Trump's trade war with Canada could rattle economies in states with key Senate races

PORTLAND, Maine (AP) — President Donald Trump’s trade war with Canada is escalating as the midterm elections approach, threatening Republican efforts to address voters' economic concerns in a year when control of the U.S. Senate hinges on states along the border between the United States and its northern neighbor.

The dispute flared over the weekend after negotiations broke down, leading Trump to raise tariffs on $20 billion in Canadian imports. Canada plans to announce tariffs of its own on Tuesday, and the spiraling conflict could lead to higher prices and scrambled supply chains for Americans already aggravated at the president’s management of the economy.

Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, one of Democrats' top targets this year, warned that fallout from Trump's approach would hurt U.S. businesses and consumers.

“Imposing new tariffs on Canada is a mistake,” Collins said while campaigning Monday, and she mentioned lobsters, blueberries, lumber and other Maine products that end up in Canadian markets.

The issue also puts pressure on Republicans in Michigan, Ohio and Alaska, states where Canada is an important trading partner. Many Democrats seem eager to capitalize on the matter as they try to regain the Senate majority, despite the party's own history with protectionist sentiments.

“Trump is escalating a trade war with Canada for his own vanity,” Michigan's Democratic nominee Abdul El-Sayed said on social media, adding that his Republican opponent, former Rep. Mike Rogers, is a “rubber stamp” for such policies. A third of the state's exports go north of the border.

Marc Short, a top adviser to then-Vice President Mike Pence during the first Trump presidency, said the issue is a political trap for Republicans.

“It’s hard, obviously, because you don’t want to incur the wrath of the president," he said. “But at the same time, I think if you’re representing agricultural states, especially, your voters are probably anxious to have somebody representing their interests in Washington right now.”

It's possible that Trump will change course or delay his plans. But for now, the president is making no apologies for the economic turmoil.

“Canada has been ripping off the United States for years,” Trump blasted on his Truth Social platform Monday, adding that he will raise tariffs on all Canadian automobiles and auto parts and steel to 50% in 2027. He added, “WE DON’T NEED CANADA, THEY NEED US!”

Trump's top trade official more calmly downplayed the dispute. “This is something where we don’t actually expect a huge impact,” U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer told reporters outside the West Wing.

Vice President JD Vance visited Maine on Monday, where he praised “our very independent friend Susan Collins” and assured voters “we’re very mindful of the fact that Maine is a border state with Canada.” He said the administration is trying to make sure Maine “gets a fair deal.”

Collins did not appear with Vance on Monday or during his last trip to Maine. She campaigned on her own as she tries to hold off a challenge from Democratic nominee Troy Jackson, a former state legislative leader.

Jackson, a logger before going into politics, said tariffs are another example of how Collins does not do enough to stand up to the president.

“Troy spent most of his life working along the Canadian border, so he knows how important this relationship is to Maine’s economy,” Jackson spokesman Dan Gottlieb said.

Trump made no secret of his affection for tariffs during his comeback campaign, promising that higher taxes on imports would generate a windfall for the U.S. Treasury and boost domestic manufacturing. But concerns about inflation and affordability have not receded, including in states with key races this year.

Maine, Ohio, Michigan and Alaska boast industries including fisheries, auto parts, lumber and produce that export items across the northern border, while Canadian imports are sold by a range of U.S. retailers.

Iowa, which also has a competitive Senate race, does not border Canada or its waters, but also exports more goods to Canada than any other nation.

Majority Forward, a political action committee tied to Senate Democrats, already ran television advertisements against Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan of Alaska during last year's partial government shutdown.

“The tariffs are hitting Alaska the hardest,” the ad said. “Call Dan Sullivan and tell him … stop raising our costs.”

Former Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown is trying to return to Washington by unseating Republican Sen. Jon Husted. Brown has long been a union-friendly protectionist Democrat. But he’s argued against Trump’s approach, saying it’s one thing to get aggressive with an adversarial economic powerhouse like China but another to impose uneven, unpredictable tariffs on neighboring nations.

Husted signed a bipartisan letter earlier this year urging the administration to proceed carefully while renegotiating a trade agreement with Canada and Mexico. But he's also embraced the White House's economic policies, recently appearing with Vance at an Ohio steel plant to praise the administration's economic agenda.

“Today is a new day, it truly is," Husted said. "It’s a new day because of the ‘America First’ agenda.”

Brown has not yet criticized Husted on Canadian tariffs, concentrating instead on the senator's support for data centers and Trump’s war with Iran. But Senate Majority PAC spokeswoman Lauren French said the Canada tariffs fight fits seamlessly into the broader case that Brown and other Democrats are making about Trump and his allies.

“It’s another proof point for the argument that this is a guy who continues to raise your costs for no reason at all,” she said.

Short said Trump's first-term protectionism was easier to defend because it was more focused on China. In the second Trump presidency, Short said, “we’ve so alienated our normal trading partners that part of their retaliation has been not to buy agricultural products,” thus cutting off replacement markets for any lost trade with Beijing.

In Maine, Vance insisted Trump only wants to level the playing field with Canada.

“They don’t expect anybody to fight back,” Vance said. “We’re sick of that.”

He also criticized Canada as treating China more fairly than the U.S. in trade negotiations.

