In the US, we have a tendency to stamp products as “American-made” and imagine that that product was entirely made within our borders. The truth is that we should be referring to almost everything that we build as “North American-made.” Cars, appliances, machine tools, tractors, toilet paper… the list goes on and on. If we trace their supply chains far enough, what we find is that they almost always run through Canada (and often, Mexico) before arriving at the US plant that gets to put its name on the box. That cross-border web is exactly what lets US manufacturing compete against the rest of the world.
Over the past few weeks, President Trump and other White House officials have looked at that arrangement and said, “we don’t need Canada, they need us.” President Trump called Canada “among the worst nations in the world to deal with” and said that it has been…
