By Fatih Birol, Executive Director

The post 7 certainties about energy for this age of uncertainty appeared first on Thoughtful Journalism About Energy's Future.

By Jonathan Church

• According to data released by the U.S. Census Bureau in September, the United States exported 46.8 million short tons (MMst) of coal in the first half of 2025 (1H25), an 11 per cent decline from 1H24.
• Steam coal exports totalled 22.5 MMst, a 10 per cent decline from 1H24. Metallurgical coal exports totalled 24.2 MMst, a 13 per cent decline from 1H24.
• Reduced coal exports to China (4.4 MMst) accounted for 73 per cent of the decline in total U.S. net coal exports. China accounted for 76 per cent of the decline in metallurgical coal exports and 68 per cent of the decline in steam coal exports.
• U.S. exports to China decreased after China imposed a 15 per cent additional tariff on imports of U.S. coal in February and a 34 per cent reciprocal tariff on imports from the United States in April.
• The reduction in total coal exports also reflects a global market characterized by declining coal prices caused by ample supply and soft demand. Meanwhile, coal consumption in the U.S. electric power sector has risen due to more demand and higher natural gas prices.

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By Sean Hill

The volume of crude oil and natural gas traded between the two countries increased in 2024, but the value was relatively unchanged because prices for these commodities were lower on average than in 2023.

More recently, crude oil trade volumes across the U.S.-Canada border have decreased. As of March 6, 2025, Canada’s energy exports to the United States are subject to a 10% tariff, although some crude oil volumes are potentially exempt from tariffs if they qualify for the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement preference. Crude oil accounts for the largest component of U.S.-Canada energy trade, and in March and April of this year, the volume of U.S. crude oil imports from Canada and U.S. crude oil exports to Canada fell by about 5% and 28%, respectively, compared with the same period in 2024, according to data from our Petroleum Supply Monthly.

Although we expect any future changes to tariff policy could also affect cross-border energy trade volumes, the United States is likely to remain the preferred destination for Canada’s crude oil given the existing pipeline infrastructure connecting the two markets. Relatively complex U.S. petroleum refineries tend to prefer heavy (dense) crude oils, such as those produced in Canada.

Crude oil. Canada is a key source of U.S. crude oil imports, and Canada was the primary source of U.S. crude oil imports in 2024. U.S. crude oil imports from Canada in 2024 averaged 4.1 million barrels per day (b/d), 5% more than in 2023, partly because the Trans Mountain Expansion pipeline project was placed in service. Canada sends crude oil from production centers in Alberta to the Pacific Coast in British Columbia for export by oil tanker to foreign markets, including those in the U.S. West Coast region.

U.S crude oil exports to Canada are small by comparison, averaging 360,000 b/d in 2024. U.S. crude oil exports to Canada are typically low-density and low-sulfur crude oil grades shipped to eastern Canada.

Petroleum products. Petroleum products trade between the United States and Canada declined slightly in 2024 because U.S. petroleum product imports increased by 5% and exports decreased by 8%. The decline in U.S. petroleum product exports to Canada was driven in part by increased motor gasoline supplies in Canada that reduced the need for imports.

Natural gas. The value of natural gas trade fell significantly in 2024 due to lower natural gas prices. U.S. natural gas imports from Canada in 2024 averaged 8.5 billion cubic feet per day (Bcf/d), 7% more than in 2023, but the value of these imports fell 43% in 2024. Similarly, U.S. natural gas exports to Canada fell by 3% in 2024 to an average of 2.7 Bcf/d, and their value fell by 37%.

Most natural gas traded between the United States and Canada is sent by pipeline. Most U.S. natural gas imports from Canada arrive at the western and central portions of the border, and U.S. natural gas exports are more often sent from northeastern states into Ontario.

Electricity. Electricity trade between the two countries is relatively small compared with trade of other energy sources, but these trade volumes remain a key source of supply under certain market conditions. The value of U.S. electricity imports from Canada accounted for 72% of the total electricity value traded between the two countries.

A previous Today in Energy article explored U.S.-Canada electricity trade in detail. Earlier this year, in response to U.S. tariffs, the Canadian province of Ontario proposed and then retracted a 25% tariff on electricity imports from Canada to Michigan, Minnesota, and New York.

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By Jeff Barron

We forecast consumption growth of crude oil and other liquid fuels will slow over the next two years, driven by a slowdown in economic growth, particularly in Asia, in our May Short-Term Energy Outlook (STEO).

