America is hemorrhaging $62 billion annually to Canada, and President Donald Trump says he’s done watching it happen.
In a pointed exchange with the Daily Signal on Thursday, the president dismissed concerns that his escalating trade war with our northern neighbor could drive up prices for American consumers. His message was clear: the status quo is the real threat to American wallets.
“Ultimately, it’s going to be very good for us because we’re losing,” Trump told The Daily Signal. “When you talk about affordability, we’re losing $62 billion a year on average with Canada, and if you really look at it, we’re losing more than that.”
The comments came as the president faces questions about whether tariffs on Canadian goods could pinch household budgets heading into the November 2026 midterm elections. Trump wasn’t backing down.
“It’s too much. It’s too much. We can’t lose it. We don’t want to lose it. We don’t want to lose it anymore,” he said.
Earlier this week, Trump announced tariffs on Canadian cars, the latest salvo in an intensifying dispute with a country he has called “one of the worst countries in the world to deal with.” Canada fired back with retaliatory measures, slapping tariffs on more than 700 American goods and doubling duties on U.S. steel and aluminum to match American rates on Canadian metals.
The trade fight has been building for months. On Tuesday, Trump took to Truth Social to lay out his case against decades of what he described as Canadian exploitation.
“They have been charging our Farmers 400% Tariffs, and more,” he posted. “They have driven many wonderful U.S. companies out of business. For 10 years they wouldn’t certify Gulfstream Jets, until I got involved. They wanted 100% of the market for Gulfstream’s Canadian competitor.”
For American farmers and manufacturers who have watched foreign competition eat into their livelihoods, the president’s willingness to play hardball represents a long-overdue correction. For decades, trade deals were sold to the American public as mutually beneficial arrangements. The reality, as Trump sees it, has been a one-sided transfer of American wealth and jobs across the border.
The president made his affordability comments Thursday after signing an executive order renaming Lake Ontario to Lake America, effective immediately.
“The lake change in the Lake of America was something I’ve been thinking about for a long time,” Trump explained. “Actually, as you know, we took something called the Gulf of Mexico. We changed it, and now it’s very routinely the Gulf of America. So if you think about it, we have a Gulf and we have a lake.”
Then, with characteristic humor: “Now all we need is an ocean. So maybe we’ll have to change the name of the Atlantic and/or the Pacific.”
The renaming follows his earlier executive action transforming the Gulf of Mexico into the Gulf of America, a symbolic assertion of American identity and sovereignty that has resonated with patriots tired of watching their nation’s influence wane on the world stage.
Whether the tariffs will ultimately raise consumer prices remains to be seen. But Trump is betting that Americans understand a fundamental truth: you can’t keep losing billions every year and call it a good deal. Sometimes standing up for your country costs something in the short term.
The midterms will reveal whether voters agree.
