Trump’s Tariffs offer Canada a Window for Change
Canadians need to fall back from globalization. We need to disentangle from American economics and culture, reinhabit our own geography, and rebuild a local economy and culture that reflect who we are.
Resistance Fails with the 1988 Election
Canada’s deep integration into the global economy began with the 1988 Free Trade Agreement (FTA) between Brian Mulroney’s government and the United States. It marked a turning point. For the first time, Canada committed to binding trade rules that prioritized corporate cross-border interests over national economic autonomy. This paved the way for NAFTA in 1994, then the USMCA in 2020, accelerating Canada’s embrace of globalization.
The 1988 federal election was fought primarily over the FTA. Liberal leader John Turner, like Mark Carney, had inherited the role of prime minister without a general mandate. Turner opposed the deal, In the televised leaders’ debate, he accused Mulroney:
“We built a country east and west and north. We built it on an infrastructure that deliberately resisted the Continental pressure of the United States. For 120 years we’ve done it. With one signature of a pen you’ve reversed that… and will reduce us, I’m sure, to a colony of the United States.”
Turner lost to Mulroney, and with him, the last serious resistance to American economic integration faded. Since then, Canada’s economy has become deeply embedded in both North American and planetary systems of trade, finance, and information. Our manufacturing supply chains, auto, agriculture, and energy are tightly synchronized with U.S. markets. Cultural imports dominate our media and entertainment. Our market reacts not just to decisions in Ottawa, but to Washington, Beijing, and Frankfurt. Over time, our economic, political, and cultural autonomy has quietly eroded.
The Cult of Cheap
Free trade brought Canada a range of benefits. Export markets opened. Some industries modernized. Consumers got cheaper goods and greater variety. For the urban middle class and corporate sector, the gains were real. But these gains were not evenly shared. Rural economies were hollowed out. Factory towns disappeared. Wages stagnated. Cultural industries struggled under the weight of American content. In exchange for efficiency, we accepted precarity. For abundance, dependency.
And then came the more difficult truths. “Globalization is slave labour making things for the unemployed,” said Marine Le Pen (a name I invoke only for the words, not her politics). An indecent formulation, but one that reveals the indecency beneath the system. In pursuit of cost savings, corporations outsourced production to wherever wages were lowest and protections weakest. Sweatshops. Child labour. Unsafe factories that collapse on their workers. Supply chains engineered to maximize opacity. Accountability became a public relations issue, not a moral one. While human rights frameworks were drafted and conferences held, the basic ethic remained unchanged: profit first.
Globalization didn’t just make goods cheaper; it made desire cheaper. Fast fashion, disposable gadgets, novelty without function. Things to be bought and discarded, not repaired or cherished. Marketing became the true engine of consumption, turning manufactured abundance into perceived need. Our homes filled with items we didn’t ask for but somehow couldn’t resist.
The environmental costs are everywhere. Forests cleared to make way for export crops. Rivers polluted by synthetic dyes. Oceans choked with plastic waste. And all of it moved by fossil fuel—across oceans, over highways, through the air—because distance, once a deterrent, became irrelevant to the logic of capital.
Globalization is an Extension of Colonialism
Globalization is an extension of our colonial past. Where empires once used flags and armies, corporations now use contracts and debt. Control by other means. Former colonies remain stuck in extractive roles: raw materials out, cheap goods in. Infrastructure still follows the colonial blueprint—roads and rails designed not to connect communities, but to move resources out efficiently. Multinational corporations behave like modern imperial agents, profiting from labour and land in the Global South while evading responsibility.
Canada, a settler colony, remains both beneficiary and captive of this system. We extract, export, and import culture at a loss. We profit from exploitation while absorbing the dislocation it causes.
The Future of Globalization
The world is, undeniably, interconnected. When governed justly, global cooperation can spread knowledge, contain pandemics, mitigate war, and address climate breakdown. Trade, done well, can lift people out of poverty. Cultural exchange, approached with respect, can deepen understanding.
If globalization is ever to redeem its potential, it must be rooted in fairness, accountability, and restraint. Labour standards must be binding. Environmental protections must be non-negotiable. Trade must be reciprocal, not extractive. Cultural sovereignty must be protected, not flattened. We need not abandon the global—we need to reimagine it.
Tariffs and a Window to Rethink
Trump’s tariffs—erratic, politically motivated, economically disruptive—may nevertheless offer Canada a narrow window. The impulse to disentangle is rarely rewarded in a global system that punishes local initiative. But tariffs shift the calculus. They create space.
Yes, there will be costs. Prices may rise. GDP may dip. But GDP is a poor compass. It counts wildfire reconstruction as growth, but ignores the trees lost. It values speculation over community well-being. It is a tally, not a measure of health.
The deeper question isn’t whether we grow—but whether we grow wisely.
The Wisdom of Contraction
There is an ecological intelligence to contraction. Forests regrow after fire. Bodies heal in rest. Civilizations, too, need intervals of reflection and repair. The past few decades have been a phase of rapid expansion—for capital, for technology, for consumption. We have reached the limits of what this phase can sustain.
Falling back is not regression. It is rhythm.
To fall back now is to begin again with intention. It is to shorten supply lines and reconnect producer and consumer. It is to value durability over disposability. It is to invest in local industry, food systems, arts, and energy—all the things that make a place livable and resilient. It is to make room for silence in the cultural din, and listen to the stories that rise in its absence.
Re-entering the World Differently
This is Canada’s chance—not just to recover what has been lost, but to think beyond what was. To step out of the trance of inevitability, to remake our global connection.
We must name what globalization has externalized: the extraction of labour without rights, the erosion of ecosystems, the destruction of cultural diversity, the hollowing of local economies, the amplification of inequality, the soft tyranny of scale. These are not accidents. They are outcomes. And they can be reconsidered.
Imagine a future where nothing crosses a border unless it honours both human dignity and ecological sanity. Where corporations are taxed not only on earnings but on impact. Where communities are empowered to define their own development. Where technology is shared to solve shared problems, not to hoard advantage. This is not utopia. It is a matter of design.
And so, let us fall back—not to withdraw from the world, but to re-enter it differently.