By Benjamin Christensen
President-elect Donald J. Trump has made Canada his personal punching bag since winning the 2024 US election, publicly joking that Canada will become the “51st state” while at the same time promising to slap a 25% tariff on all Canadian exports his first day in office. While Canadians are coming to the realization of what this means for our economic security, Trump’s rhetoric is initiating some new nationalist feelings not seen in Canada for some time. We know things are becoming dire when former Prime Ministers begin writing op-ed pieces about Canada’s national interests. This past week, Jean Chretien, responding to Trump’s threats, wrote in the Globe and Mail that, “Canadians will never give up the best country in the world to join the US”.
What’s interesting here is that Canadian nationalism is being spurred, in large part, by the threat of the US withdrawing from its free trade commitments with Canada. This represents a significant shift in the politics around free trade. It wasn’t that long ago when the prospect of signing a free trade deal with the US triggered deep feelings of Canadian nationalism that opposed deeper economic integration. During the 1980s, free trade catalyzed a national debate about Canada’s economic, social, and cultural future, triggering emotional responses that feared free trade meant Canada as a nation would not survive American corporate ambitions of continental integration. As Pierre Berton put it in 1987, “The free trade issue goes to the very heart of our national character”.
Feelings around free trade were so intense that it triggered an early federal election in November 1988 to decide what to do. Popularly referred to as the “free trade” election, national coalitions emerged across the country to stop Conservative Prime Minister Brian Mulroney from signing its first free trade deal with the US. Opposing free trade became a national rallying call for hundreds of groups across the country, who mounted a nation-wide campaign against free trade, generating analysis and protests across the country to influence public opinion. This opposition had been influenced, in part, by a left-leaning Canadian nationalism that emerged during the 1970s problematizing high levels of American foreign direct investment andcontrol over Canada’s economy, leading economic national policies such as the National Energy Program (NEP).
In 1987, the Pro-Canada Network was established as the national coalition to stop Canada from signing a free trade deal. Representing dozens of national organizations based across all regions of Canada, including the labour movement,women’s movement, indigenous groups, cultural groups, religious organizations, and many others, these forces pooled their resources, putting their differences aside to oppose Mulroney’s decision to sign the Free Trade Agreement (FTA). The Pro-Canada Network argued that free trade was a direct threat to Canadian economic and cultural sovereignty, an attack on Canadian democracy and the ability to make decisions as a country free from American corporate interests. Many Canadian manufacturing industries, particularly those that were large employers of women, would disappear, shifting Canada’s economy towards lower paying service sector jobs. This economic restructuring would reduce wages while also diminishing unionization levels. Free trade, it was feared, would intensify the commodification of Canada’s natural resources while limiting the ability to pass environmental legislation. Added up, free trade was a direct threat to Canadian values and independence.
Ultimately, this national movement was unable to stop free trade: Brian Mulroney and the Conservatives won the 1988 election, even though the majority of Canadians voted for political parties that opposed free trade (the Liberals and the NDP). The FTA was signed, and Canada’s free trade experiment began Jan. 1, 1989. Today, Canada has 15 free trade deals with 51 countries with broad public opinion support. The FTA expanded to include Mexico in 1995 with the signing of North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Then in 2017 Trump forced the renegotiation of NAFTA which was renamed United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement. Subsequently, since the 1988 federal election, free trade has become normalized and a taken-for-granted aspect of Canadian economic policy and the national coalitions that opposed free trade during the 1980s turned their attention to other issues. Now it is populist conservatives, such as Donald J. Trump, who are opposing free trade, and his opposition to free trade is catalyzing a new national response in Canada, albeit one that assumes the merits of free trade deals. Today, free trade no longer poses an existential threat like it did to so many Canadians during the 1980s. Rather, it is the loss of free trade that is so threatening.
The foundation of North American free trade is on shaky ground: the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement is up for review in 2026. It is possible that Trump will decide not to renew free trade with Canada and Mexico, or without extensive revisions to the deal. If Trump does impose a 25% tariff on Canadian exports, Canadians will have to reconsider (and restructure) its national economy. How will nationalism play into the equation this time?