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For the last week, Mark Carney, Donald Trump and Doug Ford have been ramping up the rhetoric, turning a trade spat into a war for political gain. As they collect the political benefits, ordinary Canadians and Americans will pay the price through lost jobs and lower wages.

LILLEY: Trade war theatre helps Carney, Ford and Trump but hurts everyone else Back to video

Let’s get some perspective on a spat our prime minister is describing as a war.

Trump’s new round of tariffs is wrong. They are economically harmful, but they do not amount to a declaration of war, trade war or otherwise.

Canada and the United States trade about $2.6 billion USD in goods and services each day. The new Trump tariffs apply to about $20 billion USD of Canadian exports, roughly 7.6 days’ worth of trade.

It’s just 5% of our total exports to the United States.

That’s insulting, it’s infuriating, but it’s not a war.

Yet war is how our prime minister described this when he responded to the collapse of trade talks last weekend.

“You’re at war when you get attacked, we got attacked,” Carney said last........

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