By Sumayya
DETROIT — Democratic politicians are hoping that Tuesday’s midterm elections will give them the power to control U.S. President Donald Trump. However, Canadian people who are hoping for an election result that fixes and calms the shaky relationship between the two countries might be disappointed.
Seats in Congress that used to be safe for the Republican party are now in danger, and control of the law-making body could switch sides. Trump’s support numbers in public polls are dropping fast because of his unpopular war in Iran, rising power costs, and inflation.
Public polls show that Democrats are expected to win the House of Representatives, where gaining just three more seats would give them the majority.
The future of the Senate is not as clear. Democrats need to gain four more seats to get a majority, and some polls show that this is possible for them to achieve.
Even if Democrats win control of both parts of Congress, Trump will still remain the president, said Matthew Lebo, a teacher of political science at Western University in London, Ontario.
Presidents hold a large amount of power over relationships with other countries, and Trump—who is unhappy with being seen as a leader with no power in the final part of his term—might be even more driven to use that power.
Lebo said that this situation could make Trump act more “unpredictable” and “dangerous.”
“It is not clear how much a Democratic Senate will fight back against him or if they even can fight back,” Lebo said.
The size of the expected Democratic win will be an important detail, Lebo added. Many reports hint that Republicans are worried about losing seats as elections in areas that Trump won easily in 2024, like Kansas and Ohio, become very close races.
Congress has the power over border taxes—called tariffs—and regular taxes, but Republican lawmakers have mostly let Trump use tariffs all over the world without stopping him. If the midterm elections show that the president has lost his hold over his loyal voters, Republican members might be more willing to disagree with Trump, Lebo said.
However, a large number of Republicans would have to join together with Democrats to get the extra-large majority vote needed to overcome the president’s power to stop laws and cancel Trump’s tariffs.
Also, many experts doubt whether Democrats actually want to go back to the way trade laws were before Trump arrived.
Trump’s first time as president showed how easily Canada can be hurt by American choices when the president canceled the North American Free Trade Agreement.
It was replaced with the Canada-U.S.-Mexico Agreement on trade, which is called CUSMA. Former Democratic Vice-President Kamala Harris and the current Democratic Senate leader Chuck Schumer were among the Democrats who voted against that three-country deal.
President Joe Biden brought more calm to the relationship between Canada and the U.S., but he did not change things very much. He kept many of Trump’s first-term tariffs in place, even though he promised to remove them, and he expanded other rules that protect American businesses.
“What Canadians have learned over the last few years is that we cannot trust Americans to fix their direction when they have the chance in the presidency,” Lebo said.
While Trump’s first term shook the relationship between the two countries, his second term completely broke it. Canada was an early target for Trump’s trade taxes, and Canadian people were shocked and horrified by the president’s repeated threats to take over Canadian land.
Arguments got even worse in August when trade talks broke down completely. Trump put 50 percent taxes on a large group of Canadian goods, banned people from bringing other Canadian products into the U.S., and signed an executive order to change the name of Lake Ontario to Lake America.
The trade war is very unpopular in states like Michigan and Maine, where close Senate races could ultimately decide which political party wins control of Congress.
But even if Democrats win next week, or win the race for the White House in the year 2028, it is not certain that Trump’s wall of taxes would suddenly go away.
California Governor Gavin Newsom, who is thinking about running for president, told CTV in August that he could not promise that Trump’s tariff rules would be canceled under Democratic leadership.
One detail that Democrats are likely thinking about is how to handle the United States’ massive $40-trillion debt problem. Trump has argued that tariffs bring in much-needed money—even though they have not yet made a big difference in the U.S. financial records. Democrats have not said how they plan to fix the problem.
Vermont Democratic Senator Peter Welch, who visited Montreal this week, promised to cancel the taxes on Canada.
Christopher Sands, the leader of the Center for Canadian Studies at Johns Hopkins University, said Democrats have traditionally been more protective of domestic businesses than Republicans, and he could see the party keeping a basic wall of tariffs in place.
What that means for the future of the CUSMA trade deal is not clear. The Trump administration did not renew the three-country agreement earlier this year, which started a yearly check that can go on for up to 10 years. Once that time ends, and if the countries have not agreed to extend it at that point, the deal will expire.
Sands said that as long as the United States does not completely walk away from CUSMA, there is still a chance to talk and make deals.
“You just want to hold onto that deal and hope that in a different political environment, you can have a conversation about keeping it,” he said.