The world economy, measured by GDP, increases 2.8% in 2025 and 2026 in our forecast. Excluding the years of global economic contraction in 2020 and 2009, these economic growth rates would be the lowest since 2008. Considerable uncertainty over world trade, manufacturing, and investment points to downside risk in economic growth, which has a direct effect on oil consumption.

Economic activity uses energy. Increases in population, individual mobility, the shipping of goods, and industrial output result in more oil consumption. Since the year 2000, annual oil consumption growth has been the lowest during the years when the world economy grew by less than 3%. World oil consumption was around 103 million barrels per day (b/d) last year based on preliminary estimates.

The tariffs announced on U.S. trading partners in early April may have already slowed global trade in physical goods, based on preliminary container vessel departure data from Bloomberg. Less global trade will lead to fewer shipments of goods on vessels as well as fewer trucking deliveries and could affect employment and leisure travel as well. All these factors weigh on oil consumption growth.

Although oil consumption will still grow, we forecast it will grow by less than 1 million b/d in 2025 and 2026, which would be three consecutive years below 1 million b/d. During the two decades before the pandemic, world oil consumption grew by an average of 1.3 million b/d.

The biggest forecast slowdown in oil consumption growth is in Asia. Compared with our January STEO, when we forecasted oil consumption growth in Asia to average 0.7 million b/d over 2025 and 2026, we now expect consumption growth will slow to average 0.5 million b/d over those years.

We forecast smaller changes in the Americas, Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. Globally, we revised our world oil consumption growth forecasts down by 0.4 million b/d from the January STEO for 2025 and by 0.1 million b/d for 2026.

Our forecast remains highly uncertain and subject to change. Leading economic indicators including vessel traffic, truck tonnage, and airport passenger throughput can provide insight into real-time economic activity and provide clues to global oil consumption trends. Market participants can also follow our Weekly Petroleum Status Report for trends in U.S. petroleum consumption (as measured by product supplied). The United States accounts for about one-fifth of world oil consumption.

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By Tik Root

President Donald Trump came into office promising to “drill, baby, drill” and, on day one, signed an executive order aimed at “Unleashing American Energy.” On Friday, just over 100 days later, oil companies released their first quarterly earnings reports of Trump’s second term. They weren’t pretty.

The two largest oil companies in the United States saw revenues tumble. Earnings at Exxon Mobil fell 6 per cent compared to last year, to $7.7 billion. Chevron’s first-quarter income dropped more than a third, to $3.5 billion. “We are seeing significant downward pressure on prices and margins,” Darren Woods, chief executive of Exxon Mobil, said during a call with analysts on Friday. “In this environment, it is more important than ever to focus on what we can control.”

This caps a three month stretch — and the first 100 days of an administration — that saw oil executives swooning at the possibility of a boom. But since President Trump has taken office, headwinds have mounted.

The price of a barrel of oil has fallen from almost $80 to about $60 since his inauguration, sweeping new tariffs have made things like steel costlier, and economic uncertainty has made planning considerably more challenging. According to Baker Hughes, an oil field service provider, the number of drilling rigs in the nation’s largest oil field, the Permian Basin, has fallen about 3 per cent over the last month.

“There seems to be a lack of continuity in the policymaking that affects that industry,” said Sanjay Srinivasan, a professor of petroleum and natural gas engineering at Penn State University.

On the one hand, President Trump declared a national energy emergency within hours of taking office and has been pushing for an expansion of fossil fuel extraction. The Department of Interior, for example, announced plans to open more tracts of public land to drilling, including in the Arctic. It also moved to shorten the permitting process for projects from as long as two years to 28 days.

“They are fast-tracking dangerous, disastrous projects that are going to put the health and safety of people, the water, and the environment at risk,” said Jasmine Vazin, deputy director of the Beyond Dirty Fuels Campaign at the Sierra Club, pointing to the Line 5 pipeline in Michigan as one example. “This is what [oil companies] wanted.”

At the same time, the president has called for oil prices of $50 a barrel, which would decimate the industry. “At $50-per-barrel oil, we will see U.S. oil production start to decline immediately and likely significantly,” one anonymous executive responded in a Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas survey. “There cannot be ‘U.S. energy dominance’ and $50-per-barrel oil; those two statements are contradictory.” Others reported already cutting future capital expenditures based on the administration’s ambitions.

