U.S. President Donald Trump’s latest threat to Canada: A tariff hike over wildfire smoke.
As of July 28, 893 active fires are burning from British Columbia to the Atlantic provinces, affecting over 3.7 million hectares of land and forcing Canadians to flee their homes amid evacuation orders. Individuals who come in contact with wildfire smoke—particularly those with preexisting health conditions—risk respiratory, heart, and eye conditions. The fires’ smoke and pollution have also spread south to the United States, exposing more than 115 million Americans to unhealthy air quality.
Yet, American priorities remain self-serving and distracted. Terming the wildfires a “Canadian” climate incident, U.S. news outlets and politicians have neglected devising genuine, collaborative intervention strategies in favour of counterproductive blame-shifting. The climate effects of global carbon emissions—for which the U.S. holds the largest historic responsibility—do not know borders. These wildfires are not a product of Canadian negligence, but rather a regional symptom of a transnational climate crisis, one that Trump has ignored, denied, and defunded research on throughout his presidency.
For over four decades, Canada and the United States have been bound by the Reciprocal Forest Fire Fighting Arrangement: A bilateral agreement that links the Canadian and U.S. national fire management agencies, allowing both countries to request immediate assistance from each other through a streamlined process. The two nations have historically followed this arrangement, supporting their neighbours in times of need: During the notorious 2023 wildfire crisis in Canada, former U.S. President Joe Biden mobilized 839 personnel to join Canadian firefighting forces, and Canada has consistently sent support to the U.S. during American wildfire incidents, including in 2019, 2020, and 2025.
This year, however, Republican media platforms and politicians undermined the 1982 agreement’s cooperative spirit, recharacterizing the climate incident as a product of Canadian neglect. Conservative news channel FOX Weather repeatedly characterized the wildfires as “invading,” “plaguing,” and “tanking” the United States. Trump declared the fires a product of “willful negligence” and threatened to increase tariffs on Canada as compensation for the damages associated with wildfire pollution. Ohio Senator Bernie Moreno even introduced a bill demanding Trump issue sanctions and revoke visas for Canadian officials who have “failed” to take action to mitigate the wildfires. These are just a few examples of this rhetoric.
Such aggressive rhetoric and threats of sanctions from the United States ignore that the North American wildfire crisis is not the fault of Canadian policymakers to begin with. Wildfires emerge due to the dangerous combination of hot, windy weather, dry vegetation, and an ignition source—primarily lightning. Global warming heightens the risk of these conditions: Hotter atmospheres suck moisture out of soil and dead trees and are linked to a greater frequency of lightning strikes.
Furthermore, the majority of forest fires in Canada occur in remote locations, leaving no feasible road access for fire trucks to combat blazes on the ground. These practical conditions pose major challenges to Canada’s firefighting capacity, as effective fire suppression typically requires response within 30 minutes of the first blaze, virtually impossible in difficult-to-access forestry zones. In fact, Canada would need to bulldoze entire forest ranges if it wished to completely prevent wildfires—which would only undermine the critical role forests play in absorbing climate-warming carbon dioxide.
The United States has only itself to blame. In July 2025, Trump eliminated the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)’s Office of Research and Development, effectively eradicating the United States’ national research portfolio on wildfires. These EPA labs had developed smoke-tracking maps for use by firefighters and local governments, studied when and where to light controlled blazes to reduce wildfire risk, and evaluated how wildfire smoke affects human health, air quality, wildlife habitats, and forest ecosystems. The office also operated one of the world’s only labs specializing in controlled human-exposure studies.
In the office’s absence, the only tangible action the White House has initiated regarding the wildfire crisis is scheduling meetings with Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) president Gianni Infantino to discuss how pollution may affect the 2026 FIFA World Cup Final. Worse than scapegoating Canada for this year’s wildfire season, Trump is outright refusing to institute policy measures to benefit his own affected citizens. Instead, the U.S. president has invested time, effort, and consideration into the notorious, profit-generating soccer tournament—and therefore his own political capital.
The U.S. must recommit itself to a transnational collaborative approach to forest fire prevention—and that starts with calling them North American, not Canadian, wildfires.