This Week in Canada: Your Ambassador Is Persona Non Grata

August 19 is just one day away. And it could be a doozy in the long history of trade disputes. At 12:01 a.m. ET on Wednesday, President Donald Trump will impose tariffs of 50 percent on nearly $20 billion (CAD$27.7 billion) of imports from Canada, unless negotiators come up with some sort of compromise before then.

Wine, dairy products, cement, swimming pools, clothing, fishing rods, and (because no Canada-U.S. trade war would be complete without them) hockey sticks are all on the tariff hit list. And unlike many of the earlier tariffs imposed by the U.S. president, the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) offers no shelter. Even duty-free products under USMCA, which Trump pronounced “the best agreement we’ve ever made” when it was signed in 2020, would face the new 50 percent tariffs.

As of late Monday the negotiations were continuing, and no one outside the room (or perhaps even inside it) could discern the difference between the bluster and substance of the talks. Deal or no deal, Canada has already achieved one distinction in Trump’s global trade war: His July 20 proclamation of the tariffs made Canada the first country to be targeted by a trade weapon that had gone unused through the Great Depression, World War II, the Cold War, the rise of China, and nearly a century of trade disputes. That weapon is Section 338 of the Tariff Act of 1930, which empowers the president to declare and retaliate against “discriminations against the commerce of the United States.”