Virginia exported $2.9 billion in goods to Canada, our single-largest export market, in 2025.
The wide-scale Trump tariffs hit us pretty hard last year – our ag and forestry sectors lost a whopping 10 percent of their overall international sales in 2025.
And now, the president is initiating another trade war, with our biggest trade partner.
With trade talks breaking down late last week, Donald Trump unliterally enacted 50 percent tariffs on $20 billion worth of Canadian goods.
Canada, for its part, is preparing to retaliate with “dollar-for-dollar” tariffs starting on Sept. 8, Prime Minister Mark Carney announced over the weekend.
Note: there were no trade issues between the U.S. and Canada before Trump conjured them up out of the thin air.
“Virginia’s small businesses — whether in retail, manufacturing or hospitality — operate on thin margins and have very little capacity to absorb sustained cost increases from tariffs on imported goods,” Gov. Abigail Spanberger wrote in a letter to Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins that the governor’s office made public on Monday.
In a separate letter to U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer, Spanberger warned that “continuing down this path will have devastating consequences for Virginia and states across the country.”
“Virginia’s relationship with Canada is not an abstraction. Canada represents the largest single destination for Virginia’s exports. This crucial economic partnership took decades of trade policy continuity to build. I urge you to treat the stability of that relationship as a priority,” Spanberger wrote in the second letter.
For those keeping score, our Sixth District congressman, Ben Cline, has not commented publicly on the new Trump tariffs on Canada.
Cline’s focus today on his socials seems to be on attacking Gov. Spanberger on immigration and fluffing House Speaker Mike Johnson for Johnson’s separate attacks on Spanberger.
Did I miss something, and Spanberger is on the ballot in November somewhere?
Anyway, nothing about Canada from Cline; nor has Cline addressed yet the Trump beef imports deal that has farmers in the Sixth District riled up.
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Chris Graham
