Trump’s Tariff War Shows the Difference Between Boldness and Prudence

A prince who slaps a 50 percent tariff on $20 billion in imports from his closest trading partner is not timid. The negotiations between the United States and Canada collapse at the last hour; the next day the prince doubles down and tells Canadian leaders to “fall in line” or face “far WORSE.” This is the language of ultimatums, not of cousins disputing an inheritance. The effectual truth is plain: the ruler of a great republic has chosen to treat a neighbor, long accustomed to equality, as a vassal. When I wrote in *The Prince* that men should seize fortune boldly, I did not mean that they should mistake their friends for their subjects.

In such a move I recognize virtù of a sort: bold, theatrical, willing to incur costs to compel obedience. But virtù without prudence is only temperament. In the old world, a prince threatened punishment only when he had already prepared the instruments to inflict it swiftly and decisively; otherwise he taught his enemies to measure his limits. Here the instruments are tariffs, piled atop earlier tariffs, which have already cost North American automakers something like $110 billion in eighteen months. This is not a single surgical blow that terrifies; it is a grinding siege in which both cities go hungry and begin to hate the general.

In *The Prince*, I compared fortune to a raging river that floods the plains, saying (in W. K. Marriott’s translation) that she shows her power where valour has not prepared to resist her. The United States and Canada built their dykes in calmer times through trade, shared supply chains, and habits of cooperation. The present prince tears at these embankments in order to gain leverage. He may win some concessions; yet he also opens channels through which future storms will run, as when Canada’s prime minister now speaks of preparing for a “fundamental shift” away from reliance on the U.S., which it no longer views as a reliable partner. You can ride the flood for a moment; you cannot command where it runs once you have broken the banks.

The Canadian answer is instructive. Retaliatory tariffs are prepared. Their leader tells his people they will have to “sacrifice” and they appear ready, angered not only by the taxes but by the tone: being called the “51st state,” hearing their prime minister referred to as “governor,” watching a provincial leader mocked as the lesser brother of a dead man. This is no longer a dispute over steel; it is an affront to status. In the *Discourses on Livy*, I argued (with Ninian Hill Thomson translating) that the tumults between the great and the people gave Rome its liberty, because each side, fearing the other, insisted on laws. Here the tumult is between equal republics, and it is driving them not toward better institutions, but toward cold hostility.

A ruler may choose to be feared rather than loved, but he must avoid being hated. I said as much when I wrote that fear rests on the prince’s own power to punish, whereas love depends on the fickle hearts of others. Yet hatred arises when you touch men’s property, their honor, or both. These tariffs do all three: they threaten industries, they rattle workers already anxious ten weeks before elections, and they trample the dignity of a proud neighboring people. The result is that Canadians talk of drinking less American bourbon, taking fewer holidays in the United States, and, more seriously, shifting their energy and trade elsewhere. This is hatred learned in the marketplace and the customs line, which is the hardest kind to uproot.

Inside the prince’s own state the costs appear in another register. Vulnerable candidates in border states now stand in a precarious position: they pay the price of the war without controlling its conduct. This is the classical danger of what I call the “middle course,” which I always despise. The policy is maximalist abroad but improvised at home: no clear compensation to the injured, no durable coalition bound to the new order, only pressure on those closest to Canada to defend what they did not design. Severity, if one uses it, should be concentrated, swift, and then followed by benefits that make people forget. Here severity is extended over eighteen months, with $110 billion in visible losses and no corresponding gain yet placed on the scales.

What arms support this reform of the trading order? In my time, unarmed prophets were devoured. Armed ones succeeded because they had their own militias, revenues, and allies arranged in advance. In this case, the supposed arms were the very interdependence now being shattered and the expectation that Canada would always yield to Washington in the end. But the more Washington speaks as if Canada is a subsidiary, the more Ottawa prepares to decouple, and the more its citizens harden their hearts. The prince leans on spectacle and insult to project strength; his adversary leans on endurance and the slow redirection of commerce. Fortune will decide the balance, but for now I see more dykes being built in Ottawa than in Washington.

Thus I judge this tariff war as a high‑risk gamble conducted with considerable spirit and insufficient architecture. The prince has shown that he does not fear conflict; he has also taught a friendly people to imagine life without him. If fortune smiles, he may extract a face‑saving deal before the midterms and boast of victory. If she does not, he will have weakened his neighbors’ dependence, troubled his own border constituencies, and spent real treasure for an uncertain tale of toughness. In politics, as in war, there is a difference between daring and durability, and power that cannot husband allies is already in decline.