Pizza maker Graham Palmateer has experienced just how difficult it actually is to completely extricate a business from the US economy. “I have to accept that a complete divorce from American goods isn’t possible,” he wrote in the Canadian news journal Macleans. “Canadian-owned and locally produced kitchen supplies, like paper towels and plates, have been surprisingly hard to find, and the source-tracing rabbit hole deepens quickly. Where were the trees that go into the paper grown? What company produces the packaging? For example, I’ve begun buying lemon juice from a Canadian company, but it’s possible the lemons were grown in the US because we definitely don’t farm them here.” ‘It’s really down to who can sustain the pain the longest. And Trump has kind of made it existential for Canada.’ With Trump running hot then cold, a spooked Canada prepared for war. In March, it slapped its own 25 per cent tariffs on a range of goods imported from the US that included everything from umbrellas to table-tennis tables to scrap metal. In Quebec and Ontario, provinces where the regional governments control the supply of hard liquor, US whiskeys and bourbons were pulled off shelves. “Trade wars are wars of attrition,” says political analyst Grant Wyeth. “It’s really down to who can sustain the pain the longest. And Trump has kind of made it existential for Canada. So Canadians will be willing to tolerate a lot if the next best option is annexation.” Canadians fond of visiting the US (and who make up the biggest group of visitors there) have rethought their travel plans. Road trips are down almost a quarter, according to Statistics Canada, and airlines have begun reducing the number of flights across the border due to relaxed demand. The Canadian government has paid for billboards across the US that read: “Tariffs are a tax on groceries. Tariffs are a tax at the gas pump. Tariffs are a tax on hardworking Americans.” All told, some 75 per cent of Canada’s exports are usually destined for the US, with a total of about $4.4 billion in trade between the two nations – daily. “It is overwhelmingly the wealthiest border in the world,” says Wyeth. “To disrupt that is pure lunacy looking at the scale of just how integrated the two economies are.” Robert Bothwell, who has written more than 20 books about Canadian history, describes the current situation as “dreadful”. Could Trump actually annex another country? It has happened in the past. In 1848, the United States ended the Mexican-American War with a treaty that allowed it to annex territory that became the modern-day states of Texas, California, Nevada, Utah, New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado, Oklahoma, Kansas and Wyoming. The US annexed Hawaii in 1898 after manufacturing a coup against the lawful monarch, Queen Liliuokalani. It bought Alaska from Russia in 1867, and what are now called the US Virgin Islands from a cash-strapped Denmark in 1917, and has tried unsuccessfully several times to buy Greenland (just 26 kilometres from Canada’s Ellesmere Island). It’s attempted to invade Canada before, in 1775 and 1812, when it was roundly sent packing. At the Battle of Chateauguay, some 1530 Canadian-British forces comprising a ragtag army of regular soldiers, volunteers, militia and Mohawk fighters repelled a much larger force of US regular army troops that had planned to march on Montreal. It seems unlikely that US troops might cross the border in this day and age, not least because Canada is a member of NATO, whose other member nations would be compelled to come to its aid (as they would in the case of a US force invading Greenland, a semiautonomous territory of Denmark). Nor would the Canadians necessarily prove easy pickings. “It is not a good idea to invade Canada,” writes Elliot Cohen, a former counsellor to the US State Department, in The Atlantic. “Canadians may have gone in for wokeness in recent years, it is true, but there is the matter of their bloody-minded DNA. It was not that long ago that they harvested baby seals – the ones with the big, sad, adorable brown eyes – with short iron clubs. They love hockey, a sport that would have pleased the emperors and blood-crazed plebeians and patricians of ancient Rome if they could only have figured out how to build an ice rink in the Colosseum.” ‘Trump has unified Canada perhaps more than any Canadian PM has managed to do.’ A March poll found 90 per cent of Canadians were opposed to the idea of joining the US. “I don’t think I’ve felt this level of personal pride in being Canadian and also this broader level of unity amongst Canadians since the 2010 Winter Olympics,” says Aashim Aggarwal (that was when Canada’s ice-hockey team scored in extra time to beat the US to win gold). Indeed, say the observers we spoke with, Donald Trump has succeeded in uniting a nation against him. “In response to the recent Trumpian provocations,” says Alan Lawson, “Canada is probably more unified and nationalistic than ever before. Even Quebecois who have long quite energetically distinguished themselves from the maudits anglaises [damn English], are buying Canadian. Trump has unified Canada perhaps more than any Canadian PM has managed to do.” In Ottawa (chosen as the capital by Queen Victoria in 1857 after local politicians failed to agree), Trump’s threats have already had a silver lining for Canada’s Liberal Party, which had been heading for an electoral wipeout on April 28 at the hands of the Conservative Party and the New Democratic Party. Now, though, the race has flipped. The Liberals have a new leader in Mark Carney (after the increasingly unpopular Trudeau stepped down) and are now ahead in the polls as voters weigh up the benefits of change against stability in uncertain times. And there’s still a possibility that the countries affected by Trump’s tariffs might somehow still thrive – by directing their trade efforts and strategic alliances elsewhere. “America’s now shut-out trade partners ought to focus on expediting free trade initiatives among themselves,” says the Financial Times. “After all, the US accounts for just 13 per cent of global goods imports … The whole world will suffer, but it need not follow America’s path.” Australian wine might find a bigger market in Canada, for example, from bottle shops that have boycotted US wine. Canada is the most important export market for US producers, worth about $1.6 billion a year. Meanwhile, Australia has just signed a $6.5 billion contract to sell Canada an “over-the-horizon” radar system for deployment in the Arctic – “a huge deal,” says Paul Maddison, who provides advisory services for defence companies. “It shows that there’s a desire in Canberra and Ottawa to build greater levels of strategic trust. You know, in an increasingly disrupted world you really need to know who your friends are.” Get fascinating insights and explanations on the world’s most perplexing topics. Sign up for our weekly Explainer newsletter.