How Donald Trump's Trade War Against Canada Reveals Tensions Inherent In Friendship

(MENAFN- The Conversation) In his second inauguration address , United States President Trump began by declaring“the golden age of America begins right now” and closed with,“and our golden age has just begun .” Between these lines, he vowed to“tariff and tax foreign countries to enrich our citizens.”

Tying his trade policies to dubious claims about fentanyl trafficking and illegal immigration, Trump's approach appears less about economic strategy and more about asserting dominance. Invoking the language of imperial expansion, he even proposed the idea of making Canada the“cherished 51st state .”

Historians like Richard White , emeritus professor at Stanford University, quickly drew parallels to the 19th-century Gilded Age when robber barons thrived, leaving social inequality in their wake.

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The celebrated Canada-U.S. friendship - further entrenched over the past three decades by the 1989 Canada-U.S. free-trade agreement , cross-border activity and snowbirds wintering in Florida and elsewhere in the U.S. - has long balanced underlying tension stemming from the two nations' power differences. This alludes to tensions inherent in friendships that have long been explored by philosophers.

A traveller hands documents to a U.S. Customs and Border Protection office at the Peace Bridge Port of Entry in Buffalo, N.Y. in 2023. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Cole Burston A 'great relationship?'

Trump's recent sweeping tariffs on Canadian imports are only the latest chapter in a long history of economic clashes.

From the U.S.'s Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930 , which hit Canada hard during the Great Depression , to Richard Nixon's 10 per cent import surcharge in 1971 and the long fight over softwood lumber that persisted through the early 2000s despite Canada's favourable World Trade Organization rulings, these conflicts expose the fragility of Canada-U.S. relations. The uneasy reality is that friendship between nations is never as stable as it seems.

The trade war has triggered a wave of cultural and economic nationalism in Canada that has gone beyond the“Buy Canadian” movement. At the National Ballet of Canada 's Swan Lake, recently, a stirring rendition of O Canada brought the audience to its feet.

Chrystia Freeland, now minister of transport and internal trade, voiced the nation's outrage on CNN:“Canadians are angry ,” she said, condemning the tariffs as a betrayal of what she called the“great relationship.”

Friendship ideals and power dynamics

But beneath the outrage lies a harsher truth: Canada's“friend” status is conditional, tied to America's shifting priorities. The real question isn't whether Canada is a trusted ally - it's whether it was ever more than a subordinate in this“friendship.” At stake is the concept of friendship between nations.

Philosophers exploring the intersection of friendship and politics offer a useful framework for understanding this imbalance.

Written in the post-Cold War era, French Algerian philosopher Jacques Derrida's The Politics of Friendship , first published in French in 1994 , questions the very possibility of pure, stable friendship, arguing that it is never equal or unconditional.

Instead, said Derrida, it is always a negotiation of power. Derrida questions idealized Aristotelian notions of friendship between nations - ideals that still quietly underpin our thinking about friendship, loyalty and betrayal.

Canada's Foreign Minister Melanie Joly, left, and U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio attend the G7 foreign ministers meeting in La Malbaie, Québec, on March 13, 2025. (Saul Loeb/Pool via AP) Friendship in fiction, Aristotle

In his study of friendship in fiction , literary scholar Allan Hepburn points out that friendships are inherently political, foundational to social relations and embody democratic ideals of equality and fraternity, as Aristotle suggested.

Tyrannical systems, by contrast, lack true friendships, while an ideal democracy extends mutual respect to all citizens. In this way, strangers are recognized as equals and potential friends, regardless of legal obligation, as Derrida emphasized.

In Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics , he distinguished transactional and virtuous friendship. The former is built on mutual advantage or shared pleasure, which to Aristotle is the lesser kind of friendship.

In contrast, virtue-based friendship is both the most enduring and the rarest. Aristotle idealizes this latter type of friendship, describing it as“perfect friendship” in which individuals are“alike in virtue,” wishing well to each other as something good in itself, and are themselves morally upright.

This ideal friendship - expected to be stable, enduring and intrinsically valuable - underpins discourses about the bond between nations based on shared values.

Read more: What makes a good friend?

True friendship reserved for individuals

Political scientist Evgeny Roshchin argues that friendship, as a historical concept in international relations , helped mediate the shift from hierarchical to equal political relationships, shaping sovereignty and political order.

In contrast, philosopher Simon Keller questions the idea of“friendship between countries ,” asserting true friendship is reserved for individuals. He warns that comparing nations to friends may mislead us by shifting focus from genuine human connections to political dynamics.

Ontario Premier Doug Ford, left, listens as Neil Herrington, right, senior vice president of the Americas Program for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, speaks during an event in February 2025 in Washington, D.C. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein).

Yet the Aristotelian model of the friend as“a second self” has significant limitations, often ignoring differences and reinforcing hierarchy. For Derrida, friendship is not a fixed, harmonious ideal but an ongoing, unpredictable negotiation that blurs the boundary between ally and adversary.

He contends:“'Good friendship' supposes disproportion. It demands a certain rupture in reciprocity or quality, as well as the interruption of all fusion or confusion between you and me.”

Even at its most personal, friendship is marked by power dynamics - who holds it, who benefits from it and who can be cast aside. Not a cynical rejection of friendship, however, Derrida's model calls for broadening its moral and political dimensions.

Transactional structure
President Donald Trump speaks in the White House in Washington, D.C., on March 3, 2025. THE CANADIAN PRESS/AP-Pool via AP

Derrida's model applies to the Canada-U.S. relationship, which has long been framed as one of mutual respect, built on democratic values and shared economic interests. But its underlying structure is transactional.

The rhetoric of friendship has always served a function: to justify co-operation when it is useful and to smooth over conflict when it is not. The moment those interests diverge, the limits of the relationship become clear.

Trump's tariffs have exposed this dynamic in the clearest possible terms. Canada's position as a friend to the U.S. is fragile and contingent, shaped by the fluctuating interests of the more powerful side.

But the rupture is not new, nor is it a break from the norm. It's simply a reminder of how the relationship has always worked. The question now is not whether Canada can restore its friendship, but whether it can afford to continue believing in it on the same terms.

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Embrace inherent fragility

Derrida's model of friendship offers a way forward. His model defies the simplistic binary of friend and foe, loyalty and betrayal, as these terms are ultimately mutually constitutive. Derrida calls for relationships that embrace their inherent fragility.

For Canada, this doesn't mean abandoning the discourse of friendship with the U.S. entirely, but rather acknowledging the bond's fragile, conditional nature - always deferred, always on the brink of rupture.

The challenge for Canada is to redefine its position in North America beyond the framework of mutuality and dependence. At the policy level, with Canada-U.S. relations, this means diversifying trade and diplomatic ties, resisting automatic alignment and asserting independent leadership in global affairs.

At home, it means forging a national identity that is self-defined and free from the shadow of comparison.

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