Trump’s tariffs have also taken a toll on oil companies by raising the cost of the steel they rely on for wells and other equipment, as well as likely slowing global demand for oil, which generally drops along with economic activity. Foreign producers deciding to increase output, including an OPEC+ announcement last week to boost its supply by more than 400,000 barrels a day in June, has only compounded domestic pressures.

“I have never felt more uncertainty about our business in my entire 40-plus-year career,” said one executive in the Federal Reserve survey. Another added: “Tariff policy is impossible for us to predict and doesn’t have a clear goal. We want more stability.”

Whether the Trump administration can bring that stability remains an open question. Even if it does, there’s no guarantee that American oil output — which was already at record levels before Trump took office  — can grow significantly, or that it will create more jobs. It’s also unclear if Trump cares.

“I’ll get those guys drilling,” he told supporters in Greenville, North Carolina, in November. “If they drill themselves out of business, I don’t give a damn.”

So far, that seems to be the trajectory. A Wall Street Journal analysis found that American oil-and-gas companies lost more than $280 billion in stock-market value between April 2, when Trump unveiled his tariff blitz, and Monday.

That drop outpaced that of every other major sector.

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By Mitchell Beer

From Oklahoma oil producers to coastal liquefied natural gas (LNG) shippers, U.S. fossil companies are beginning to worry that the president they invested more than US$200 million to bring back to the White House is endangering their business.

Donald Trump famously came to power on a “Drill, Baby, Drill” platform that raised skeptical eyebrows before he was even inaugurated. But now, just 100 days into his final term of office, his punitive tariffs are bludgeoning industries and economies around the world, and the fossil industry has not been immune.

Last Thursday, the climate-denying former fossil CEO now serving as U.S. energy secretary, Chris Wright, travelled to Oklahoma on a mission to “reassure U.S. oil companies” that the trade war-driven turmoil they’re facing “is apt to be fleeting and the administration fully supports more crude output,” Bloomberg News reports. “Wright, who previously ran one of the world’s biggest fracking service providers, said the uncertainty roiling the broader market is because the U.S. in the midst of negotiating more favourable trade deals. He predicted it would only last ‘a few more weeks’.”

Trump’s team has set out to negotiate those deals with the dozens of countries affected by tariffs—in one notable “stable genius” moment in the last few days, he claimed he’d already concluded “200 deals”, the Financial Times reported, when there are only 195 countries in the world. Other news reports indicate the process is moving rather more slowly.

Fossil executives meeting with Wright and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum were “largely upbeat”, Bloomberg says. But “two of the largest oilfield service providers, Halliburton Co. and Baker Hughes Co., warned this week that tariffs were impacting their bottom line. Matador Resources Co., a Texas shale company, announced Wednesday it was dropping one of its nine drilling rigs. And last month, a host of oil bosses delivered scathing critiques of Trump’s policies in an anonymous survey by the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.”

“The administration’s chaos is a disaster for the commodity markets. ‘Drill, baby, drill’ is nothing short of a myth and populist rallying cry,” said one Texas fossil exec. “Tariff policy is impossible for us to predict and doesn’t have a clear goal. We want more stability.”

On Thursday, Continental Resources co-founder and Trump mega-donor Harold Hamm told Bloomberg the administration needed “leeway to hammer out trade deals,” adding that oil prices will rise once the uncertainties around tariffs are lifted. “I see a lot of positives—we just don’t want to get bogged down negatively,” he told Bloomberg TV. “We’ve seen so many good things, I think he’ll go down as the president that made a difference.”

But another facet of Trump’s trade war could have longer ramifications. In two lobbying letters on behalf of a $34-billion LNG export industry, the American Petroleum Institute (API) “warned the Trump administration it cannot comply with new rules aimed at forcing them to use U.S. transport vessels by imposing levies on Chinese-built ships docking at U.S. ports,” the Financial Times reports.

“The new rules are part of U.S. efforts to increase the pressure on China over what Washington argues are unfair trade practices, while boosting the domestic manufacturing of ships,” the Times writes. “However, they have caused alarm among U.S. exporters, who worry they will dramatically increase the cost of contracting vessels.”

The LNG industry, which depends heavily on Chinese and other foreign-built ships, has already secured a three-year delay in implementing tariff rules and a 22-year timeline to gradually phase in U.S.-flagged vessels. (By which time demand for their product will have largely evaporated, according to a growing body of analysis led by the International Energy Agency.) But that won’t be enough, the API maintained, in letters to Wright and Burgum that declared it impossible for LNG producers to comply with Trump’s buy-American rules.

