U.S. tariffs go easy on Alberta. That lets separatists go harder on Canada

Several factors have triggered concern in some corners of the country about the role the United States may play in Alberta’s upcoming referendum on separation. They range from a Trump cabinet secretary’s remarks, to administration meetings with separatists, to the spectre of U.S.-based foreign influence campaigns.

But what if the biggest lift Washington gave to the independence movement was done in plain sight and through official policy channels, even though it was likely inadvertent and an indirect boost?

We’re talking about tariffs — or, namely the lack of them against the province now eyeing a divorce with Canada.

The economy-rattling trade penalties have bound many Canadians together against a perceived common external menace. But because Alberta’s industries are largely unaffected by the tariffs that are hitting other regions hard, separatists have perhaps been able to harness public frustrations against an internal foe, rather than a foreign one.

Let’s unpack this.

When U.S. President Donald Trump initially threatened and applied various duties on virtually everything the United States imported last year, one of his first broad exemptions was on oil and gas products that comply with the North America trade agreement, as most do.

That benefited U.S. refiners that rely on Canadian crude, and forestalled the sort of fuel price shock Washington was averse to (before Trump’s Iranian incursion).

But this also brought huge relief to the trading neighbour next door, given that oil is by far Canada’s largest U.S. export. Of course, nowhere would a major tariff shock to oil be felt more than Alberta, the key oil-producing province.

The second-largest export industry in Alberta? It’s agriculture, which was also exempted from tariffs.

While Alberta’s trade economy has proceeded largely footloose and tariff-free, that isn’t the case elsewhere in Canada.

Consider key industries in other big provinces: Quebec aluminum, Ontario steel and automobiles, British Columbia lumber.

“Despite Canada as a whole facing tariff pressures, the challenges are fairly different depending on the region,” said Salim Zanzana, an economist with RBC Economics.

His team has laid out how large those disparities are. The effective tariff rate being paid by Alberta is close to zero, compared to a rate 18 times larger in Ontario and 23 times larger in Quebec.

Trade policy experts Carlo Dade and Sharon Zhengyang Sun recently co-authored a paper highlighting the differing impacts of Trump’s tariff regime around Canada. The paper, for the New North America Initiative at the University of Calgary School of Public Policy, notes that Alberta’s gross domestic product is the most reliant on U.S. exports, but has among the least exposure to sectoral tariffs.

Tariffs in Alberta, particularly on lumber, still affect about $1 billion of provincial exports, an impact likely most felt in specific parts of the province, the report notes.

But the blast zone is wider and deeper elsewhere in Canada.

“That has Ontario rightly running scared and that puts forward the larger question for the challenge to the federation,” Dade said.

While other premiers have ventured south of the border to decry the mutual detriments of tariffs, Alberta Premier Danielle Smith has been in a position to argue for stronger trade ties and market expansions.

She sat for a podcast interview in September with U.S. Ambassador Pete Hoekstra. Last week she urged others not to “panic and freak out with ads and overwrought commentary” in response to Trump’s periodic threats — which might be easier for a premier to do when large swaths of their jurisdiction’s key factories have not been imperiled when Trump makes good on some of his threats.

While most provinces have continued to block U.S. liquor sales, Alberta lifted its ban back in June 2025. It was joined only by Saskatchewan, whose major potash sector was also exempted from U.S. tariffs.

Alberta’s more relaxed attitude toward the United States extends beyond public policy.

While Canadian travel to the U.S. has taken a major hit since the tariff threat began last year, that drop isn’t universal. It hasn’t been nearly as much of a phenomenon at Calgary’s largest airport.

The number of Canadians travelling back to Calgary International Airport from the U.S. in May was down by 8.2 per cent compared to where it was in May 2024, before Trump’s presidency. At other major Canadian airports, the figure was down 30 per cent or more.

Put together, Albertans have less urgency for sudden Canadian unity in the age of “51st state” rhetoric.

And that’s where agents of Canadian disunity can step in.

Without much of a threat to defend against from outside Canada, that may have freed up Albertans’ frustrations to be channeled within Canada, toward a generations-old target for their ire.

Premier Smith has more routinely bemoaned federal policies than U.S. ones, although she maintains she’s a federalist. The separatists take it even farther, questioning the purpose of Canada altogether.

Jeffrey Rath, one of the most prominent separatist leaders, has routinely adulated Donald Trump and berated Prime Minister Mark Carney in the same social media posts.

And consider this exchange captured on video last week at a park outside Edmonton, where Derek Smith, who hosts the pro-independence podcast Unacceptable Fringe, was handing out separatist lawn signs.

He and a man from the nearby village of Onoway got into a discussion about Trump.

“What has he done that bad that everybody hates him so bad?” the visitor said.

“He says it like it is and people don’t like it and it’s too bad,” Smith replied. “I wish we had somebody like him running our country. We’d have jobs.”

Would they be wondering why Canadians dislike Trump if they were living in a different province, where they might know people hurt by shuttered truck assembly lines, or unsure how long subsidies can keep them going at the aluminum smelter?