new jobs, higher wages, and gigantic new markets…they drew a picture of endless benefits and improvements in living standards.” It didn’t happen.
Before NAFTA, Canada had the highest wages and standards for workers on the continent, but eventually, the country lost much of its manufacturing base and the value-added jobs that went with it. Many high-paying jobs vanished, and benefits like public pensions, unemployment insurance, and social programs faced cuts.
The CPC warns that “Trump’s campaign to erase the Canada-U.S. border is the next step in North American economic integration, which has never been just about trade” but rather “imposing a North American corporate constitution that granted supranational corporate bodies more power than national governments, with U.S. imperialism in control.”
Before imposing retaliatory tariffs, the Canadian federal government tried to appease Trump with a billion dollars’ worth of unnecessary “border security” spending—which would likely be paid for by cuts to public services like healthcare, education, and housing.
The mass labor and people’s movements, the CPC said, must press Parliament to “act in the public interest and reject corporate sellouts.”
The Communists put forward a multi-point program that they say would truly benefit workers, not only in Canada but in other countries as well. First on their agenda is Canada’s withdrawal from the USMCA and replacing it with a trade policy based on “multilateral and mutually beneficial trade with the world,” including union wages and protections for all workers.
As an immediate crisis response, the party argues that unemployment support (Employment Insurance, or EI) in Canada should be expanded to cover the full duration of job loss for workers at 90% of their previous earnings.
To combat Trump’s plans to draw Canada tighter into its imperial grip, the Communists demand the country withdraw also from NATO and NORAD. Rather than being increased as Trump demands, military spending should be slashed by 75%, with the funds reallocated toward job creation, healthcare, housing, childcare, and climate action.
Such steps would reorient the country’s foreign policy away from being the junior partner to U.S. imperialism toward peace and disarmament.
Standing up for Canadian sovereignty and independence is not about simple nationalism for the CPC, though. The party hopes to build class consciousness and broaden the scale of the resistance to shape the response to the current crisis and influence whatever future trade regime emerges.
The party is also very attentive to the ways that the capitalist class—Canadian, U.S., or otherwise—uses national sentiments, racism, and anti-Indigenous prejudices to keep workers divided.
“We need unity in the ranks of working people,” Wai Kiat Tang, a Communist Party candidate who ran in Toronto in last week’s Ontario provincial election, told People’s World. The party, he said, “honors the multi-national nature of Canada” while working to build the coalitions needed “to stand against Trump’s fascist annexation agenda.”
The party is also on guard to prevent Canadian workers from being pulled down the dead-end path of Trump-style politics.
With a federal election looming, the party is urging vigilance against Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre, “who falsely claims to lead a ‘workers’ party’” while aligning himself with Trump’s fascist movement. “Poilievre’s endorsement by billionaire Elon Musk reveals his true allegiance—not to working people but to the billionaire class,” the CPC said.
For the labor and progressive movements to the north, nothing less than the country’s very survival is at stake.
“The fight to protect Canadian independence and workers’ rights is a fight for democracy, peace, and a future free from imperialist control,” the CPC declared, and its members are throwing themselves into that fight.
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