The fossil trade lobby group told the two cabinet secretaries there are “currently no U.S.-built vessels capable of shipping LNG and no surplus capacity at U.S. shipyards to build LNG carriers by the deadline of 2029,”  the Times writes, citing sources familiar with the content of the letters. “API warns the rules would compromise U.S. producers’ ability to dominate the global LNG industry and cement America’s position as the global [fossil] energy superpower.”

The API told the Times it recognized the need to curb what it called discriminatory trade practices but had concerns about the approach. “We will continue working with USTR [U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer] and the Department of Energy in support of feasible and durable policies that benefit consumers and advance American energy dominance,” said Vice-President of Corporate Policy Aaron Padilla.

The Center for LNG, another industry lobby group, said the rules would risk destabilizing long-term contracts, raise costs for international customers, and undercut the U.S. role as a major LNG exporter. “That’s why we have urged USTR to exempt LNG shipping and LNG carriers from this action entirely,” he told the Times.

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By Mitchell Beer

This Weekender mostly combines material we published in late February and early April, but the context is a bit more urgent…again.

Monday is Election Day in Canada, and with less than 100 hours to go before polls open, Donald Trump reinserted himself into the campaign, telling TIME Magazine he’s “really not trolling” with his mutterings about turning us into a 51st state.

In an interview published Friday, Trump brought the focus back to the annexation threat that The Weekender and many others have been warning about for months. He repeated his false claims that the U.S. is subsidizing Canada, declaring that “the only way this thing really works is for Canada to become a state.”

“It now seems increasingly obvious that Trump’s expansionist aspirations are no fleeting fancy,” CBC writes. “He kept quiet for a while, leading some to wonder whether he’d gotten it out of his system.” But “in recent days, the president has been blunt in different encounters with media that he seriously would love to see Canada become a state.”

Trump’s apparent seriousness about annexation leads to two questions, the answers to which may well be shaped by the election results Monday night:

• What are the prospects for Canada to form new trading relationships with other regions and countries that are facing Trump’s malignant wrath, to diversify our economies and stand together against a common threat?

• How can climate and energy strategy become part of the glue that holds this new alliance together, and what policies and real-world actions will Canada need to join in?

The World Pushes Back

The astonishing thing over the last few weeks was not that Donald Trump went ahead with his threat to blow up the global trading system by imposing tariffs on about 60 countries, including two economically mischievous islands populated only by penguins.

It was that the rest of the world was so fast to push back, ready and determined to move on from an era of U.S. economic dominance. That a promising approach to building a new trading bloc that bypasses the rogue regime in the White House went from online conversation to serious proposition in scarcely a week.

That if you surveyed the scene from just the right angle, a new, emerging bloc might be able to cover more ground and tackle multiple problems at once by pivoting to low-carbon goods and real decarbonization technologies.

And that Canada might yet place itself at the centre of the world’s next great, low-carbon trading alliance, as long as our incoming federal government has the insight and inclination to play along. (Which is a longabouts way of saying…your vote matters.)

In the 100 or so hours after Trump’s self-styled “Liberation Day” announcement earlier this month, we saw a fast flurry of analyses on the slapdash, amateur-hour process behind the decision, the immediate impact on jobs, a shock reaction from global stock markets that has continued through the month, and the apparent certainty that this spells the end of global trade as we’ve known it.

But there are more interesting, even hopeful and positive questions to ask, beginning with:

If every end is also a beginning, what’s next?

If the tariffs are really dealing a death blow to the established international trading system, what if this undercuts the fossil fuel industry as badly as Trump’s direct hostility and interference have devastated the U.S. renewable energy sector and climate justice community?

For Canada, now that we’ve declared that there’s no way back to an era when our economy was over-dependent on our neighbour to the south, what else do we gain by getting closer to countries that are farther along on their climate and decarbonization journey?

And how can we work with our future trading partners to accelerate the shift?

Sleeping Beside an Elephant

The roiling, ranting, manufactured crisis that Donald Trump has brought to our doorstep has communities, countries, and whole continents scrambling for solutions. So we might as well admit and embrace the reality staring right at us—Trump has created a moment when the sense of what’s “realistic” gets tossed in the air, when unexpected lines of thought suddenly make a whole lot more sense.

