Call Trump’s bluff of needing nothing from us

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This article was published 14/02/2025 (257 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

People who know me, know I’ve been talking about this for weeks now.

People who know me are sick of hearing about this.

Originally, it was just about potash — two years spent in Saskatchewan was enough to school me on how important potash is, not only to that province’s economy, but how vital it is to America’s farmers, too. But the idea has grown.

First off, we have to recognize that United States tariffs on Canadian products are only delayed.

U.S. President Donald Trump has raised concerns about the trade deficit between Canada and the U.S., because the U.S. buys more from us than we buy from them.

Luckily, Trump has also publicly stated Canada has nothing the U.S. needs.

So maybe we should try to address Trump’s concerns by doing our best in the short term to equalize our trade deficit. (In the long term, we need better, more consistent, more diversified customers.)

That either means buying more from the U.S., or having them buy less from us.

Let’s pick the second option.

Since the bulk of the trade deficit is energy, I’ve got an idea.

First off, the U.S. maintains a Strategic Petroleum Reserve — up to 714 million barrels — that it holds ready in giant salt caverns in case there’s a sudden disruption in supply. (There’s currently about 372 million barrels in storage.)

The U.S. Department of Energy describes the SPR as “a significant deterrent to oil import cutoffs and a key tool in foreign policy.” The SPR buys oil when there’s an oversupply to keep oil wells in the U.S. going: it sells oil when there’s a significant disruption in supply.

There’s been considerable call for Canada to adopt its own strategic petroleum reserve, with studies going so far as to identify 61 similar salt caverns in Lambton County, Ont., that could hold 31 million barrels. Giant tank farms are also an option, but the lead time for construction would be 12-18 months.

Relatively quickly, the Canadian government could start buying Canadian oil at market price to fill the reserve, oil that we could keep from adding to the U.S. trade deficit. The oil would stay on the federal balance sheet as an asset.

Thirty-one million barrels is not a lot of oil, if we stick to just using the salt caverns — after all, we export about four million barrels a day to the U.S. But at the current price of Alberta oil, it would mean a $1.8-billion decline in that troublesome trade deficit Trump so dislikes.

But oil’s really only the beginning.

And that brings me back to potash.

Maybe we need a strategic potash reserve as well.

If the tariffs come back in March, they could conceivably hurt Saskatchewan badly if that province’s potash producers have to eat the cost of the tariff. Perhaps the Canadian government could buy potash at market prices and divert it from being sold in the U.S., building up a stockpile that would not even have to leave the mine site.

Heck, we could buy it and leave it in the ground until needed. (After all, Trump has been very clear the U.S. needs nothing from us.)

Once again, an asset on the balance sheet, and a non-tariff action that creates a myriad of problems south of the border.

American farmers currently get almost 90 per cent of their potash for use in fertilizers from Canada, and our country is the world’s largest supplier. Those farmers are very worried about a 25 per cent tariff on potash, especially as the head of the largest potash producer in the world, Saskatchewan-based Nutrien, says the costs of tariffs will fall directly on farmers.

Either way, we could buy and hold enough potash to wait and see how the tariff battle plays out, just as strategic foreign-policy insurance.

And while we’re talking strategy, let’s talk tungsten as well.

Last week, China rolled out another small piece of its response to the Trump tariffs. On Thursday, it announced it would limit exports to the U.S. of tungsten, tellurium, bismuth, indium and molybdenum. That follows bans in December on the export of gallium, germanium and antimony, to the U.S.

The U.S. currently doesn’t produce any tungsten but needs it for a raft of military applications, and it’s well aware China has a stranglehold on tungsten production, responsible for somewhere near 90 per cent of the metal produced globally.

The U.S. is so aware of its need for the metal that the U.S. Department of Defense just invested US$15 million in the development of a proposed tungsten mine in — wait for it — Canada. The money’s going to Fireweed Metals in the Yukon.

“Tungsten is used in a diverse set of DoD systems and is essential to national security,” Laura Taylor-Kale, U.S. Assistant Secretary of Defense for Industrial Base Policy, said in a Dec. 13, 2024 news release.

“The U.S. is overly reliant on overseas sources of tungsten and a secure North American supply for this commodity will mitigate one of our most critical material risks. This award also highlights the importance of the Department’s partnership with our Canadian allies.”

Well, Trump’s actions highlight the lack of importance with which he regards that partnership.

And did I mention uranium? Canada is one of the world’s largest producers of uranium, and 27 per cent of our production last year went to the U.S. Perhaps we should start finding our own uses for the material — and definitely maintain a federally funded strategic stockpile of maybe two or three years’ worth of production.

Or maybe we should mirror China’s approach, and start throttling back our sales of uranium — let alone the rare-earth minerals we have, and any future tungsten — to the U.S., so we can shrink the trade deficit Trump says he is so very worried about.

And use the time to spend a few years finding new customers — and better friends.

Russell Wangersky
Perspectives editor

Russell Wangersky is Perspectives Editor for the Winnipeg Free Press, and also writes editorials and columns. He worked at newspapers in Newfoundland and Labrador, Ontario and Saskatchewan before joining the Free Press in 2023. A seven-time National Newspaper Award finalist for opinion writing, he’s also penned eight books. Read more about Russell.

Russell oversees the team that publishes editorials, opinions and analysis — part of the Free Press‘s tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press’s history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates.