EDITORIAL: Trump spares our oil and taxes our hockey sticks, but we will not be his well

The stick and the barrel

Friday, on CNBC

Jamieson Greer summed up in three words, on September 25, what Washington still gets out of Canada.

Oil. Gas. Potash. Not the hockey stick.

The U.S. trade representative was mostly talking about China that Friday morning, on CNBC. He was asked about us in passing. He answered the way a customer talks about a supplier.

Three words. Three raw materials. Not one finished good.

What he did not name

He did not name the hockey stick. A Canadian-made one has paid 50% in duties at the American border since August 22.

He did not name our dairy products, targeted by one of the three July 20 proclamations.

He did not name kitchen cabinets, hit by a separate sectoral tariff, according to The Canadian Press.

He did not name Canadian alcohol, part of which will be turned back at the border starting September 29.

He did not name the hands.

A barrel goes through a pipe. A stick goes through hands: the ones that sand, glue and pack, to the hum of a machine that only stops at shift change.

Greer counted our resources. Not our hands.

Oil, gas, potash

“No urgency”

His sentences are worth rereading, as CBC and The Canadian Press reported them.

There is the comfort. President Trump, Greer says, is “comfortable where we are on Canada.”

There is the calendar. Canadians “call us now and then.” There is no urgency on his side, he adds.

There is, finally, the inventory: “We’re still getting what we need from them in terms of oil, gas, potash.”

A satisfied customer

What we need. The pronoun carries everything. The “we” is America, buying. The “them” is us, delivering.

A satisfied customer does not call back. He waits for delivery.

Comfortable. In no hurry. Served.

And yet nothing Greer says is false. Trade goes on. Farm products, he notes, cross the border in both directions.

That is exactly what should worry us. For Washington, a supplier who delivers does not need a deal.

No urgency, since they are short of nothing.

The July 20 list

Off the list

On July 20, Donald Trump signed three proclamations under Section 338 of a 1930 tariff law. The White House published the summary the same day.

The text announces 50% duties on Canadian products “ranging from wine to hockey sticks to cement.”

Further down, one line. These duties will not apply to energy, potash, fish or critical minerals.

The doctrine fits in that line. Written, signed, dated.

On the list

On the list, wine. On the list, the hockey stick. On the list, cement. Off the list, whatever comes out of the ground and the sea.

Oil goes through; the hockey stick pays.

We stand with the people who make things in Canada. Against the supplier doctrine, written by the White House on July 20 and summed up by Greer on September 25. Because that list exempts what comes out of the ground, and taxes at 50% part of what comes out of our workshops.

A tariff is paid at the border, by the importer, then by the buyer. It is also paid, later, by whoever used to make the product.

To exempt is already to choose what we will remain.

Salt and cement

September 8

On September 8, the president signed five more proclamations. Entry bans, effective September 29. And a revision of the list, effective September 15.

The fact sheet the White House published that day explains the revision. Some products come off, such as rock salt and cement. Others go on, from all-terrain vehicles to dairy products.

The reason is written down: to better serve the public interest.

Whose public interest?

Road salt

Rock salt is what gets spread on roads in winter. On August 18, Kansas Senator Jerry Moran had pressed Greer’s office. He asked it to weigh the effect of salt tariffs on businesses, local governments and taxpayers in his state, according to the Congressional Research Service.

Cement is what building sites run on.

Three weeks after that call, salt was off the list. What we need, Greer said.

The salt comes off. The stick stays.

The same fact sheet also announces the removal of Canadian products from federal purchasing catalogues, which handle more than $50 billion in public contracts, according to the White House.

Everything suggests the list moves to the rhythm of American need.

Taking salt off the list admits the need.

Subsidiaries up north

Bring it home

Greer handed over the key himself on Friday. His president, he said according to Global News, has his steel, aluminum and auto tariffs to bring production back home.

Bring it back home. The phrase is honest. It says where the factories are supposed to go.

South.

Read next to the July 20 list, the model takes shape. What gets manufactured should be manufactured down there. What gets dug up could stay here, provided it crosses free of charge.

The images follow the words. Since the August breakdown, CBC recalls, Trump has posted a map of North America with the American flag covering Canada. Then a cartoon of himself standing over Carney, sprawled out during a hockey game: “Get up, governor.”

A hockey game. A governor. Not a prime minister.

