Top Finance Committee Democrat Rips Trump's New Canada Tariffs as 'Yet Another Shakedown'

Critics are piling on President Donald Trump for once again picking a fight with the United States' top trading partner by moving to slap 50% tariffs on certain imported Canadian goods.

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee, said on Tuesday that Trump's latest broadside against Canada was "yet another shakedown that will raise the cost of living for Americans, their families, and small businesses across the country."

Wyden also said that Trump has "abused every trade authority at his disposal" and vowed to soon release a bill "to rein him in and put Congress back in the driver's seat" in crafting US trade policy.

Wyden wasn't the only Democrat to take a shot at Trump over his new economic attack on Canada.

Rep. Mike Levin (D-Calif.) called Trump's new tariffs "really dumb" given that they violate a trade deal that Trump himself negotiated with Canada and Mexico during his first term.

"You cannot negotiate a trade agreement, sign it, celebrate it, then blow it up and expect anyone to trust the next deal," said Levin. "And who actually pays? American importers and American families. Tariffs are a tax on us."

Rep. Jared Huffman (D-Calif.) predicted that US consumers would once again pay the price for the president's trade war.

"We're the ones who will eat the cost," wrote Huffman. "That's what happened with Trump's last tariff spree and it will happen again. Trump's failed foreign and economic policies are making life worse for hardworking people."

Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman on Tuesday published an analysis trying to make sense of the justifications for Trump's latest trade war with Canada, but he came up mostly empty.

"The White House fact sheet claims that the new tariffs are a response to Canadian policies that discriminate against US products," explained Krugman, "notably the moves by most Canadian provinces... to stop importation of US alcoholic beverages. But these policies were themselves a response to the tariffs on Canadian goods Trump had previously imposed."

Krugman then noted that Trump shifted his justification for the tariffs, saying they were designed to punish Canada after smoke generated by wildfires in Ontario billowed into the US last week.

However, Krugman found this explanation even more absurd.

"Blaming Canada for not controlling fires that are, in reality, largely a consequence of global warming," Krugman remarked, "is unutterably idiotic."

Krugman concluded his analysis by arguing that "whatever the real motivation for these new tariffs, they are almost surely illegal," noting that they run afoul of Trump's own North American trade deal.

Trump on Tuesday indicated that the tariffs on Canada were not actually a response to the wildfires, though he said his administration was looking at separate measures to punish the Canadian government for purportedly doing a poor job of managing its forests.

Several studies have found that Trump's tariffs, which he kicked off in April 2025, have cost US businesses and consumers hundreds of billions of dollars, as importers pass most of the increased costs imposed by the tariffs to consumers in the form of higher prices.