Rash: The dangerous drift between Canada and the U.S. bodes ill for Minnesota

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There’s a drift on the northern border.

In the case of wildfire smoke coming from Canada, it’s hazy.

But in the case of Canadians distancing themselves from America, the drift is quite clear.

Clear in data on car trips between the two nations, for instance: In July, reversing a longtime trend, more Americans drove north of the border than Canadians drove south.

And it’s clear in data from a new Gallup poll headlined “Canadians Sour on U.S. Leadership, Warm to their Own: Disapproval of Washington higher than Beijing, on par with Moscow.” Among its findings is that only 15% of Canadians approve of U.S. leadership while 79% disapprove.

The decline is due in large part to President Donald Trump’s trade tirade (now in legal doubt after a recent court ruling) that’s targeted Canada more than most other countries, as well as his rhetorical attacks on Canada’s sovereignty, referring to the country as the “51st state” and its previous prime minister as “governor.”

But it’s not limited to the current administration. Rather, it appears the shift might be a more transcendent trend that may not be quickly or completely reversed even when winds from Washington blow more friendly.

“How Canadians feel about U.S. leadership is closely tied to the administration that’s in office,” said Benedict Vigers, a Gallup senior world news writer. “Disapproval of Washington in Canada has really been the norm since 2017,” Vigers continued. “So while I think the reversion to approval levels of Trump’s first-term trend holds true, the overall longer-term trend shows Canadians have been taking a more negative view of their southern neighbor for many years.”

Canadians’ average approval rating of U.S. leadership was about 61% during the Obama years, Vigers said, while Trump’s era erased that to an average of about 19%. In the middle, meanwhile, the Biden years averaged about 41% — up from Trump but nowhere near the Obama bond Canadians registered.

The same pattern has generally held throughout the West, including Britain, where Vigers lives. That raises the specter, he said, “of whether allied or foreign approval of U.S. leadership will return to those levels in the future, but the fact that it hasn’t been that high for almost a decade certainly raises some interesting questions.”

Keeping those ties tight was the mission of Jamshed Merchant when he led the Canadian Consulate to Minneapolis from 2012 to 2016. Merchant, who now teaches at the School of Policy Studies at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, used the metaphor of neighbors to explain the nations’ divide.

It’s like neighbors living side-by-side in “one huge house, one smaller house,” Merchant said. “You have gardens, but the fence between the gardens was essentially a line. And you moved across, you shared things, you did things together all the time. Now, all of a sudden it looks like there’s this kind of cold fence. So that relationship we had as those neighbors has disappeared.”

On a “personal level and on a social level and on a community level, it’s like a betrayal,” said Merchant. Canadians, he continued, “are firm in their desire that they don’t just cave to whatever the United States wants” regarding areas of friction — whether fictional (sovereignty) or all too real (trade).

Inevitably, individuals and not just institutions feel the strain of what’s become a “national crisis,” said Merchant. “Everything we’ve taken for granted, all our relationships, our trade patterns, and the way we thought about holidays, has all been just torn up and thrown out the window, right? So it’s kind of now into rethinking all of those kinds of things at the same time, realizing that no matter how we rethink things, the United States, just given our proximity, is always going to be the major partner” in economic, defense and other key areas.

Those living south of the border may need to rethink things too. Just consider the impact here at home: Canada is by far Minnesota’s largest trading partner, accounting for about $7.5 billion of the state’s $26.5 billion of exports last year. That figure reflected 7% growth. The first quarter of 2025, however, showed a 3% decline from the same time last year. And the drop in Canadian visitors year over year is even more dramatic, down 19% through July.

Prime Minister Mark Carney, a sharp political, policy and polling departure from his Liberal Party predecessor Justin Trudeau, has a 59% approval rating compared to a 38% disapproval.

Regarding the relationship with America that has such a determinative effect on economic optimism, Merchant said that Carney, a former Harvard hockey player, will need to do what he did as governor of the Bank of Canada during the global financial crisis and the Bank of England amid Brexit: “Stickhandle through it.” Which he’s apparently trying to do by dropping some retaliatory tariffs in order to encourage an accord with the U.S.

With Washington trying to check Carney’s government it’s essential that individual citizens throughout each country try to stickhandle through it as well in order to retain the relationship.