04/05/2025
I’m Canadian, and I Get It: Trump’s Doing What He Was Elected To Do—We Need to Figure That Out Fast
By: Steve H
I’m watching from up here in Canada, and the news is relentless—Trump’s tariffs slammed the U.S. stock market this week, with the S&P 500 cratering 5.85% on April 4, 2025, a $5 trillion hit since Wednesday. Canadian stocks are down too—not as brutal, but most of us have retirement funds tied to U.S. markets, so it stings. My social media is a mess of outrage: “He’s tanking the economy!” “What a disaster!” We’re threatening boycotts, waving our flags harder, and pointing at the chaos like it’ll make Trump flinch. I’ve been one of those voices—our exports to the U.S. are 75% of our trade, and I’m worried about my grocery bill spiking or my cousin losing his job at the auto plant, and me losing my job in the Alberta oil patch. But here’s the thing I’m starting to realize: Trump doesn’t care about our anger, his U.S. critics, or the stock tickers. Neither do his working-class voters—the ones who elected him, the people who lost their spot in the middle class when manufacturing went away. Canada is not going to shame him into backing off by crying about markets or exports. As a Canadian, I’m seeing it now—Trump is giving those voters exactly what they wanted, and we better wrap our heads around that quick.
I used to think Trump was just reckless, some bull in a 'chy-nah' shop breaking everything and setting the economy back years; well I still do. But I’ve been trying to see it from the perspective of his working-class voters—not the Bay Street types or the Wall Street crowd losing sleep over the Dow Jones Industrial Average, but the folks in Alabama or Michigan who saw factories shut down 20 or 30 years ago because of deals like NAFTA that we may have loved up here. Canada’s been slapping tariffs on U.S. dairy and other goods for decades, while American lawmakers passed bills that gutted their middle class and favored the investor class. These aren’t investors with 401(k) portfolios or large pensions funded by the stock market; they’re the working class, scraping by on $17 an hour, living in trailers, the ones who got pushed out of the middle class when manufacturing left. They don’t care if our lumber gets hit with a 25% tariff or if Tropicana struggles to sell orange juice to Canada. The guy in rural Washington state would rather the American lumber industry meet American needs—why does he want free trade? If it means cheaper juice at their Walmart and more lumber jobs in the Midwest, that’s a win when they’re stretching $40,000 to feed three kids. Exporting goods to keep our investors—or theirs—rich? That’s not their fight.
Trump said, “I love the uneducated,” and the elites scoffed—coastal liberals and Bay Street suits laughing at the rubes. But they’re dangerous in a democracy when you look down at them, and he gave them a voice. Those working-class voters, the ones who lost their middle-class lives to globalization, aren’t stupid—they’re pi**ed off. I’ve been mad about this, but I get it now. For them, the economy we’re defending—the one I’ve been taught to care about—stopped working ages ago for them, and it's beginning to fail us here now. It ate up their middle class, and it’s eating ours now. The 2008 crash didn’t just sting; it gutted them. Homes foreclosed, savings gone, and then the bankers who blew it up bought those houses out from under them for cheap. Prices have doubled since—in some markets, quadrupled—but those working-class people didn’t get their lives back. They’re renting from global equity firms now, paying to live in homes they once owned, probably for more than their 2007 mortgage was. The “recovery” saw home prices rebound, but ownership was concentrated with investors. It boosted our trade numbers and their CEOs’ net worth, not the guy in Ohio who lost his house and saw his company crumble when publicly traded competitors moved in across the street. So when Trump shrugs at a plunging S&P and keeps swinging, he’s not screwing up—he’s their revenge. And I can’t blame them for wanting it.
Currently what I see are Canadians begging for more Canadian products, demanding stores carry and showcase them, ironically that’s what America’s working-class voters were begging for 30 years ago when they were still middle class. Canadians have gotten a little taste of what the American middle class had forced upon them and suddenly we overwhelmingly want what Trump’s giving his base, but we can’t recognize it through our rage and hate for him and those voters. We’re missing the point up here. We thought we could guilt him into playing nice by pointing at the chaos—economic numbers based on stock markets, job numbers, global trade disruptions. But democracy down there gave those working-class voters a populist because the system was fine shredding their middle class for a minority of wealthy investors and lobbyists. Their bottom 60% holds next to nothing—2.6% of the wealth—while the top keeps climbing. In a democracy, that’s game over for the status quo when the elites sneer at the “uneducated” majority. Trump isn’t likely even trying to fix anything—he’s their wrecking ball, and he’s delivering. I’m not saying I like it—our economy’s tied to theirs, and I’m scared of what’s coming. But shaming him with stock charts won’t change a thing. He’s not wrong for those working-class voters; he’s just wrong for us.
And what’s our government’s response? Retaliatory tariffs. A jug of Tropicana orange juice has jumped to near $15 here, but not because of a single Trump policy. Trump isn’t taxing orange juice exports; he isn’t making our groceries expensive. Every dollar we pay in tariffs is imposed by our own government—and for what? Trump doesn’t sell orange juice. This doesn’t hurt him or the U.S. government, it hurts Canadian consumers. It might hurt the Tropicana corporation and its investors a little, but Trump’s working-class base doesn’t sell orange juice either—they don’t care if a Pepsi-owned giant loses market share. Those voters, the ones who lost their middle-class dreams and live paycheque to paycheque, will welcome cheaper orange juice in America as exports struggle. This is our response, not the direct result of Trump’s policies, and it’s us footing the bill at the checkout line.
So, Canada, we’ve got to stop clutching our pearls and start thinking straight. Trump’s not here to keep our exports flowing or our investors happy—or American investors, for that matter. He’s torching a system that screwed his working-class voters first, the ones he gave a voice to when the elites laughed. I don’t know what we do next—retaliate, adapt, beg?—but we better figure it out. We can’t do to our middle class what was done to theirs, or we’ll be voting for our own Trump 30 years from now. The answer probably involves some acknowledgment of what those working-class voters have been saying for decades. The chaos isn’t his mistake; it’s his mandate. And it’s not our game anymore.
