DEAR AMERICA — You might have heard about all those Canadians booing the American anthem over the weekend. Some of you call it classless. Others wonder how a fan can lash out at the Star Spangled Banner and then, seconds later, cheer wildly for their favorite American player. Welcome to this complicated moment for your typical Canadian. Many of our compatriots feel spurned by a U.S. president bent on continent-wide economic retribution. They’re perplexed about the shifting demands behind Donald Trump's tariff threat: border security and drug smuggling one day, trade deficits the next. Or defense spending. Or farm products. Trump has even started griping — falsely, we need to clarify — about Canada disallowing American banks from operating up north. Earlier today, the president sounded more serious than ever about absorbing Canada as a 51st state — a recurring quip that nobody is really laughing at. By late-afternoon, Trump and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had made a deal to delay tariffs “at least a month,” according to the PM. Needless to say, some Canadians need an outlet for pent-up pride and frustration. And they happen to have hockey tickets. Family group chats are abuzz these days with pushback: canceled vacations in warmer places, traded tips on how to “buy Canadian” at the grocery store. Many of you know us as your polite neighbors to the north, quick to apologize for getting in anybody's way and grateful for our deep, historic ties to a global superpower. Neither of us chose our proximity. Tectonic plates didn't bend to our shared will. But centuries of exploration, expansion, conflict and oppression produced our continental cul-de-sac. Neither of us is about to leave. Where would we go? Canada, then, benefits from the kind of unceasing prosperity you only get when you live next to the most powerful nation the modern world has ever seen. We see some of you rolling your eyes. You don't think we've earned it. You scoff at our meager military, a fighting force suffering from inadequate funding and a recruitment crisis; or our dairy farmers, whom generations of politicians have protected from foreign markets; or our plucky preference for multilateral gabfests over expressions of hard power. Hey, we all have our faults. For example, we’re not thrilled about all the gun crime in Canadian cities fueled mostly by American firearms smuggled north of the border. (Can you put a stop to that?) But we acknowledge the obvious power dynamic. Every Canadian is familiar with the “10 times rule” — by so many measures, the U.S. is 10 times bigger than Canada. Sure, that’s true of broad metrics like GDP and population. But it’s so much more pervasive. McDonald’s operates more than 1,400 restaurants here. In the U.S.? 14,300. We all know the mighty American economy would make mincemeat of Canada's export-reliant status quo. We do billions in cross-border trade every day, and our supply chains are deeply integrated — but without you, we’d be in a bad place. Most of our leaders gamely claim that nobody wins in a tit-for-tat trade war, but the realists among them admit the obvious: one side's loss would be painful. The other's would be catastrophic, even existential. Still, we have some pride. We may sound hokey as we remind you about our shared struggle on the beaches of Normandy and the streets of Kandahar, and one community's willingness to care for hundreds of air passengers marooned on 9/11. Those historic bonds are real. But a nasty economic showdown, even a lopsided one, will also remind Canadians what we are not. Canada is not the United States. That's one of our clearest defining characteristics. When thousands of Canadians pack Montreal’s Bell Centre on Feb. 15 for an NHL-run best-on-best showdown between Canada and the U.S., the American fans might need some armor. Montrealers are rowdy on their quietest night. Like we said, this is a complicated time. Most of us want to help you, but we don't know what you really want — and we fear it's more than simply economic victory. For now, we’ll mount the most polite rebellion we can muster. Hopefully it ends there. Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. Reach out with news, tips and ideas at nightly@politico.com. Or contact tonight’s author at ntaylor-vaisey@politico.com or on X (formerly known as Twitter) at @TaylorVaisey.
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