Part I: Is Trump Putting America First–or in Danger?: The Question of Trade

Free Malaysia Today

 Is peace preferable to war?

Is cooperation preferable to antagonism and hostile (as opposed to healthy) competition?

Would you rather cultivate friends or multiply your enemies in the world? Which condition, according to the dictates of reason, would promise to make you stronger, safer, and more prosperous–to have others in helping and supportive relationships with you or to have others constantly targeting you in hostile ways, seeking to gain an advantage over you and succeed at your expense?

When you seek to serve your own interests and put yourself in the most advantageous position, do you pursue safety and security so you can devote all your energies to your creative pursuit and work? Or do you want to work under constant threat or assault, such that a good portion of your energies goes to defending yourself from others trying to undermine your well-being and put obstacles in your path?

Donald Trump campaigned on an “America First” platform.  To assess what it means to put “America First” and the effectiveness of his actions and orders thus far, it strikes me as worthwhile to ask these basic, common-sense questions to analyze the contemporary political situation, and more specifically Trump’s agenda, in the most fundamental and down-to-earth dynamics. While it’s hard to keep up with Trump’s dizzying and chaotic flurry of decrees, this series will attempt ongoing analyses of the Trump’s actions in terms of how effectively they put the well-being of Americans’ lives first, beginning with the global trade war he has initiated.

Presumably, by “America First,” Trump means his policies and practices will center the interests of the nation and of Americans first and foremost, suggesting that somehow previous administrations have been remiss in doing so, somehow serving the needs of other nations and peoples at the expense of Americans.

He insistently rails that other countries have been taking advantage of America, ripping us off.  He frames his obsession with tariffs as an effort to rectify what he sees as unfair trade imbalances.  His threats to exit NATO are grounded in his claims our allies in NATO don’t pay their fair share of military expenses.  He has all but dismantled the USAID office, disrupting vital humanitarian aid to peoples around the globe. Do these actions serve us? In this piece, we’ll take a look at what his tariffs and trade policy have meant thus far, particularly when framed in terms of the common-sense questions I raised at the outset here.

Let’s just look at how Trump’s tariffs have impacted our relationship with Canada and how the nature of that relationship impacts the American economy, American businesses, and above all the everyday lives and well-being of Americans.

Canada is not just a longstanding ally and friend of America, sharing a border; Canada is also America’s largest trading partner, importing nearly $350 billion of products from the United States in 2024.

Trump’s tariffs, likely combined with his persistent talk of annexing Canada, are already showing signs of negatively impacting U.S.exports to Canada precisely because Trump’s behaviors have stoked a powerful anti-American sentiment in Canada and ignited a “Buy Canadian” movement that has dampened trade already in a wide and various range of industries, from diapers to citrus to beverages and liquor. Brown Forman, for example, the producer of Jack Daniel’s, has borne the brunt of Canada’s retaliation, witnessing the removal of its products from Canadian shelves, which has been far worse for them than Canada’s retaliatory tariffs themselves.

The citrus and beverage industries are reporting similar declines in product exports to Canada.

Hostile tariffs do not make good neighbors; and hostile neighbors, we should learn, do not make for a good economy.

Metro, a Canadian distributorship who works with such companies as Walmart, among others, has indicated it is now prioritizing local Canadian products, saying, "Our intent is not to remove American products from our shelves if the tariffs take effect, we will evaluate as we do currently, all product listings with the intent to offer the best value and products.”

Meanwhile, small businesses in the U.S. seeking to expand into Canada are finding their efforts thwarted by Trump’s alienation of a key and historical national ally.  According to Reuters,

“Demeter Fragrances, a small family-owned and operated business that manufactures perfumes in Pennsylvania, said it halted its plan to expand into Canada in 2025. "Canadian sentiment has turned away from American product," said Mark Crames, Demeter Fragrances' chief executive officer. "Consequently, it seems like a wasted effort and, we simply scrapped the initiative."

Demeter’s experience is not an isolated experience in America’s small-business world. CEO Jessica Hung of Parasol Co, a California diaper maker, had been working with a Canadian distributor to place her company’s products on the shelves of Canadian retailers only to have that distributor cease and desist because of boiling anti-American sentiment. Hung shared

"They were instructed by a retailer to pause any American brand launch. They told us they would re-evaluate when market conditions allow. That's the kind of disruption we would never expect. I never heard of this happening until now. It’s definitely quite a bit of headwinds."

And meanwhile, Canadian small businesses in these industries who have had difficulty finding shelf space in Canada and competing with U.S. businesses have report now seeing promising futures and opportunities ahead.

Trump is not correcting a trade imbalance; he’s creating one to the detriment of not just U.S. businesses and the U.S. economy but to the material lives of Americans living in that economy who will bear the brunt of the lack of job creation, possible layoffs, obstacles growing their businesses and more. And it never helps to have hostility with a nation on your border.

It’s hard to see how Trump is putting America first with these tariffs.

There can be healthy competition and rivalry, but this isn’t it.  Healthy competition is when two people running a race push each other to run harder and faster and reach their full potential. Unhealthy competition is when the two people running slow themselves down by trying to slow the other down by throwing obstacles in the way of the other runner.

The ethos and idea behind free trade is that it honors comparative advantage. If one country is better at producing quality goods more efficiently, we enable that country to do so, recognizing its economic sense and benefit to the global economy and people’s lives.

Trump is fostering unhealthy competition to the detriment of all around the globe and especially the American people.

His trade policies, to sum it all up, are not putting Americans first but rather putting us in economic peril.