Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) issued a stark warning Friday that President Donald Trump’s “tantrum” over his trade talks with Canada will end up backfiring and end up destroying domestic manufacturing, the supposed impetus for Trump’s trade policy to begin with.
Thursday night, Trump announced that he would be ending trade talks with Canada after a Canadian province paid for an advertisement criticizing Trump’s trade policy, and using the words of former President Ronald Reagan. Trump resumed his tirade against Canada Friday morning, accusing the nation of “trying to illegally influence” an impending Supreme Court case that will decide Trump’s authority to issue sweeping tariffs.
“Trump's tantrum ending negotiations with Canada hurts us to be a manufacturing superpower,” Khanna wrote Friday in a social media post on X.
“When China holds the world hostage with rare earths, we must work with Canada on a Manhattan Project to process them. But Trump is destroying our alliance without gaining U.S. jobs. Trump's policies have not led to significant new steel jobs. No nation builds industry with tariffs alone.”
Khanna went on to argue that abruptly ending trade talks with Canada – the largest supplier of iron and steel to the United States for decades – would weaken the United States’ leverage in its ongoing negotiations with China, the dominant global supplier of rare earth materials.
“Instead of doing the hard work of creating a national industrial bank that [Secretary of State] Marco Rubio and [Vice President] JD Vance supported before joining the Admin to build steel and aluminum here, Trump is picking performative fights with [Canadian Prime Minister Mark] Carney that is not doing a single thing to help us lead against China,” Khanna wrote.
Trade between the United States and China has been a central focus of Trump’s trade policy, with both nations repeatedly imposing retaliatory tariffs on one another. Earlier this month, Trump set a Nov. 1 deadline for the placement of an additional 100% tariff on the nation in retaliation for China restricting exports of certain raw materials.
Trump is scheduled to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping this weekend during a summit in Malaysia in what will be the fifth round of trade talks between the two nations.
(Thread) Trump's tantrum ending negotiations with Canada hurts us to be a manufacturing superpower. When China holds the world hostage with rare earths, we must work with Canada on a Manhattan Project to process them. But Trump is destroying our alliance without gaining US jobs. https://t.co/3loQQ4gWHJ
— Ro Khanna (@RoKhanna) October 24, 2025