The simple truth is that Mexico and Canada need the U.S. far more than the U.S. needs either of them. Mexico sends some 84 percent of its exports to American markets, while only 14.5 percent of U.S. exports go to Mexico. Canada relies on the U.S. to buy 77 percent of its exported goods, but just 17 percent of U.S. exports travel north. The disparity is so severe that, according to a KPMG survey taken over the weekend, 48 percent of Canadian manufacturers plan to invest in production facilities in the U.S. specifically to make their wares without then having to export them across the border to their primary market.

In both cases, moreover, the U.S. has readily available domestic sources of just about every commodity that it imports from its poorer and economically dependent neighbors, while both Mexico and Canada have few alternate suppliers of American goods, whether agricultural or industrial. In a “dollar-for-dollar” trade war with its neighbors, U.S. consumers can easily “buy American,” while Canadians would suffer the deprivation of “forgoing Florida orange juice altogether,” as Trudeau laughably told his countrymen on Saturday.

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