Canadians support hard line against U.S., but don't want to pay for it

While Canadians remain broadly supportive of “holding firm” in a trade war with the United States, a new poll finds that this support drops off a cliff the moment Canadians are asked to pay for it.

The survey conducted by the think tank Build Canada found a clear majority said they would not support any trade strategy that threatened their retirement savings, risked the job of someone close to them, or incurred even a moderate increase to their taxes.

When asked if they would pay an extra $500 per year to hold the line in the current trade war, 56 per cent called this “unacceptable.”

The extra cost would work out to an overall tax increase of about one per cent, given that the average Canadian household pays about $48,000 in annual taxes.

Respondents were even less unwilling to risk any kind of employment consequence, with 68 per cent calling it “unacceptable” for Ottawa’s trade war prosecution to come at the cost of “increased household job-loss risk.”

Both sentiments seemed to differ from the number of respondents calling for Canada to “hold firm” on its trade policy with the U.S.; just 20 per cent said Canada should “make concessions” in order to maintain its trade access to the U.S.

“These results reveal tension between Canada’s preferred negotiating position and Canadians’ acceptance of its potential economic consequences,” read an accompanying analysis by Build Canada.

Last month, Prime Minister Mark Carney rejected a deal that could have normalized U.S. trade relations after months of tariffs imposed by U.S. President Donald Trump.

In response, the U.S. launched a new round of 50 per cent tariffs on an estimated $27.6 billion in Canadian imports. Starting on Tuesday, the Carney government retaliated with a package of 639 counter-tariffs on U.S. exports to Canada.

The new tariffs range from a 50 per cent tax on U.S.-manufactured toilet paper, to a 25 per cent tax on U.S.-made industrial lawnmowers.

Thus far, Ottawa has not indicated any intention to return to the negotiating table, with Carney suggesting they are planning to maintain the status quo until at least the end of Trump’s current term in 2029.

At an Aug. 24 announcement regarding a trade war subsidy package, Carney said “we will support these businesses for as long as it takes, in other words, beyond the life of this U.S. administration.”

In a video address released Tuesday , Carney warned that there would be economic consequences as his government pursued a longer-term strategy of reducing Canadian ties to the U.S. market.

“That pivot will come at a cost. There’s always a cost to action. But it doesn’t come close to the cost of standing still,” he said.

The new poll is the first ever published by Build Canada, a think tank launched in February 2025 with support from the Canadian tech sector. Daniel Debow, a former VP with Shopify, serves on its board.

The non-profit has previously launched an interactive “outcome tracker” tracing the results of 603 individual promises made by the Carney government. As per the tracker’s most recent tally, 182 were completed, 287 remained “in progress” and five were marked as “broken.”

The new poll on trade war costs is not the first time that Canadians’ support for a policy has differed sharply from their willingness to pay for it.

In 2019, just before the introduction of a federal carbon tax, a CBC-commissioned poll found that while respondents saw climate change as one of Canada’s most pressing political issues, a majority were unwilling to pay more than $100 per year to address it.

Just four years later — when Canadians were now paying 14 cents of carbon tax on every litre of gasoline — a Postmedia-Leger poll found blanket opposition to the tax, with criticism particularly concentrated among Atlantic Canadians who had only just started paying it.

Andrew Enns, executive vice-president with Leger, noted at the time that all this opposition was coming from people who had previously been quite bullish on strategies to mitigate carbon emissions.

“When you just ask people, ‘Hey do you support all these great things?’ they’re tripping over themselves to say yes,” he said.

The Build Canada poll also found sharp partisan divides between those who thought Canada should “make concessions” to U.S. trade demands.

A mere three per cent of respondents who had voted Liberal in the last federal election took the concessions approach, while this described a majority of Conservatives (50 per cent to 41 per cent).

“The survey does not establish whether these differences reflect political preferences, economic circumstances, or a combination of factors,” it said.

Build Canada surveyed a random sample of 1,696 Canadian residents between Aug. 31 to Sept. 4 and the data were weighted to reflect the 2021 census. The margin of error is plus or minus 3.1 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.

• Canada was founded with the clear goal of not being the United States
• The worst-case scenario for the U.S.-Canada trade war