I live and work in Canada and the U.S. Most of my American colleagues and friends know nothing about this trade war - Toronto Star
The international border is proclaimed on the Gordie Howe International bridge that connects Windsor, Ontario, Canada and Detroit, Michigan.
Casey Plett is the author of several books, including “On Community.” She teaches at Ohio University.
An image of Lake Ontario was pulled up on my public hotel computer kiosk in Manitoba recently. The website was Google Maps, which shows the correct name to Canadians and the Trump-ordered “Lake America” to Americans.
No one was using the computer when I came across it. Someone had just called up Lake Ontario then left the kiosk, perhaps wishing to remind all who strolled by: Don’t forget this insanity for a second.
I’d gone to Manitoba for my cousin’s wedding. The groom, whom I’d only met a few times, asked where I was living: Ontario? I explained that I lived part-time in Windsor, but I taught full-time in Ohio during the school year.
“We’ll come visit you in Windsor,” he said without missing a beat. “But I don’t cross that border.” It made me sad, but of course I couldn’t blame him. I responded by shaking his hand. “Respect.”
Canadians will not be mystified by the above interactions. Americans, however, find such anecdotes more head-spinning. “People just aren’t crossing the border,” a close friend asked in disbelief the other day. This is a year and a half after the southbound traffic dropped off a cliff.
Here’s a frustrating fact for Canadians: Most Americans are only dimly aware this whole fracas is happening at all.
Everyone in my U.S. life knows that I’m Canadian. Most of my American friends and professional contacts are well-informed people who pay attention to the news. They’ve never once asked me about all this. It doesn’t come up.
Sometimes leftists will express bafflement that I still live in the U.S., but it’s always connected to other subjects: Disgust with the violence Trump has wreaked, fear of encroaching political oppression, personal risks with me being transgender — take your pick. No one ever brings up Canada.
Some reporting has focused on the trade war disrupting border state politics. I believe these stories, but I also wonder if, when taking the whole country into view, they aren’t anomalous, the exceptions that prove the rule.
“How much do you know about the U.S.-Canada trade war?” I asked a well-informed friend in Ohio a few weeks ago. We are good friends, she has visited me in Windsor, she works in journalism. She did a double take, then admitted “not much.” Did she know about the latest (at the time) trade blow-up where Carney walked away from the deal? Nope.
Americans are befuddled when I tell them every product up north now bears a maple leaf wherever it can be justified, that my Canadian friends trade tips on which grocery products are U.S. ingredient-free. They gape when I recount how even cannabis stores promise “100% CANADIAN” wares — despite weed being, you know, a substance one cannot by law import.
I don’t think my experience is anomalous. Last summer, NYMag ran a feature article titled, “You Have No Idea How Furious The Canadians Are,” in which an American journalist roams Toronto, marvelling at the knock-on effects of his government’s belligerence and how they’d infected Canadian daily life. It’s sort of funny to read now, grim to think little’s changed.
Americans don’t actually like the tariffs, or the 51st state threats, belligerence, or the trollish renaming of Great Lakes. They think it’s all stupid. A majority say tariffs hurt their own economy. Virtually everybody with an opinion takes a dim view of renaming Lake Ontario. Among those with an opinion, more Americans even approve of Canada’s counter-tariffs than not.
The complicated wrinkle there is “those with an opinion.” The above facts exist in the same strange universe where most Americans don’t even know who Mark Carney is. What this whole stupid dust up is to the Americans is low-salience. The average Yank hasn’t been given reason to care.
On one hand: None of this is a surprise. Anyone living in the U.S. finds themselves with a lot of Buffoon-in-Chief related news to sort (or live) through, news that is regularly violent, heartbreaking and head-spinning.
Yet, on the other hand: One looks at, say, the front page of the Star’s website, with its firehose of trade war content — which Canadians do not have the privilege of ignoring — and it’s impossible not to be bowled over with the contrast to the front page of the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal, where the subject jostles amongst a cavalcade of national and international strife.
One wonders if it’s sustainable. My guess? If the trade war keeps escalating, all bets are off. Neither the US government nor its citizens understand how locked in the average Canadian is to taking hits if it means telling the States to get wrecked. At a certain point, if their government keeps ruining the economy, enough Americans will pay attention whether they want to or not.
If, conversely, as often happens, Trump climbs down in private even as he bloviates in public, and his lackeys and Carney blearily hash out a deal — average American ignorance will remain. For the time being.
Personally? I think eventually, over the years, it will sink in down here just how badly their country has fumbled it with their neighbour. It will just probably be too late. My big takeaway from all this, as a dual citizen with a cross-border life? It’s this: Canadians have long memories, are a “Fool me twice, shame on me” people. Respect.
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Casey Plett is the author of several books, including “On Community.” She teaches at Ohio University.
Opinion articles are based on the author’s interpretations and judgments of facts, data and events. More details
