What we can gain amid a trade war

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 12/03/2025 (207 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The trade war isn’t the problem. The way we think about it is.

Tariffs. Economic disaster. The headlines are full of panic. But step back — who’s actually losing here?

For decades, Canada has played by the rules of free trade, shipping raw materials out instead of turning them into finished products at home. We were told this was good for us. That it would make goods cheaper, strengthen our economy, and give us more choices.

But look around. Do things feel cheaper? Are our industries thriving? Or are we paying more for basic necessities while producing less for ourselves?

People talk about free trade like it’s a natural law, something so obvious that only a fool would question it. But free trade isn’t about freedom. It’s about who benefits.

When Canada signed on to free trade agreements, we were promised open markets and more jobs.

But over time, many industries shifted production elsewhere. Manufacturing jobs disappeared.

Wages stagnated. We became more dependent on imports.

Now, Trump’s tariffs are hitting Canadian exports, making it harder for our goods to compete in the U.S. market. Canada has responded with tariffs of its own, making imported goods more expensive.

Together, these shifts are forcing us to ask a much bigger question; Why have we been so reliant on this fragile system in the first place?

Tariffs aren’t destabilizing the economy, they’re revealing how unstable it already was. A system that thrives on outsourcing and cheap imports was never built to withstand real pressure.

For decades, industries have prioritized cutting costs over resilience, and now, even the smallest disruption sends shock waves through supply chains, wages, and prices.

We’re being told tariffs will be a crisis. But is the real problem the tariffs, or the fact that we’ve built an economy so dependent on trade deals that we have no backup plan?

Yes, tariffs affect prices. But prices have been rising for years. Your grocery bill, your rent, your energy bill, they’ve all gone up, and not because of tariffs. Meanwhile, Canada still exports raw lumber instead of producing furniture. We still send food abroad for processing and buy it back at a markup. We still rely on foreign supply chains for the essentials we could be making here.

And now, with tariffs threatening corporate profits, the same people who have been driving up prices all along want you to believe that this is the moment everything will become unaffordable.

But what if this trade war is actually an opportunity? What if tariffs on our exports force us to stop relying on the U.S. market and invest in selling more goods at home? What if higher import costs finally make it profitable to manufacture more in Canada instead of shipping jobs overseas?

What if, instead of sending raw materials to be processed somewhere cheaper, we started building more of what we consume right here? More production means more jobs, stronger industries, less reliance on fragile supply chains. It means an economy that works for more than just investors.

Manitobans know what it means to endure. You don’t get through long winters by hoping for an easier way out — you prepare, you adapt, and you make things work.

That’s real security, not the illusion of stability that disappears the moment a supply chain breaks.

Tariffs won’t break us, but decades of outsourcing and relying on imports already have. The headlines say tariffs will hurt the economy, but an economy is only as strong as the people who keep it moving.

Maybe it’s time we stopped playing by rules that were never made for us in the first place.

Maybe this time, instead of letting corporations dictate the terms, we build something that works for us.

MJ Jonasson is a Winnipeg thinker and advocate for community-driven change. With a background in housing advocacy, Indigenous economic development, policy and social entrepreneurship, she has worked alongside communities to develop meaningful solutions that challenge systemic inequities.