For Canada, that response begins with a level of unity and shared purpose that we haven’t seen in many decades—prompting former prime minister Jean Chrétien to slyly declare that he would have nominated Trump for an Order of Canada if only the honour were available to convicted criminals.

It extends into some serious, long-overdue conversations about how to make our economy truly independent. We’ve always known we were sleeping beside an elephant, as Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau told the Washington Press Club in 1969.

But there’s been little serious talk about dialling up our economic relationships in other parts of the world sufficiently to dial back our dependence on the U.S. Until now.

It began with a post by Social Capital Partners Chair Jon Shell, suggesting a new trading bloc with the economic clout to survive, thrive, and leave the United States behind.

“We know what Donald Trump is afraid of,” he wrote on LinkedIn. “Now let’s organize around it.”

The EU, UK, Canada, Japan, South Korea, and Australia (I’m now calling them “EU + 5”) collectively have 760 million people and control 34% of the global economy and vast quantities of natural resources. We are an obvious threat to the U.S. and to China if we were to organize.

The best way to beat a bully is for the rest of the group to rise up against him.

The rest of Shell’s scenario is that much more plausible in the year when Canada holds the rotating chair of the Group of 7 forum of industrialized nations, and will be hosting the G7 leaders’ summit in June.

The most powerful signal to give Trump would be for this group to meet in a very public way, ideally in Canada, so the meeting would play out on American TV in the right time zones. The stats on the economic and resource might of this new group would scroll across the bottom of Fox News. [If we can assume that Fox would even carry the story—Ed.]

A joint statement at the end pledging to work together as friends and allies to ensure a resilient and prosperous future for our populations would be a powerful message. Quick wins could be action on Ukraine and munitions manufacturing.

First and last, it needs to be 100% clear—and for Trump, spelled out with a Sharpie in simple, single-syllable words with lots of golf analogies—that no one is taking this lying down.

“My strong recommendation to Canada, Mexico, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the European Union is to join together to create a free trade zone that excludes the United States, imposing at least a 10% tariff on all imports from America,” writes Bill Clinton-era U.S. labour secretary Robert Reich. “Don’t negotiate. Do this now so you’ll be negotiating from a position of power.”

G7? Meet the ‘Free 7’ (By Comparison)

As Reich’s formula suggests, a useful add-on to Shell’s thinking would be to build on Canada’s relationship with its more reliable trading partner in North America by including Mexico in an EU + 6.

And by declaring an emphasis on clean energy and decarbonization trade, the countries could jump-start their economies after Trump’s tariff attack, boost affordability and local self-reliance across the entire bloc, support Ukraine’s reconstruction, and prevent military conflict in the first place—and oh, by the way, move closer to meeting their climate targets.

The focus on climate and carbon would be consistent with the accelerated priorities the European Union has been setting since 2022, when Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine turned energy efficiency and renewables into a geopolitical security strategy for countries that were too dependent on Russian gas.

And this general line of thought has been gaining traction. Within a week, the idea of a wider trading bloc had broken out from social media and Substack newsletters to general media in a Toronto Star post by John Austin, a nonresident senior fellow at the Washington, DC-based Brookings Institution. His formulation brought together the EU, Japan, the UK, Canada, Mexico, South Korea, and Thailand in a group of nations that “would dwarf the U.S., as well as the economies of China combined with its ally Russia.”

Given America’s new stance, now is the time for the G7 member nations to disinvite the U.S. from the group, and morph to a new organization: a “Free 7.” It would be a new forum in which the nations that still believe in democracy, free markets, freedom of expression, and free trade would collaborate to strengthen their collective hand and push back against authoritarians—which now includes the U.S.

The work of the new Free 7 would be the urgent task of building an international coalition that stands up to the authoritarian axis—and successfully contains it. This means standing up to pressure from the U.S.

Take this as a thumbs-up for the basic idea, not necessarily the branding Austin attaches to it. It would take a whole other edition of The Weekender (or more) to unpack what we mean by “Free” and how well or widely it applies to the countries in the group, certainly including Canada.

But the point of contrast with full-on authoritarians like Trump still makes a lot of sense—to counter the rush to fascism that we’re seeing in the U.S. and, if it goes this way, to reignite the response to climate change and the energy transition. That general line of thought makes South Korea an interesting addition to the group after an unequivocal population pushed back against an egregious assault on the country’s democracy—unlike their U.S. counterparts, who splintered in response to Trump’s 2020 election loss and the deadly insurrection attempt that followed.

