US commerce chief says Trump to meet Canada, Mexico in middle on tariffs

We can't really afford to do that. I'm not actually convinced we should respond with tariffs because it will hurt us more. They certainly shouldn't be our only or primary tactic. We will have the double whammy of less exports giving less money coming in and less jobs (because of US tariffs), and more expensive imports that we rely on but can't afford (because of our tariffs). Trump is trying to wreck our economy and adding tariffs on US products won't help us prevent that. Our tariffs are meant to be punitive, to get Trump to back down, and I'm not convinced they will succeed in that. He's going to war to destroy Canada and he's willing to sacrifice poor Americans to win that war. We can't survive a tariff-to-tariff boxing match, just as much as we couldn't possibly survive a toe-to-toe fight. We need to be creative and think guerilla (trade-) warfare.

We need to find specific ways to make it painful for rich Americans while not making it worse for the majority of Canadians. We need to move manufacturing back to Canada and we need to find new trade partners and repair old deals, and improve trade internally. Some of that will take time and it still won't remove our need to import from the US, but it will give us a better long term outlook.

The middle ground for Russia is throwing your problems out a window. Maybe Canada and Mexico should give that a try?