This week, the U.S. escalated its illegal trade war with Canada by banning entire product categories. But how big a deal will it actually be?

Glorious Leader Chairman Trump is banning most Canadian alcohol, some whey product, molasses, and motorcycles from crossing the border. It sounds serious. But for most of these, it's not.

Let's start with motorcycles. Canada exported just over 5,000 motorcycles of any kind last year. Not 5,000 to the U.S. 5,000 anywhere on Earth. Basically the seating capacity of a mid-size hockey rink. Almost all of them are made in Quebec, and we won't really even see the impact of this until fiscal 2028, since most motorcycles for this season have been made.

Whey protein, the stuff lookmaxxers scoop into shakes, same story. Americans import about 73 million dollars of it, and we supply about half of that. But the specific whey products that are going to be banned are, according to trade data, a fraction of that.

Molasses exports are about one million dollars, most in B.C. and Alberta.

The alcohol bans, though, will have an impact. Canada makes about two billion dollars' worth of spirits a year, and a little more than half of that goes to the U.S. Add in other kinds of alcohol, and it's about 1.2B we ship south. That's not nothing.

So if Trump is trying to send a message, why would he pick such random things? Because he's not trying to send a message up north. It's a tweet he can make his base get all "USA! USA!" over.

A senior Scotiabank economist told the CBC the reasons for the bans aren't about effective trade policy; they're about "face-saving."

There is one thing that gets glossed over in all the angry Facebook posts about this. The bigger deal isn't the import bans; it's the fact there are bans at all. That's an escalation that's hard to back down from. With tariffs, there's wiggle room, right? It's a number. You can move that number around. A binary "all or nothing" is, well, dumb. Terrible negotiating strategy. Hardly the Art of the Deal.

So what's going to happen? This is so easy to predict, it's almost comical.

Distilleries will put their energies on overseas markets. They'll sign partnership agreements there. They'll get a new supply chain. And when the circus down south leaves town, that stuff doesn't just snap back. Raw production ingredients won't be bought from American providers anymore. Hops will come from Germany. The molasses used by distilleries: Guatemala.

We will do what we've been doing since the U.S. started this shit: we will cut them out of the loop.

As for the financial hit to these Canadian producers in the meantime, you might think, "Well, Canadians will pick up the slack and buy a bunch of it from all over the country." And that's harder than you think, because of some strange history.

Prohibition ended at different times in different provinces, and smugglers took advantage. So the provinces asked Parliament to pass a law giving each province's liquor board the only right to bring alcohol in, even from the next province over. Carrying a bottle across a provincial border as recently as 2012 was technically illegal.

Ottawa relaxed the rules for personal use in the few years following, but provinces still control sales, because provinces make money from it.

In July, nine provinces signed a deal to change that, but the rollout is staggered.

We've seen this play before. There'll be some scary headlines online over the next few days, amplified by politicians. But remember: headlines are written to get clicks, and sometimes the bark is much worse than the bite.

This country has always been at its best when someone tried to push it around.

So tomorrow, if you drink, buy some. Pretty much any wine from B.C. is world-class. Or if you're in Quebec, try Cardinal beer; it's partly owned by my brother. Alberta has the world's best rye whiskey. More ice wine comes from Ontario than anywhere else in the world. And I assume PEI makes booze out of fermented potatoes; those people would build houses out of potatoes if we let them.

And our friends around the world, thanks for still having our back. If you're our BFFs Australia and New Zealand… you guys drink, right? Ask the restaurant if they've got anything Canadian. That goes for all our friends around the world. Thanks for having our back.

It doesn't matter what the American government throws our way. Because once again they have fundamentally misunderstood the Canadian spirit. We will get through this the way we get through winter. Together, a little cold, but still standing when the snow melts.

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