Carney’s word

Mark Carney had named this model, in a video aired by CBC on September 1. Ottawa, he said, cannot accept terms that would turn our industries into subsidiaries of American industries, the Congressional Research Service reports.

Otherwise, he added, those industries would be gradually dismantled in Canada, then wiped out.

Dismantled. Then wiped out. Two verbs, one timetable.

A subsidiary does not decide its products. It delivers what it is ordered to.

In other words, Greer’s supplier and Carney’s subsidiary are the same thing, seen from each side of the border.

Bringing it home to them means emptying it out here.

What cannot be replaced

63% of imported crude

The exemption has a reason. It fits in a few numbers.

In 2025, Canada supplied 63% of the crude oil imported by the United States, and almost all of its imported natural gas. The data come from a profile published in May by the Canada Energy Regulator, cited on Friday by BNN Bloomberg.

What we need is that crude. What we need is that gas. What we need is potash from the world’s largest producer, according to BNN Bloomberg.

On Monday, Trump did float cheaper potash from Belarus. He then partly changed his mind: we will keep going with Canada, he said, according to The Canadian Press.

Who replaces a neighbour that supplies almost all the gas?

Fertilizer for the fields

Jason Kenney, a former premier of Alberta, summed it up for The Canadian Press, according to BNN. An export tax on fuel and potash, he said, would hit Republicans who drive F-150s and spread fertilizer on their fields.

The exemption is a sound calculation for Washington. It protects the American farmer.

It also spares, and this has to be written, Alberta’s oil workers and Saskatchewan’s potash miners. A useful act remains useful, even when signed by the man who taxes everything else.

What cannot be replaced gets waved through.

A global policy

“We gave them a deal”

Washington has an answer. It deserves to be heard in its strongest form.

“Our trade policy is a global policy,” Greer argued, according to BNN Bloomberg. It targets Canada, China, the United Kingdom, Brazil. The message: nothing personal.

Then, on the August deadlock: “We gave them a deal, they left.”

Where the growth is

Earlier in the week, on Bloomberg Television, he went further, according to the Toronto Sun. Opposing Trump is politically popular in Canada, he acknowledged. But the growth and the consumption are in the United States. Not in Europe, not in Brazil, not in China.

Columnist Brian Lilley picked up those words in the Toronto Sun. He accuses Mark Carney of putting politics ahead of paycheques. He lines up unemployment of 6.4% here against 4.1% down south, and weaker real growth in the north since Trump’s return.

That is their best argument. Canada would be fighting for the polls, and workers would pay the bill.

It deserves to be taken seriously. The numbers exist. So does the unemployment.

Since when does a global policy carry the name of a single country?

Their strongest argument is judged on the evidence.

A section from 1930

Invoked for the first time

The evidence exists. It is in the text of the measures themselves.

Section 338 dates from 1930. No president had expressly invoked it to impose tariffs before Donald Trump, the Congressional Research Service writes in its September 14 report.

One country. One law. No precedent.

It does not target the world. It targets Canada. And it strikes regardless of the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement (CUSMA), the very deal that was supposed to protect our trade.

BNN Bloomberg notes it too: Washington has global tariffs, and it has measures aimed at Canada alone.

In Beijing’s box

The White House writes it itself, in its September 8 fact sheet. For a year and a half, only two countries have retaliated rather than negotiate: the People’s Republic of China and Canada.

A global policy does not file its closest ally in Beijing’s box.

And yet that is the box we are assigned, between two proclamations.

As for the deal that was “given,” the two capitals still accuse each other of changing the terms at the last minute.

A 1930 law for a single country is not global.

Our own pipes

A number that bothers us

We owe Greer a truth that makes us uncomfortable.

He is right about the volume. From January to July, Canada exported US$234 billion in goods to the United States, according to Census Bureau data cited by BNN Bloomberg. In the same period of 2024, before Trump’s second term, it was US$241 billion.

A drop of about 3%. Not a collapse. Greer calls that strong trade. On this point, he is not wrong.

In July, according to Statistics Canada, two-thirds of our exports still headed south.

The tap left open

Our pipelines do not run south by accident. In 2025, the United States received 90.8% of our hydrocarbon exports by volume, according to the Canada Energy Regulator.

