Trump Bullied Canada — Not for Dairy or Jobs, But for Big Tech
From Canada to Europe, Trump’s trade threats are designed to protect corporate profits, not American jobs
Exports have dropped, manufacturing is weakening - but Trump has accomplished one thing with his trade threats: he made Canada drop a tax on the tech billionaires.
This is all part of the evidence his “populist” rhetoric about trade was never about helping working Americans, but just enhancing his personal power to get tax cuts for billionaires in foreign countries as well as here at home.
Trump threatened to cut off all trade deals with Canada NOT in defense of US dairy farmers or US autoworkers but in defense of those tech companies that didn’t want to pay a modest 3% sales tax that applied to both domestic and foreign technology services provided in that country.
Similarly, Trump has attacked existing digital services taxes in Europe.
Beyond taxes, he is demanding that Europe stop enforcing antitrust rules against US technology companies operating in Europe, demanding Europe roll back what its Digital Markets Act meant to rein in corporate consolidation in digital markets. Apparently all those payoffs to Trump at the inauguration by Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, OpenAI’s Sam Altman and a host of other big tech companies have paid off for them with Trump championing their interests overseas.
This use of trade threats to protect corporate profits isn’t limited to just the big tech companies. A few years ago, with the support of President Biden, 140 countries led by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development agreed to establish a minimum 15 percent tax on corporate profits worldwide.
Trump not only attacked this minimum tax in various trade deal threats, he had what was nicknamed “the Revenge Tax” inserted into his big budget bill. That revenge tax, called Section 899 in the bill, would have hiked taxes on foreign corporations based in any country imposing high taxes impacting US companies in their countries. In order to get the Revenge Tax removed from the budget bill, Europe at the recent G7 summit agreed to exempt US companies from the 15% minimum tax rate in their countries.
Trump’s focus on using trade to assist his corporate donors was also in play when he pressured various countries to sign deals with Elon Musk’s Starlink – at least before that relationship blew up – as detailing this piece in the Washington Post: “Someone’s actually winning the trade war. It’s Elon Musk and Starlink.”
Trump’s trade threats of course are also delivering for his own private companies, with Vietnam “bypassing its own laws to fast-track $1.5B Trump golf resort” and Trump Organization cutting development deals in the Gulf.
And What has Trump Done for US Manufacturing Workers? Nothing
Note that none of this helps US workers, but is the only tangible results of his negotiations with both Canada and Europe so far, highlighting that Trump’s trade priorities are protecting corporate profits abroad, not the rest of us.
Overall economic activity fell in the first quarter of 2025, with the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) down at an annual rate of negative 0.5% as a result of Trump’s trade wars and budget slashing.
And despite all of Trump’s rhetoric around manufacturing jobs, actual job openings in manufacturing have fallen to the lowest level since the pandemic under Trump.
Trump does not care about workers or their rights, except as rhetorical props. He has gutted every program and every government institution dedicated to supporting workers, from jobs programs to the National Labor Relations Board.
His clear priorities on using trade policy threats to lower taxes on big corporations shows their is no daylight between his plutocratic domestic policies and his goals of enriching himself and other billionaires through trade deals.
At some point the media will drop this fake “populist” description of Trump policies. He is a racist, period. Everything else is just rhetoric and theater.