Carbon is the New Tariff

In February, The Weekender reported that the emerging, global demand for low-emissions trade isn’t just a North American phenomenon—nor even a trend that North America is leading. And that carbon controls could soon become the new tariff.

The European Union adopted the world’s first carbon border adjustment mechanism (CBAM) in 2023, and its implementation is set to begin this year. That bit of progress landed in the middle of the Liberal leadership campaign earlier this year when then-candidate Mark Carney proposed to replace the hated consumer carbon tax by introducing a CBAM regime with other like-minded countries.

That thinking leads toward a plausible and really promising future where climate impact is a key criterion guiding trading relationships, as long as the system is rigorous enough to deliver real-world results. If a country is seriously and measurably reducing emissions, it qualifies. If it isn’t, it gets politely but firmly left behind.

As far back as January, Canada’s future trading partners were already making moves in the right direction. In the first week after Trump’s inauguration, a small flurry of analysis indicated that the rest of the world was moving on—not least because countries have already seen eight years of punitive, provocative U.S. tariffs under the Joe Biden presidency as well as Trump 1.0, and they’re quite rightly fed up.

The trend was most definitely paralleled by an emerging, global shift in energy priorities. “Most major economies are investing in ever-cheaper solar and wind power,” the New York Times wrote. “Even as coal, oil, and gas still power the global economy, and more fossil fuels are burned year after year, the movement globally is toward heavy investment in solar, wind, and batteries, the prices of which have fallen sharply in recent years.”

Time to Stand for What Matters

But in international trade relations, as in the fight against climate change, standing against what we can’t and won’t accept is just half the battle. The next successful trading bloc will only fulfill John Austin’s vision of a “Free 7” if we’re very clear and deliberate about the kind of economic activity we want.

In a Toronto Star op ed, Savanna McGregor, Grand Chief of the Algonquin Anishinabeg Nation Tribal Council, said Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre’s “Canada First” National Energy Corridor wouldn’t meet that standard.

Reading Mr. Poilievre’s announcement, I am left wondering why it does not mention Indigenous people even passingly, other than to expect fancifully that we give “approval … before any money is spent.” Surely he knows Canada’s constitution requires Indigenous consultation, accommodation, and ultimately consent to build major infrastructure inside his National Energy Corridor? How can there be consultation (to say nothing of accommodation and consent) if the corridor is “pre-approved” before anyone has the blueprints for what infrastructure will be built and where?

McGregor asks how city dwellers would respond to word of a “pre-approved” major development in their own back yard, with no indication of whether it’s a school, a shopping mall, or a radioactive waste dump.

It sounds ridiculous and contemptuous, yet this is exactly how Mr. Poilievre and many others hold Indigenous communities today (there is a radioactive waste dump on Algonquin land right now). Obviously, pushing a development decision without identifying the development would never fly in a city where the residents have no constitutional right to be consulted—so it definitely will not fly for Indigenous people having that right.

“Ironically, the pre-approved corridor Mr. Poilievre wants to speed development up would nearly paralyze it,” McGregor wrote, citing court cases that would slow down a campaign promise that she describes as a “war with Indigenous nations”.

Then there’s the question of who gains if those projects are fast-tracked. In a separate post for the Star, Toronto Metropolitan University associate professor Shari Pasternak and Emily Lowan, fossil fuel supply lead at Climate Action Network Canada (of which Energy Mix Productions is a member), connected dots to some of the main movers and shakers in Trump’s inner circle. Which means that projects like the Prince Rupert Gas Transmission (PRGT) pipeline and the Ksi Lisims LNG export terminal “are now making Canada vulnerable to Trump’s predatory goal of North American energy dominance.”

Pasternak and Lowan wrote:

The solution is not to copy Trump’s “drill, baby, drill” approach with a thin gloss of maple syrup over top; it is respect for Indigenous jurisdiction and a just transition from fossil fuels to clean energy. Canadian pride should come from ethical investment and reconciliation—not backstopping U.S. corporations.

We’ve all heard the too-easy, too-glib line that a crisis is a terrible thing to waste. And once, just once, I wish the pundits and prognosticators who keep talking that way would turn their attention to the climate crisis and the fossil fuel industries that drive it. Or the nature and biodiversity crisis. Or the food security crisis. Or the multiple, wrenching human rights crises going on around the world as we virtually speak. No need to be fussy.

