It is now just under a month until 2 April, the fateful date indicated by Donald Trump as the deadline for the imposition of 25% duties “on cars and everything else” on the European Union. The US President’s move is increasingly taking on the connotations of a retaliation with the ultimate aim of persuading the other side of the Atlantic to suspend funding for the Ukrainian resistance, as shown by the White House tenant’s ill-fated ambush on President Zelensky in an Oval Office relegated for the occasion to the stage of a deplorable media circus.

Europe, as is well known, would thus join a well-stocked group of powers dragged by the tycoon into a bloody trade war for every party involved, with the consequent race against time to pursue new trade routes and diplomatic relations with which to mitigate the catastrophic effects of the hyper-protectionist turn threatened by Washington. Witness the EU-Mercosur agreement last December, the Brussels summit in February between Ursula Von der Leyen, António Costa and Justin Trudeau, and, even more recently, the EU College of Commissioners’ trip to India – all in order to reach more fruitful agreements before the US windfall overwhelms Old Continent trade.

Similarly, even the Italian government, net of any partisan considerations, is intent on individually drawing up its own plan B, in the event that Trump’s esteem for Giorgia Meloni does not prove sufficient to wrest that impalpable preferential treatment so much promised by the US President to our country, thus showing foresight and mistrust towards the declarations of a highly unpredictable and unreliable leader. Returning to Canada, in fact, the past few months have seen a vehement acceleration in the already remarkable bilateral relations between Rome and Ottawa, with the aim of further cementing a historic partnership that moves in the wake of CETA, the EU-Canada Comprehensive Trade and Economic Agreement. To put it in context, official Canadian data reveal that in 2023, imports of Italian goods into Canada reached a value of $12.9 billion, with bilateral trade that, in recent years, has reported a steady and significant growth of Made in Italy in the North American country, amounting to +27.7% in export value from 2019 to 2022. Moreover, since the introduction of CETA in 2017, interchange has increased by approximately 60%. Volumes, these, that certifyItaly ‘s positionas third trading partner in Europe and eighth globally for Canada .

The total understanding between Rome and Ottawa

The strategic strengthening of the ongoing partnership is expressed in acts such as the ratification of the Roadmap for Enhanced Cooperation, signed by Meloni and Trudeau during the Italian G7 last June, aimed at increasing Italian-Canadian collaboration in key sectors such as energy security, technological innovation and trade. Even more relevant, in a strategic key for the security of Italian companies’ supply chains, is the recent ‘Joint Statement onCriticalMineralsand Critical Raw MaterialsCooperation‘ on rare earths and critical raw materials, which dates back to just last October and extends, from a bilateral perspective, the special Canada-EU Strategic Partnership on Raw Materials of 2021. Last but not least, the establishment of the business matching platform between Italian and Canadian companies by Cassa Depositi e Prestiti, launched at the end of 2023, guarantees companies a better and easier process of internationalisation and access to markets. Meanwhile, north of Washington, relations with the White House have become so tense that about half of Canadians, according to a poll conducted by Toronto Today, are in favour of the Maple Leaf joining the European Union. In contrast, only 13% favoured annexation by the United States, according to a study by the research institute Leger.

The Trumpian tariffs boomerang

If, as some incurable optimists claim, the duties threatened by Trump on both sides of the Atlantic turn out to be a mere bogeyman wielded as an instrument of retaliation, the tycoon’s strategy would in any case and inevitably have produced, as an unintended and highly undesirable consequence, the further and parallel rapprochement between Rome and Brussels and Ottawa, in function precisely of a downsizing of trade with Washington. In this context, it should be emphasised, Canada is the world’s fifth largest producer of lithium and natural gas, as well as second on a global scale in nickel and uranium production, third in copper and tenth in oil extraction, not forgetting the country’s enormous reserves of cobalt and graphite.

With US tariffs on Canadian products due to come into force tomorrow, the estimated effects on the collapse of imports of bourbon and Californian wine already appear devastating for the respective producers, with the GOP ending up alienating, in the run-up to the midterms, the support of an important slice of the electorate that depends on such inducements: a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to induce Canadian consumers to switch from Ketucky’s whisky to Veneto’s grappa.