How Canada Inflicted Maximum Midterms Pain on Trump

 https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2026/11/08/trade-war-midterm-elections-canada-carney-01154193?utm_source=firefox-newtab-en-us

Ottawa spent a decade trying to appease, match and outlast Trump. This year, it read the electoral map.

If any state was primed for a fight over tariffs, it was Michigan, home to one of the country’s most fiercely contested Senate races. In the summer of 2025, two entrepreneurial political consultants — one Democrat, one Republican — had joined forces to create the Michigan Trade Smart Alliance with the hopes of drafting the state’s top business groups. At the time, corporate leaders nationwide were wary of publicly challenging Trump’s policy out of a fear that they would draw his wrath. But as trade negotiators from the two countries remained deadlocked over an end to the trade war, the association’s membership began to balloon.

“The linkage between cost of living for Americans and tariffs on the world, and specifically on Canada, broke through,” Kirsten Hillman, who served as Canada’s ambassador to Washington from 2019 to early 2026, said two days after the election. “And that is something that we have been trying as a country, not just the government, but Canadian businesses, to really get into the U.S. discourse for two years.”