But here’s the thing so many of us have been hoping for—since the U.S. election result in November, and since around 8:10 PM Eastern last June 27, as we watched then-U.S. president Joe Biden implode onstage in his debate against Trump. Faced with the worst we’ve ever seen from Trump, the #ElbowsUp mantra is extending far beyond Canada, into a global coalition so wide that it might be able to withstand this moment, recover, thrive—and thrive green.

There are no guarantees, and it’ll take a while to see how things land. But the first step in building the solution we need is to envision it. And over the last few weeks, that’s been happening.

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By Jatin Nathwani, Munur Sacit Herdem

Improving Canada’s productivity is a fundamental necessity and the core of any strategy to help overcome the challenges emerging from a tariff-driven trade war initiated by U.S. President Donald Trump.

Such a strategy is crucial for safeguarding Canada’s economic security and prosperity in a highly contested global marketplace.

Specific parameters need to be spelled out to support a concerted effort to build and maintain a robust innovation ecosystem – one focused explicitly on attracting and retaining talented individuals from across the globe but especially from the U.S., given Trump’s assault on science and research funding there.

Establishing a “Canada-Europe Talent Hub” would be the first practical step to foster an agile institution that rewards a strong start-up culture. The hub would deliver targeted, sector-specific programs to facilitate access to critical resources such as funding, expertise and market-entry strategies, supporting innovative projects from inception to commercialization.

One critical aspect of the hub would be its operational structure, modelled in part after successful initiatives such as Communitech in Waterloo, Ont.

Launched in 1997 by a group of local tech founders, with support from municipal and federal leaders, Communitech began as a peer-to-peer support network and grew into one of Canada’s most effective public-private innovation hubs.

Today, it supports more than 1,400 companies and helps entrepreneurs turn ideas into thriving businesses. Its strengths lie in fostering a strong founder-led community, collaborative culture and commitment to helping startups avoid common pitfalls.

Building on this model, the proposed talent hub could be co-established by a coalition of public innovation agencies, such as Canada’s global innovation clusters and Horizon Europe, with a governance board composed of experienced entrepreneurs, corporate partners and academic leaders from both regions.

How Canada could get much closer to Europe

As the U.S. closes doors to scholars, Canada fumbles a chance to welcome them

Recruitment could leverage existing immigration pathways, bilateral academic networks and targeted outreach to U.S.-based talent displaced by Trump’s science and research cuts.

The hub would prioritize hands-on mentorship, real-world problem solving and cross-border market integration, thus ensuring it’s driven by founders, not bureaucracy.

Unlike traditional research networks or government-to-government partnership arrangements – often plagued by bureaucratic inertia – the new talent hub would focus on enterprise formation to drive rapid, impactful innovations and market-driven solutions for business and industry writ-large.

Linking Canadian and European talent in a collaborative environment would be the spearhead of economic diversification, energy security, climate action, digital transformation and financial-system resilience.

The evisceration of the scientific and technological capacity embedded within key U.S. federal agencies through massive layoffs and significant funding cuts to venerable U.S. universities (Harvard, Columbia, Johns Hopkins and others) has created an unprecedented opportunity for Canada and Europe, both of which share common liberal democratic values and believe in pluralism.

Highly talented individuals now working in the U.S. are already exploring opportunities elsewhere, seeking bastions of stability in a turbulent world. There is now an enormous opportunity for Canada and Europe to combine efforts to attract this talent.

In addition, one of the primary benefits of the talent hub would be its emphasis on real-world applications and speed of innovation.

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By Mitchell Beer

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By Gib van Ert, Robert J. Currie, Allan Rock

Late in 2024, the incoming president of the United States, Donald Trump, began calling for the annexation of Canada. 

What was first taken as a tasteless joke quickly emerged as a chief plank of the new administration’s foreign policy. On Jan. 7, a reporter asked Trump whether he intended to use military force against Canada – something he had threatened only moments earlier to use against Panama and Greenland. “No, economic force,” Trump replied.  

Both military and economic force to annex another country are forbidden under Canadian and international law. Any U.S. takeover attempt already faces serious political and public resistance. But we also have legal and constitutional defences of our sovereignty, to be taken up if needed. Let us hope it does not come to that. But lawyers and judges must be ready in case it does. 

Trump’s goal is clear 

Since becoming president on Jan. 20, Trump has followed through with his threats in the form of on-again, off-again tariffs on various Canadian exports designed to cause severe damage to our economy. 