“It’s over,” Vance said. “We expect fairness in our trade policy.”

Collins shared a different goal.

“I really want us to go back to the very friendly, economically beneficial relationship that we have with our Canadian neighbors," she said.

U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer speaks to reporters outside the White House, Monday, Aug. 24, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)

Sen. Jon Husted, R-Ohio, speaks ahead of Vice President JD Vance's speech at the Cleveland Cliffs Middletown Works, Friday, Aug. 21, 2026, in Middletown, Ohio. (AP Photo/Jon Cherry)

FILE -Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, responds to reporters at the Capitol in Washington, July 14, 2026. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File)

President Donald Trump speaks with Nebraska Gov. Jim Pillen after a back to school event in the Rose Garden of the White House, Monday, Aug. 24, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Californians are spotting swarms of dragonflies flitting around parks, chasing mosquitoes in ponds and hunting flies on farms, a phenomenon experts say was likely fueled by unusually warm spring rains.

Peter Veilleux, who owns a nursery in Oakland, said he started noticing the dragonflies — at one point spotting about 100 flying together — while walking his dog at a park near his house and around the city’s Lake Merritt.

“It’s been amazing to see them,” Veilleux said, adding that he started seeing big groups of dragonflies in July.

He was so awed by the sight that he posted about it on Facebook, asking if anyone else was seeing the formidable predators in such large numbers. Dozens of people commented about their own sightings in the San Francisco Bay Area and elsewhere in California.

It is common to see dragonflies during the summer months, when they emerge from freshwater as flying insects. But this year’s large numbers are probably due to the warm monsoon storms that came through the state in late spring and early summer, said Kathy Biggs, a dragonfly expert and co-author of the book “Dragonflies of California.”

She said most are likely wandering gliders, a highly migratory dragonfly that can appear in large numbers when conditions line up. Dragonflies, which can fly at speeds of up to 35 mph (56 kph), use air pressure changes to help them fly great distances, Biggs said.

“We could say that they’re surfing the pressure system, the monsoon,” she added.

Joe Del Bosque said he noticed swarms of them earlier this month at his farm in Fresno County, flying 10 to 20 feet (3 to 6 meters) above him.

“We do have them every year, but we had more than normal,” he said.

Del Bosque said he was happy to see the flying hunters because they eat aphids, whiteflies and fruit flies that feed on his crops. The insects, along with ladybugs working on the plants, are excellent pest control because they eat tiny insects on the plants and larger winged ones, like adult aphids and moths, he said.

“They are like little fighter jets,” Del Bosque said. “They zoom in for other insects and capture them in the air.”

Dragonflies spend most of their lives wingless and underwater. Their life cycle begins after female and male dragonflies mate and the female dragonfly lays tiny eggs in freshwater. After the eggs hatch, the young dragonflies, called nymphs, live underwater for at least six months and for up to five years for some species. They start hunting then and feed on mosquito larvae, tadpoles, and even other nymphs.

Once they emerge from the water, they shed their skin and transform into four-winged insects that can move their forewings and hindwings independently. This allows them to fly forward, backward, up and down, and hover perfectly in place.

But their life as flying animals is short, lasting a few weeks or months. They spend it looking for new lakes, rivers and ponds, preying on tiny insects and attempting to repeat the cycle of life.

“They’re super agile, super strong flying insects with really good vision, really good eyes, and really strong flight muscles, and they are voracious predators that are out there feeding on mosquitoes nonstop,” said Chris Grinter, senior collection manager of entomology at the California Academy of Science in San Francisco.

Grinter said dragonflies are among the most effective predators in nature, with more than 90% of their hunts ending successfully.

“They can eat hundreds of mosquitoes a single day,” he said.

Dragonflies have awed humans for thousands of years. To Native Americans, a dragonfly is a symbol of purity and happiness. In Japan, they symbolize power, agility and victory. In some European folklore, they were considered to represent evil or bad luck.

To attract them to your garden, Biggs recommends avoiding pesticides and building fishless ponds and sunny areas with perches.

There are about 70 dragonfly species in California, but most are not migratory and remain near where they emerged, Biggs said.

Some of them might be out the very first thing in the spring, even as the snow is melting, and some of them are out in the Mojave Desert in the driest, hottest places in California, Grinter said.

Biggs said the migratory species keep moving on, ‘surfing’ high-pressure systems in the air.

“They could be somewhere a few days and then leave,” she said.

A dragonfly rests on a plant at the Lake Merritt Dragonfly Habitat Garden in Oakland, Calif., Friday, Aug. 21, 2026. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)

A dragonfly rests on a plant at the Lake Merritt Dragonfly Habitat Garden in Oakland, Calif., Friday, Aug. 21, 2026. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)

A dragonfly rests on a plant at the Lake Merritt Dragonfly Habitat Garden in Oakland, Calif., Friday, Aug. 21, 2026. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)

A dragonfly rests on a plant at the Lake Merritt Dragonfly Habitat Garden in Oakland, Calif., Friday, Aug. 21, 2026. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)

A dragonfly rests on a plant at the Lake Merritt Dragonfly Habitat Garden in Oakland, Calif., Friday, Aug. 21, 2026. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)