How Utah hopes to bridge the US-Canada border in the middle of a trade war

MONTREAL — Growing up across the river from New York in small-town Ontario, Bill Brady knew this about the United States: it was big, it was powerful and it had Pizza Hut.

Back then, crossing the border from Cornwall, Canada, to Massena, U.S., simply required finding a car to drive the bridge — something Brady and his brother did often to eat at their favorite fast-food joint.

From Brady's point of view, the countries' close proximity, shared history and intertwined economies meant the border seemed less like a barrier and more like an opportunity for mutually beneficial exchange.

In 1997, Brady crossed the border again to attend Brigham Young University. This time he never returned, choosing instead to raise his five children and launch several businesses, including Troomi, a kid-safe smartphone company aimed at healthy digital habits, in Utah.

But when Brady landed in Montreal Saturday night as part of the Utah trade mission to Canada, he said it felt like coming home.

"The relationship between our countries, I believe, is singular," Brady said. "It is unlike any relationship between other countries in the world."

Brady is just one of multiple Canadian members of a delegation led by Utah Gov. Spencer Cox to pitch Beehive State businesses, resources and workers to their Canadian counterparts.

Unlike recent trade missions to Mexico, the Middle East and Asia, however, this one comes at a time when the "singular" U.S.-Canada relationship appears to be at a breaking point.

New tariffs on Canada

On day one of his 2nd term in office, President Donald Trump surprised America's closest neighbor, and the single largest consumer of American products, with a 25% across-the-board tariff as a punitive measure to encourage enhanced border security.

In 2024, around 0.2% of the fentanyl seized by U.S. Customs and Border Patrol and 8.7% of border encounters with undocumented migrants occurred at the U.S.-Canadian border.

The tariff was quickly paused, then narrowed to only include the roughly 15% of Canadian goods that do not fall under the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, before it went into effect on March 4.

In the meantime, Trump announced a flat 25% tariff "without exceptions or exemptions" on all steel and aluminum imports, a 25% tariff on non-USMCA compliant cars and car parts, and a 10% tariff on most energy imports.

Canada is by far America's top foreign source of steel and aluminum, accounting for around one-fourth of total steel imports and three-fourths of aluminum imports, representing more than 60% of America's yearly aluminum consumption. Canada was also responsible for 60% of U.S. crude oil imports in 2023, making up more than one-fifth of all the oil refined in the U.S.

On Wednesday, Trump announced the most expansive tariff regime in over a century with a blanket 10% tariff on most countries and rates of up to 50% on imports from places with significant trade barriers. The president defended the step as a way to eliminate trade imbalances and encourage U.S. manufacturing.

Canada was excluded from the list but Trump addressed the country directly during his remarks. While Canada does not charge levies against the vast majority of U.S. goods, Trump highlighted the country's protectionist policies surrounding agricultural imports and their trade surplus with the U.S.

"In many cases, the friend is worse than the foe in terms of trade," Trump said. "We have to take care of our people, and we're going to take care of our people first."

Many, including the United Auto Workers union and the International Dairy Foods Association, praised Trump's move to insulate some U.S. industries from Canadian competition.

Some political economists, including Mark DiPlacido, a trade policy advisor at American Compass, said the groundbreaking decision — and the subsequent upheaval to the stock market — was a necessary step to rearrange the global economic order "on a systemic level."

"This changes the overall incentive across the entire economy to achieve balance and start really investing more in production," DiPlacido told the Deseret News. "The only safe bet to avoid these tariffs is to produce in America."

But the potential long-term economic gain has come at the cost of short-term harm to a centuries-long friendship.

In response to Trump's new tariff regime, Canada has announced a 25% retaliatory tariff on $100 billion in U.S. goods, a 25% reciprocal tariff on non-USMCA vehicles and a billboard campaign in more than a dozen U.S. cities calling tariffs "a tax on hardworking Americans."

"The old relationship we had with the United States based on deepening integration of our economies and tight security and military cooperation is over," Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said last month.

What's in a relationship?

If the U.S. loses confidence with Canada, it could lose much more than its second biggest trading partner, according to Michael Strain, the director of economic policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute.

Maintaining a strong connection with friendly nations is "extremely, extremely important," to American interests, Strain said, and can often be the most "America-first" policy.

"The United States needs allies and needs strong relationships," Strain told the Deseret News. "We learned that after 9/11, we learned that during COVID, and the administration's willingness to inflict considerable damage on those relationships is one of the worst aspects of its trade policy."

In some ways, the U.S.-Canada friendship is unprecedented in world history.

Since the time of the American Revolution, the two countries have shared the world's longest undefended border, at 5,525 miles. And as China has grown to dominate world manufacturing, Canada remains one of just a handful of nations that continues to trade more with the U.S. than it does with China.

"The relationship between the United States and Canada is almost certainly the greatest international success story of the last 150 years," said Chris Hodson, the Canadian studies research coordinator at Brigham Young University. "There's a reason why U.S. standards of living and Canadian standards of living have really skyrocketed together throughout the 20th century."

Members of Utah's trade mission, which begins Monday and runs through Friday, are out to prove that the U.S.-Canadian relationship can still thrive despite policy barriers at the border.

Read the full article at Deseret.com.

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