He uses nonsensical justifications for tariffs, but his real goal is clear – the use of economic force to undermine Canadian sovereignty and pave the way for U.S. annexation.   

Trump repeated his commitment to territorial aggrandizement in his inaugural address, saying: “The United States will once again consider itself a growing nation, one that increases our wealth, expands our territory, builds our cities, raises our expectations and carries our flag into new and beautiful horizons.”  

He also invoked Manifest Destiny, the discredited 19th-century American belief in the irresistible spread of its empire across North America. 

International law is on Canada’s side 

The acquisition of territory by force has been illegal under international law since the end of the Second World War – ironically because of U.S. leadership at the San Francisco conference that drafted the 1945 United Nations Charter.  

Article 2(4) requires all UN members to “refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state.”  

The UN Declaration on Principles of International Law Concerning Friendly Relations and Co-Operation Among States affirms that no acquisition of territory by “the threat or use of force shall be recognized as legal” and no state may use “economic, political or any other type of measures to coerce another state in order to obtain from it the subordination of its exercise of its sovereign rights.”  

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This prohibition is also a matter of international human-rights law, specifically the right to self-determination. Of particular importance to Canada, Article 3 of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples specifically confirms the right of Indigenous Peoples to “freely determine their political status.”  

These international norms are also part of Canadian law. They represent customary international law, which the Supreme Court of Canada has repeatedly affirmed forms part of Canadian common law.  

This means that the international legal principles of Canadian sovereignty over its territory, the right of Canadians to self-determination and the illegality of foreign acquisition of territory by threat or use of force, including economic force, are rules of Canadian common law that must, in proper cases, be given effect by Canadian judges. 

The Constitution assumes Canadian sovereignty 

Canadian sovereignty and territorial integrity also underpin our written Constitution. The Constitution Act, 1867 (formerly the British North America Act) vests executive power in the Sovereign, establishes a Privy Council for Canada and continues the command-in-chief of Canada’s land and naval forces in the Sovereign as head of state. 

These provisions are irreconcilable with any transfer of executive power from the head of state, as advised by Canadian political leaders, to a foreign power.  

Major amendments to the Constitution in 1982 added the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, the protection of Aboriginal rights and a new mechanism for amending the Constitution without British involvement. Throughout its provisions, the Constitution Act, 1982 assumes, and requires, Canadian independence.  

Section 3 confirms the rights of all Canadian citizens to vote in elections for members of the House of Commons and to serve as MPs. The continued existence of the Commons as the elective element of our federal legislature is the essential prerequisite of these rights.  

Section 6 declares the right of every Canadian citizen to enter, remain in and leave Canada – a meaningless right without a Canada to enter, remain in and leave.  

Part V sets out several ways in which the Constitution can be amended. Capitulation to a foreign power is not one of them.  

Finally, Section 52(1) provides that the Constitution is the supreme law of Canada and that any law inconsistent with it is of no force or effect. The force of all the Constitution’s other provisions turns on this one, which empowers Canadian courts to strike down other laws as unconstitutional. 

Indigenous rights are also critical 

The position of Canada’s Indigenous peoples must also be remembered.  

Modern Canada is the product of a series of territorial encroachments and acquisitions by France and Britain in pre-modern times. Canadian courts continue to struggle with the consequences of that history, empowered by the 1982 Constitution’s recognition and affirmation in Section 35 of the existing Aboriginal and treaty rights of the Aboriginal peoples of Canada.  

This process of reconciliation gained new impetus with Canada’s adherence to the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in 2016 and Parliament’s recognition of that declaration as a universal international human-rights instrument with application in Canadian law. 

All of this gives legal foundation to an instinct that should come naturally to anyone living on this continent: we are long past the point in our history where Indigenous lands and traditional territories can be swapped back and forth between states without Indigenous consent. 

Judicial resistance may be needed 

The United States seems now to have turned against the principles it once championed. But those principles remain the foundation of both the international legal order and Canada’s laws. 

American attempts to force annexation by economic means are being met with strong resistance from our political leaders and the public. That resistance may succeed and Trump’s dream of making Canada the 51st state may be shattered by politics alone.  

But if Canada-U.S. relations so deteriorate that our independence is actively threatened, political and popular resistance may require the support of legal and judicial resistance. The annexation of Canada by a foreign power is manifestly illegal. Canada’s courts must not hesitate to say so.  

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