President Donald Trump is losing the political battle over his trade war with Canada, according to CNN's Harry Enten.
Enten said Trump has seen a dramatic collapse in trust on tariffs – which he regularly promised to impose – since the 2024 campaign, when voters trusted him over Kamala Harris on tariffs by 22 points. Today, Enten found, his net approval on tariffs has cratered to 30 points underwater — a "52-point switcheroo" among independents alone, who now disapprove of his tariff policy by 60 points.
"Look at this drop," Enten exclaimed.
"It's just one of these shifts that we have seen throughout President Trump's second term, whereby the reality did not meet the perceptions or the hopes beforehand," Enten added. "Americans hate the tariffs and they are taking their anger out on president."
The numbers are similarly bad when voters are asked specifically about new tariffs on Canada, where net support for the tariffs sits 33 points underwater overall, and 44 points underwater among independents — a group he stressed is critical to winning elections. "They hate it even more than the general electorate does," Enten said.
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, who took office in 2025, has a positive net approval rating among Canadians, while Trump's net approval in the U.S. sits 21 points underwater, and Trump has not posted a single net-positive approval rating in any poll since just before "Liberation Day" in 2025, when the tariff wave later struck down by the Supreme Court first took effect.
"He is losing. Mark Carney, on the other hand, north of the border, is winning," Enten said.
That imbalance, Enten argued, explains why trade talks between the two countries have stalled.
"The Canadians know that President Trump is playing from a weak hand, and Mark Carney is playing from a strong hand," he said, "and that is why they have walked away from the table."
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