Mark Carney, BNN Bloomberg recalls, sees no point in putting energy on the table. Trans Mountain president Mark Maki sees that road leading to mutually assured destruction.

We chose not to shut the tap. That choice can be defended. It is also a supplier’s choice.

That is true, and it does not change this: the July 20 list was written in Washington. Not in Ottawa.

Our pipes lead south. We laid them.

The factory being switched off

Up to 100%

Here is what is coming.

Since September 15, the revised list also covers items already hit under Section 232, such as steel, aluminum or autos. According to the White House, cited by the Congressional Research Service, the two duties stack: up to 100% on some items.

In 1965, the Auto Pact stitched our plants to theirs. In 2026, a 1930 law pulls them apart.

In 2025, about 90% of our auto exports went to the United States, according to the same report.

The shift that never comes back

Factories do not close by decree. They close by subtraction.

A plant does not shut all at once. A shift is cut. Then another. Then the night line. Then all that is left is the silence of a stopped press, and gloves lying on a workbench.

That is what Carney called gradual dismantling.

A country that no longer makes its hockey sticks, no longer cuts its cabinets, that does nothing but fill potash cars…

I admit it. The first time I read Greer’s sentence, I was relieved. Oil goes through, so Alberta’s paycheques do too. Then I reread the list.

The relief was the trap.

Nobody closes a factory in a single day.

LeBlanc’s phone

Moncton, Friday

In Moncton, that same Friday, Dominic LeBlanc answered without raising his voice.

The minister responsible for Canada-U.S. trade talks to Greer a few times a week, including that afternoon, CBC reports. Greer’s comments, he says, are consistent with their conversations.

“I’m not waiting by my phone,” he added. The good-faith work continues, he says. Ottawa remains ready to talk.

No pleading. No rupture.

Frank McKenna, a former ambassador to Washington, urges caution about this no-urgency talk. The midterm elections are coming, he tells CBC, and affordability weighs on them.

A record elsewhere

Statistics Canada gives the minister some support. In July, our exports to countries other than the United States hit a record $25.6 billion, up 7.4%.

To the United States, they fell 6.6%. Crude oil and gold led the decline.

And yet look at what led the increase. Iron ore, nuclear fuel and crude oil to the Netherlands. Copper ore to Germany. Miscellaneous goods to China.

Aircraft are the exception. Their exports jumped 80.1% in July, to overseas destinations.

Even elsewhere, we sell first what comes out of the ground.

Two demands

To Washington

We demand two things. One on each side of the border.

From Washington, we demand an end to the sorting. A partner does not split an ally into its rocks and its workshops.

We will not be the reservoir that crosses for free. We will not be the subsidiary Carney refused on September 1. We will not be the neighbour filed with Beijing in a September 8 fact sheet. We will not be the supplier who calls “now and then.” We will not be the quarry of a policy that brings everything home.

That is the line.

To Ottawa

From Ottawa, we demand a simple rule. That no deal lower a tariff in exchange for that status. That the next text, if it comes, be judged on what it lets us make here, not only on what it lets through.

This is not a party demand. It is a country’s demand.

No lower tariff in exchange for a smaller country.

The country, not the well

Tuesday, September 29

On Tuesday, September 29, the entry bans will begin.

Oil will keep flowing. Potash will keep rolling south. The hockey stick will pay its 50%. Greer will stay comfortable.

Two regimes. One border. No urgency.

A new stick has a weight you recognize in your hand. A proclamation has none. Yet it weighs more.

What we would sign

A deal may come. Frank McKenna believes it: “at some point, this will become ripe,” he says.

The decision, that day, will be ours.

If Washington eases the tariff but keeps sorting our rocks from our workshops, will we sign anyway?

The barrel never waits at the border. The stick does.

Oil goes through, the stick pays, the country will not be a well.

Sources:

Primary Sources:

• The Canadian Press — Greer sees no urgency for a deal with Canada, September 25, 2026
• White House — 50% tariffs, with energy and potash exempt, July 20, 2026
• Statistics Canada — July merchandise trade, September 3, 2026

Secondary Sources:

• CBC News — Greer, LeBlanc and McKenna on the lack of urgency, September 25, 2026
• BNN Bloomberg — oil, gas and potash in Canada-U.S. trade, September 25, 2026
• Congressional Research Service — Section 338 and the tariffs on Canada, September 14, 2026