Trump's Pressure on Canada Resembles Napoleon's Fall

Napoleon, struggling in his war with Britain, imposed the Continental System and invaded Portugal for breaking it. Similarly, after Trump's trade war with China failed to go his way, he showed a pattern of imposing high tariffs on Canada. The U.S. is truce-minded with China, its rival, while attacking Canada, its ally.

President Trump visited China in May for the first time in nine years, and a U.S. visit by Xi Jinping is scheduled for September.

He also made coercive moves, including remarks about renaming Lake Ontario, which borders Canada, as 'Lake America.'

Although Trump justified the tariffs by citing Canada's unfair trade, the actual data contradicts this. The average U.S. tariff on Canadian imports is 8.6%, nearly three times Canada's 3% tariff on U.S. goods. Moreover, fentanyl from Canada accounts for only 0.2% of total U.S. inflows, which critics say weakens the justification for the tariffs.

In the end, President Trump sharply cut tariffs on China: in August they fell from 164% to 49%, and in 2026 they were finally lowered to 36.5%.

After the U.S. imposed tariffs on China, Chinese goods began flowing indirectly to the U.S. through Mexico, Vietnam, and Canada. In response, the U.S. is demanding strict crackdowns from allies that serve as tariff-evasion routes. It is pursuing a new pressure strategy, including urging Mexico to stop buying Chinese products.

For its trade war with China, President Trump proposed a differentiated strategy dividing allies into three tiers. The first is 'aligned countries,' which receive low tariffs and security guarantees. The second is 'countries in negotiation,' which face intermediate tariffs while going through talks. The last is 'non-aligned countries,' such as Canada, which face high tariffs and exclusion from security arrangements. The U.S. has warned that it will reimpose tariffs on any third country that signs agreements harming U.S. interests, revealing an intent to strengthen its control over allies.

It stalled on demands to arrest British nationals, so Napoleon, to maintain his authority, launched an invasion with no exceptions.

The war cost the French army some 150,000 men in a devastating loss, and it became the first sign of Napoleon's downfall.

For its economic survival, Russia resumed trade with Britain in 1810. Napoleon launched the Moscow campaign in response, but there he suffered another disastrous defeat, losing 300,000 troops. This shows how the compulsion to maintain the blockade became the seed of his empire's destruction.

The U.S. using Canada as an example to pressure others closely resembles Napoleon's invasion of Portugal. Just as France had about 30 million people while Portugal had fewer than 3 million, the population gap between the U.S. and Canada forms the backdrop of this pressure. The means differ, since this is a tariff war rather than a military invasion, but the intent to control another country through an exemplary coercion is similar.

Having declared the Continental Blockade but running short of war funds, Napoleon raised revenue in 1809 by selling licenses that exempted goods from the blockade. This was an act by which Napoleon himself punched holes in his own blockade. Today the U.S. too shows a contradiction in its own blockade strategy by allowing exemptions for rare-earth and critical mineral imports.

In waging a tariff war, the U.S. holds the dollar, a hegemonic currency, which gives it a more advantageous position than in Napoleon's era. The dollar's status lets the U.S. wield greater influence when applying economic pressure. However, even President Trump, as the leader of a democracy, cannot ignore public opinion and elections. Unlike Napoleon, who could make arbitrary decisions as an absolute monarch, Trump must heed an electorate whose support he needs. These points are the decisive differences that make it hard to compare Napoleon's case directly with the current U.S. situation.