Fortress America: Trump’s New Trade War Targets Canada & Mexico with Tariffs – Bernard Lewis once said, “America is harmless as an enemy and treacherous as a friend.” The historian’s sharp aphorism was aimed at U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East.
Still, it resonates just as powerfully in trade and economic policy under Donald Trump. American allies who assumed that their trade relationships with the United States would remain predictable, or at least subject to the logic of negotiation and the terms of the USMCA, found themselves confronted with something more uncompromising.
Donald Trump Begins Slapping Tariffs On Big Trade Partners
Trump’s tariffs are not mere bargaining chips meant to extract conventional trade concessions. They are instruments of a broader economic strategy aimed at reconfiguring the very foundations of America’s engagement with the global economy.
Trump is not seeking a better deal within a trade framework he fundamentally accepts; he is trying to unravel that framework in favor of a more self-sufficient United States.
The dominant narrative in mainstream commentary treats Trump’s tariffs as traditional protectionist measures to pressure trading partners into making concessions. According to this view, Trump’s imposition of tariffs on Chinese goods, European automobiles, and even Canadian and Mexican steel was designed to bring trading partners to the table to secure more favorable terms for the United States.
Indeed, Trump often framed tariffs as a tool of leverage, compelling rivals and allies to offer better terms in trade negotiations. This perspective assumes that Trump’s tariffs operate within the standard logic of economic statecraft, where protectionist measures serve as temporary bargaining tools rather than long-term strategic imperatives.
However, this interpretation fails to account for a deeper ideological current that is running through Trump’s economic nationalism. While tariffs have often been wielded as tools of coercion in trade negotiations, Trump’s worldview suggests something different: a belief that America should not merely win better trade deals but disentangle itself from reliance on foreign economies altogether.
From the 2016 campaign onward, his rhetoric has consistently emphasized a return to domestic production, a retreat from global economic integration, and a rejection of the idea that economic interdependence—so central to the neoliberal order—is an asset.
Trump’s protectionism is not conditional; it is aspirational.
Donald Trump Wants Fortress America
In many respects, this vision of economic autarky is a repudiation of the entire post-Cold War neoliberal consensus on global economic integration. While the Clinton, Bush, and Obama administrations largely accepted the premise that economic interdependence was inevitable and desirable, Trump views it as a vulnerability.
His actions as president reflect this conviction. He withdrew the U.S. from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), sought to renegotiate NAFTA into the USMCA, and pursued tariffs not as a means to an end, but as an end in themselves. His administration’s rhetoric around “bringing jobs back to America” and “decoupling” from China was not about securing marginally better trade terms—it was about fundamentally reordering the structure of American production and consumption.
Now, with Trump having returned to office and following through on his long-threatened tariffs on Canada and Mexico, the shift toward economic autarky is no longer speculative—it is reality. As confirmed by the U.S. administration, the new tariffs will take effect on February 4, hitting key Canadian and Mexican industries at a moment of economic vulnerability. His economic advisors reflect his autarkic instincts, and key constituencies within the Republican Party have embraced an agenda of economic nationalism.
Far from representing a return to standard transactional protectionism, Trump’s second term is making tariffs and economic decoupling from China—and even some allies—a permanent fixture of U.S. economic policy.
In essence, Trump’s vision resembles a modernized version of the “Fortress America” doctrine—a policy orientation that, much like its 1940s antecedent, prioritizes self-sufficiency and disengagement from entangling economic commitments abroad.
Tariff Time: What Will Canada and Mexico Do?
This presents a profound strategic challenge for Canada and Mexico, America’s closest economic partners.
The economic interdependence once underpinned North American stability is eroding, replaced by uncertainty and outright hostility. Canada, reliant on access to U.S. markets for its resource exports and industrial base, now faces an America that no longer sees value in those linkages.
Former President of the United States Donald Trump speaking with attendees at the 2023 Turning Point Action Conference at the Palm Beach County Convention Center in West Palm Beach, Florida.
Mexico, deeply embedded in automotive and manufacturing supply chains, must confront the possibility that nearshoring will not replace lost integration but merely serve as a prelude to further exclusion. The space for negotiation is shrinking, and the economic pillars of North America’s partnership are being dismantled brick by brick.
The question, then, is whether Canada and Mexico can forge a new path forward—or whether both nations will find themselves staring at the ramparts of a Fortress America—watching, waiting, and ultimately realizing that those walls may prove unscaleable.
About the Author: Dr. Andrew Latham
Andrew Latham is a non-resident fellow at Defense Priorities and a professor of international relations and political theory at Macalester College in Saint Paul, MN. Andrew is now a Contributing Editor to 19FortyFive. You can follow him on X: @aakatham.
