The Canada that took pride in sharing a 5,525-mile undefended border with its neighbor is gone. A 2026 Pew survey found that 33% of Canadians view the United States favorably, down from 54% in 2024. A majority now see the US as the top threat to their security, more than China, Russia, or any other nation.
Not long ago, the two countries ranked among the world’s most deeply integrated economies, tied by a trading relationship worth hundreds of billions of dollars annually. The border crossing felt more like a formality than an international boundary. The idea that Canadians hate America would have read, as recently as 2023, like absurdist political fiction.
Then Donald Trump returned to the White House.
The Numbers That Shocked Even the Researchers
Only 35% of Canadians said the US is a reliable partner in 2026, compared to 83% in 2022. That collapse in trust of nearly 50 percentage points came in just four years.
The Pew survey found that 44% of Canadians hold a favorable view of China, while just 33% feel the same about the US. That reverses the 2023 pattern, when 57% of Canadians viewed the US positively and only 14% viewed China positively.
What Trump Actually Did to Trigger This
Trump imposed a 25% tariff on Canadian goods entering the United States in early 2025, followed by a 50% steel and aluminum levy and a 25% autos tariff. Canada sells about three-quarters of its goods to the US. Those duties landed on factory floors in Ontario, on dairy farms in Quebec, on lumber operations in British Columbia.
Trump’s repeated suggestions that Canada should become America’s 51st state carried a particular sting. Canada’s identity as a sovereign, distinct nation is not a casual attachment. Canadians have long defined themselves in large part against their neighbor. The literary critic Northrop Frye once diagnosed a “garrison mentality,” the posture of a small people huddled against a vast and threatening outside, and Margaret Atwood’s Survival elevated survival itself into the organizing symbol of the national imagination. Trump’s “51st state” comments activated something old and deep.
Data from the Angus Reid Institute found Canadians feeling angry (55%), betrayed (37%), and anxious (29%) in the lead-up to tariff implementation. Only 17% of Canadians hold a favorable view of Trump, compared to 79% who feel the opposite. The anger ran across NDP, Liberal, and Conservative voters alike.
The Boycott That Wasn’t Symbolic
In February 2025, provinces pulled millions of dollars’ worth of US wine and spirits from store shelves in response to Trump’s decision to impose a 25% tariff on Canadian goods. The #ElbowsUp movement came to symbolize the boycott of US products, with Canadians deliberately avoiding everything from US booze and streaming services to Disney vacations, joining 1.4-million-member-strong Facebook groups and downloading apps to identify US products to avoid.
An Angus Reid analysis found 85% of Canadians stating that they had already replaced US products or planned to do so.
Preliminary data from Statistics Canada revealed that Canadians made 22.9 million visits to the US by car or plane in 2025, compared with 31.9 million in 2024. Canadian-resident return trips by automobile dropped 28.6%, the 11th consecutive month of year-over-year declines.
The effects hit American border states hard enough that Congress noticed. A report prepared by the Democratic minority of the US Congress’s joint economic committee warned that the drop in Canadian tourism was hurting businesses in several states. Senator Maggie Hassan, ranking member of the committee, described the situation as putting “many American businesses in jeopardy.”
An Election Rewritten by Resentment
At the start of January 2025, the Conservatives under Pierre Poilievre held a lead of nearly 26 points. The Liberal Party, battered by years under an increasingly unpopular Justin Trudeau, looked headed for a historic defeat. Then Trump escalated.
Prime Minister Carney positioned Canada on the front lines of the global resistance to Trump’s trade wars and interventionist rhetoric, campaigning with the slogan “elbows up,” a reference to aggressive defensive play in hockey. The Canadian election in April led to Mark Carney’s Liberal Party forming a minority government. Trump’s tariff regime and his repeated threats to make Canada the “51st state” were the primary reasons Carney’s party was able to pull off a stunning reversal of political fortune.
In his victory speech, Carney maintained the defiant tone that helped him surge in popularity, telling voters, “Our old relationship with the United States is over.” It was not the usual diplomatic hedging you expect from a newly elected leader of a country deeply integrated with its largest trading partner. Canadians cheered it.
Trump’s intervention in the Canadian election, including posting about the “51st state” on the morning of voting day, became a campaign endorsement for the Liberals. Every time Trump talked about annexing Canada, more Canadians moved toward the party most clearly opposed to him. Trump’s policies and rhetoric became the central issue in the Canadian election and helped the Liberals close an almost 20-point gap with the Conservatives in a matter of weeks.
The Long View: This Isn’t Entirely New
Anti-American sentiment in Canadian history didn’t begin with Trump’s second term. Canada’s identity has been tangled up with its proximity to the United States for as long as it has existed as a country. The literary tradition, the political arguments, the persistent national insecurity about cultural sovereignty run deeper than any single presidency. Trump arrived during a period of existing strain and turned the temperature up faster than any previous president.
Canadian approval of US leadership has dropped to its lowest level since Trump’s first term, according to Gallup. Just 15% of Canadians approving, continuing a longer-term trend in which a minority of Canadians have approved of Washington each year since 2017.
Canadians express little confidence in Trump to handle key global issues, and yet more than half still view the US as the world’s top economy, while two-thirds say it’s more important for Canada to have close economic ties with the US than with China. Even at peak animosity, Canadians aren’t fantasizing about economic decoupling. They understand how intertwined the two economies are.
What Comes Next
The shift from 54% favorability to 33% in two years is not a blip. Twelve consecutive months of declining border crossings, provincial shelves cleared of American wine, grocery store decisions about which ketchup to put back are not the gestures of people who will simply reset when the political weather changes.
Some of this will ease. Bilateral relationships between neighbors this economically bound don’t stay in open crisis indefinitely; the structural gravity of trade pulls things back toward function, if not warmth. But the reputational damage is real, and some of the trust that underpinned the relationship has been burned in a way that rebuilds slowly, if at all.
Canada absorbed the experience of being treated as an acquisition target by a country it had spent a century treating as family. Some things, once said seriously enough and by someone with enough power to mean them, don’t get unsaid between election cycles.
Disclaimer: This information is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment and is for information only. Always seek the advice of your physician or another qualified health provider with any questions about your medical condition and/or current medication. Do not disregard professional medical advice or delay seeking advice or treatment because of something you have read here.
AI Disclaimer: This article was created with the assistance of AI tools and reviewed by a human editor.