Beyond tariffs: 5 worrying ways Trump could escalate his trade war with Canada

Interesting detailed analysis. Not sure even the Trump administration would go that far, but labour mobility implications for cross border services etc are something to watch out for:

…Tariffs may be the easy part

None of these scenarios is inevitable.

Some would almost certainly face legal challenges. Others would run against the spirit, and in some cases the letter, of longstanding bilateral agreements. Several would impose serious costs on American companies, workers, and consumers, as well as Canadians.

But that is different from saying the tools do not exist.

For decades, Canada has tended to think about its exposure to the U.S. mainly through trade: how much it exports south, how vulnerable particular sectors are to tariffs, and how quickly it can diversify into other markets. That remains important. But the deeper relationship rests on much more than the movement of goods.

It depends on easy movement of people, trusted border administration, coordinated tax rules, privileged access to American technology, and physical infrastructure that both countries have spent decades integrating.

Those arrangements are usually treated as the background architecture of the relationship. In an even more serious confrontation, they can also become leverage.

And even these five possibilities do not exhaust Washington’s arsenal. At the far end of the escalation ladder sit the president’s emergency economic powers, which can be used to restrict financial transactions and block foreign property under U.S. jurisdiction after a qualifying national emergency is declared. Authorities of this kind sit at the heart of much of the U.S. sanctions machinery used against adversaries such as Iran, Russia, and North Korea. Applying anything comparable to Canada would represent a rupture far beyond today’s trade dispute.

The more realistic lesson is simpler.

Canada’s vulnerability is not only that it trades heavily with the U.S. It is that decades of successful integration have embedded Canadian prosperity inside systems that Washington helps administer.

Those systems make both countries richer in normal times.

In a confrontation, they can also become pressure points.

If the trade war keeps escalating, tariffs may eventually prove to have been the easy part.

Pouya Daneshpajooh is an Editorial Intern at The Hub and a Master of Global Affairs student at the University of Toronto’s Munk School.

Source: Beyond tariffs: 5 worrying ways Trump could escalate his trade war with Canada