Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana gave a floor speech in the Senate on March 26 about the trade deficit between the U.S. and Canada. This is part of what he said: “In 2024, the United States sold to the people of Canada about $350 billion in goods. Canada sold Canadian goods to the United States in the amount of $412 billion.” He also said, “When you have got your neighboring country … and your neighbor is selling $63 billion more in goods to you than you are selling to them, that seems kind of unfair. And the president, as we all know, has made that point very vociferously.” What neither Sen. Kennedy nor President Donald Trump say, though, is how this trade deficit really came about in the first place.

Most of that trade deficit is because we have shifted to buying oil from Canada and away from the Middle East as a matter of U.S. national security. The question Kennedy and Trump believe they are raising, fairness in trade, isn’t really a question of fairness at all but how much our national security is worth to us.

For 20 years or so, the United States has actively assisted Canada in growing its oil production because U.S. presidents saw an opportunity to shift oil acquisition away from OPEC countries to our more secure and trustworthy partner to the north, Canada. Prior to this shift we received about 15% from Canada, with most of the balance coming from OPEC and Saudi Arabia. Flipping that score is really a sort of national security coup for the U.S. because buying from countries that were known to have supported and funded terrorism is in fact as bad as it now sounds.

Besides our own growth in domestic production we are now supplied by Canada by nearly as much as we used to receive from OPEC. And some of our domestic production is from buying Canadian oil and reselling it for a profit, to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars.

Donald Trump’s trade war with Canada under a tortured idea that Canada is treating us unfairly doesn’t acknowledge the enormous benefit we set up for both countries by giving Canada the assistance needed to expand its oil production. Engaging in a trade war will cost both countries dearly but also force the United States away from secure Canadian oil, back into the arms of OPEC and its Middle Eastern billionaire-supported terror networks. Far from making America great again, Donald Trump is destroying beneficial relationships with allies, enabling unfriendly regimes and driving costs up for everything: a lose, lose, lose proposition.

In 2020, Donald Trump signed a deal with OPEC and Russia to cut oil production by 10%, which increased the cost of oil and gas globally and inflated prices for everything. That’s right, Trump’s oil deal inflated costs for everything that is shipped or transported. His policy helped create the inflation he ran on to win reelection. The deal expired in 2022 and prices began to drop. Trump’s trade war is on a similar path, driving costs and prices up on everything, even our national security.

Donald Trump has cost the United States far too much. If Republicans were true to their oaths they would impeach him, convict him and remove him forever from public office.