This isn't a trade war, Canada. We’re in a war for our sovereignty

With that one sentence, Trump has framed this moment in Canada-U.S. relations as something much larger than a trade war. It’s also a sovereignty war, as Mark Carney made abundantly clear in his Saturday news conference, using words like “power play” and “we were attacked.”

The prime minister listed the disturbing ways in which the Trump administration was attempting to compromise Canada’s sovereignty as the talks came down to the wire.

• The U.S. demanded restrictions on Canada’s ability to sign trade deals with other countries, which amounts to an attempt to influence foreign policy.

• The U.S. also demanded concessions on French-language protection, which wades right into the very constitutional nature of this country.

• The U.S. also appeared to be demanding exclusive access to critical minerals, which can only be seen as an attempted assault on Canada’s resource sovereignty.

Carney also called this a strategic blunder. “The new U.S. tariffs are designed to hurt us and divide us,” he said. “They’re a miscalculation. They’re a miscalculation because Canadians will always take care of each other.”

Let’s remember, this isn’t the first time Trump has miscalculated in the realm of sovereignty. Remember Greenland? This is a president who has underestimated the blowback before when he treats national sovereignty as an economic transaction.

And this time, he is trying it on a country that is already immersed in sovereignty debates in 2026 — from Alberta’s referendum in October to Quebec’s provincial election that same month. Although it is worth noting, and not insignificant in the trade context, that the Parti Québécois has promised not to hold a referendum on independence while Trump remains in office.

Note to president: that’s how much any effort to mess with sovereignty can unite this country. It’s also telling — and consistent with other miscalculations — that this administration also believes the U.S. booze bans are being administered from the top down, rather than the grassroots up.

As Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew said late last week about the prospect of returning American alcohol to store shelves: “Don’t buy it. Let it sit on the shelf … and buy the Canadian stuff instead.” Kinew urged Canadians to keep up their own statements of economic sovereignty. “Let’s send a message that … we don’t like Donald Trump’s approach to trade or his way of treating Canada.”

This is also a country that has been at this fork in the road before, on whether free trade is about economics over sovereignty — though you have to go back a bit to recall when this seized the nation.

Back in the great free-trade election of 1988, it was Brian Mulroney making the economic case, while the Liberals’ John Turner argued for sovereignty. The economic case won out, but Turner’s powerful charge to Mulroney during the debates — “I happen to believe you sold us out” — rings loud to this day.

If Turner were alive today, we might be tempted to say: John, meet Mark Carney, a Liberal leader who may be thinking these days that you were on to something there in 1988.

To be fair, Carney might be one of those Liberals who believes today that a business case can still be made for free trade with the United States and Canada’s team no doubt was taking that stance strongly in these talks that have now collapsed.

The problem is that Trump and his team were treating this as a matter of sovereignty, on the table along with tariffs and quotas. Or at least some of them were. As Carney said on Saturday, without elaborating, it was his view that the Trump administration has not been speaking with one voice in the trade talks.

Where Canada had been united, Carney said: “You cannot say that about the United States administration.”

For a man whose career has been steeped in economics, Carney might have been expected to be a prime minister who would go toe-to-toe with Trump in that realm. But he’s made his mark so far by putting his foot down on sovereignty, whether that was telling Trump that Canada wasn’t for sale in their first Oval Office meeting or in the now-famous speech in Davos, Switzerland, at the beginning of this year.

Walking out of the trade talks on Friday night is another such moment. It was again not the beginning of a trade war — we were already in one — but another shot fired in what can only be seen as a sovereignty war.

The proof? Trump keeps talking about Canada as a state — exactly what will make Carney’s position at home stronger.