U.S. tariffs on Canada: (Almost) nobody wants this, except the guy who really does

This can give some comfort to Canadians who fear the impact of the great US rates. In general: you are not alone in your feeling.

The idea remains deeply unpopular among the country’s residents whose new president threatens to erect economically hard commercial barriers. Surveys of Leger and the Associated Press/NORC In January, both found that only 29 percent of Americans want tariffs on all imports.

That includes not only a significant part (although not majority) of the supporters of the Republican Party of Donald Trump, but also many of his key figures.

The libertarian senator declared Rand Paul and the most traditional establishment republican Mitch McConnell do not always see the eyes, but both Kentucky senators have warned that Trump’s tariff idea is bad that will make prices increase for US consumers.

Large companies can encourage deregulation and much of what Trump launches, but opposes tariffs, with United States Chamber of Commerce Warning last year its rates of 25 percent in all imports from Mexico and Canada, which would sink the typical family for more than $ 1,000, “with significant damage for US manufacturers, farmers and ranchers.”

The retail sector is also concerned about the rate approach especially.

And if you imagine that the United States oil industry is driven by Trump’s claims that “we do not need its oil and gas”, then you would be misunderstanding how integrated are Canadian producers and US refineries, and the president of a Petroleum lobby, according to reports. Oil exports of protected neighbors of Trump’s commercial actions.

It is not different from generalized condemnation From business groups and republican politicians equally when Trump imposed tariffs on Canadian aluminum and steel in 2018 in his last presidential mandate, when they were qualified as an “increase in taxes on Americans.”

In 2025, with more of the reection movement in Trump’s image than in his first presidency, it is still difficult to find voices to the south of the border that Trump’s rates see as a great idea. The key exception, of course, is the decision maker itself, who repeatedly boasted that “they will make our country rich.”

It is difficult to find any expert that supports it in that. Not even the conservative kingdom of expert tanks: including the Cato InstituteThe American Enterprise Institute: “Anyone who is willing to tell the president his tariff plans are risky, For him?” A scholar wrote Thursday and Stanford University HOOVER institutionfrom which Trump started the economy Kevin Hasett as its director of the National Economic Council.

As a symbol of the cross agreement of this front, the former Treasury Secretary of Bill Clinton and former Republican Senator Phil Gramm co -written to Wall Street Journal Missive Against tariffs and encouraged other economists to sign, in the spirit of the more than 1,000 American economists who signed a letter supplicating against the 1930 Smoot-Hawley tariff law, which many argue worsened the great depression.

“The old line is that economists do not agree above all,” said David Henderson from the Hoover institution to CBC News. “But in tariffs there is an almost total consensus that high rates are bad. And this 25 percent rate is a high rate.”

He was revealing in the minds of that veteran economist who, when he heard that Trump appointed Stephen Tariff’s lawyer, they look as president of the Council of Economic Advisors, Henderson had never heard of the type. Nor do most of his friends in commercial economy, said Henderson.

In paper Miran wrote past autumn, argued that rate rates at 20 percent are “optimal” for US revenues and general well -being, while anything up to 50 percent will not be harmful. However, he also offered this condition, which perhaps is thrown into the agitated debate on Canada’s struggle strategy: “Reprisal tariffs of other nations can cancel the benefits of well -being of tariffs for the United States”

(Look is a member of the Manhattan Institute, where their opinions to Pro-Tarifa are not widely shared, if the headlines as “Why the deep state loves rates” and “Economists are wrong, but not on tariffs“They are something to happen.)

But Trump has been able to surround people as they look at that they help support the president’s zeal for slapping import taxes to the assets of other countries. Its incoming secretaries of Treasury and Trade They have backed their vision in various degrees, while Hassett minimized the wide fears of price shocks in Fox Business this week.

“When people trying to panic for the commercial policy of President Trump simulate what he is going to do, they do not take into account all other policies,” he said.

“Then, President Trump is drill, baby, exercise and deregulation and tax cuts and reduces spending.”

While Trump praised the tariffs of the late nineteenth century of the Republican president William McKinleyThe party, since the 1950s, has been the side that supported free trade on protectionist impulses, says Henderson. That could explain why conservative economic orthodoxy is so firmly against the team rate.

But when Henderson spoke with an event of the chapter of the Libertarian Party in California last week, he says that many of Trump’s supporters in the crowd seemed to be skeptical about his points about trade. Trump’s “personality cult” has put the attitudes of his fans in alignment with his, and much of the base of Republican voters along with her.

A Ipsos survey For Reuters made after the opening of January 20, Trump showed that a clear majority of Americans remain opposite to tariffs on Canadian goods, including 88 percent of the Democrats and 66 percent of the independents, but Only 37 percent of Republicans do not agree with tariffs on the northern border.

One could see that in two ways: on the one hand, most of his party still wants me to advance and throw a possible commercial war. On the other hand, about two fifths of his own group believes that he is on the wrong way.

In Leger’s survey, even most respondents who were members of the Trump party say that tariffs will increase the price of goods and services in their country.

And that is before they are instead, and all the warnings of economists and traditional oil and politicians potentially come to pass and hit the American wallets.

“Regardless of what people think, if they see that the price of gasoline rises 15 to 20 cents per gallon, they could ask themselves,” says Henderson.