The Roll Up: October 28, 2025 

TL;DR:  No one would have predicted that one of the major targets of Donald Trump's attacks in his second term would be our neighbor to the north, Canada. Trump fired the first shots early in his term and hasn't let up, with new tariffs announced this past weekend in response to a World Series TV ad featuring Ronald Reagan speaking against tariffs. Here's what we know:

The latest volley in Trump's war with Canada comes from what should be the friendliest of international events--the World Series. As the Los Angeles Dodgers face off against the Toronto Blue Jays, the event lives up to its name (sort of) as an event to crown Major League Baseball's "global" champion. In reality, the league only covers two countries in North America, and Toronto is the only team north of the border since the Montreal Expos became the Washington Nationals 20 years ago. Still, this event seems to have generated some unsportsmanlike conduct as Trump hiked tariffs on Canadian goods another 10 percent over the weekend in response to a World Series TV ad featuring archival footage of Ronald Reagan speaking against tariffs. The move followed the suspension of U.S. trade talks with Canada earlier in the week.

Social media mentions of Canada tend to operate more at the background noise level most of the time--the nation just hasn't traditionally generated much for American social media users to talk about. But the past eight months have been a different matter. Using Rolli IQ social media intelligence, it's possible to see how much engagement posts about Canada have grown during the second Trump administration and the increasingly negative nature of those posts and engagements.

First, a look at the baseline level of Canadian topics on social media, measured between March 1 and October 27, 2024. Mentions and engagement are relatively low, compared to other international topics of the time period. Sentiment is mixed, with nearly half the posts neutral about the relationship, while about a third are negative and about a sixth are positive. Rolli IQ tells us the subject matter is all over the place, from medical bankruptcies to attacks on Catholic churches to solar eclipses and fashion rankings.

Rolli IQ Sentiment Summary for "Canada" and "United States" Mar. 1-Oct. 27, 2024

Looking at the same time period in 2025, the picture begins to change. This time period was chosen because the beginning of March 2025 was when Donald Trump began talking openly about making Canada the "51st state" and putting up some trade barriers. In 2025, the volume of total mentions jumps more than 300 percent, while engagement is up by more than 45 percent. The nature of the conversation has changed, too, with fewer neutral posts and more positive and negative comments. Rather than being all over the map, many more comments are focused specifically on the relationship between the two countries, negative sentiments due to trade disputes and political disagreements.

Rolli IQ Sentiment Summary for "Canada" and "United States" Mar. 1-Oct. 27, 2025

If we focus the Rolli IQ analysis even further, searching specifically about trade with Canada, the difference become even more stark year to year. In 2024--during a presidential election year--talk of trade with Canada is barely registering on social media. Rolli IQ's analysis shows it largely irrelevant, in this case meaning trade talk is a side issue to other topics online. The negative posts are largely from Canadians about Canada's internal economic woes and its trade policy with partners around the world.

Rolli IQ Sentiment Summary for "Canada" and "trade" Mar. 1-Oct. 27, 2024

For the same period in 2025, Trump's talk and then use of tariffs against Canada changed the nature of the conversation. Not only are posts and engagement up between seven- and 17-fold, we also see a large upward swing in negative mentions and engagements, due almost entirely to frustration over the initial tariffs and, of late, of more tariffs due to the Reagan TV ad. Some voices are positive in support of the tariffs and Trump's continuing approach to Canadian imports, but the overwhelmingly negative response on both sides of the border yields the smaller percentage of positive posts.

Rolli IQ Sentiment Summary for "Canada" and "trade" Mar. 1-Oct. 27, 2025

Drilling down to the individual user level using Rolli IQ's Topic Tree, we can also see the sharp change in the subject matter and posts users are making. In 2024, trade discussions focused on a wide variety of topics, such as the need for Canada to enforce its trade policies. This is policy wonk level discussion, including former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau weighing in on the matter.

Rolli IQ Topic Tree excerpt for "Canada" and "trade" 2024

The telling difference a year later is evident in another Rolli IQ Topic Tree analysis. Now the conversation has turned from general policy discussions to specifics about the trade negotiations between the U.S. and Canada. The excerpt below shows much more partisan and rancorous posts, in many cases calling out the other side.

Rolli IQ Topic Tree excerpt for "Canada" and "trade" 2025

The difference between the years is also obvious if we look at the international scope and nature of comments, using Rolli IQ's Emotion Map feature. Note the large number of originating countries on the 2024 posts, featuring many nations other than the United States and Canada. There's also a difference in the nature of comments, with the question mark denoting those so-called "irrelevant" comments, labeled so because the include topics far beyond just trade. 

Rolli IQ Emotion Map for "Canada" and "trade" 2024

But looking at the same topic in Emotion Map from for 2025, we see that most of the other countries commenting before are now gone, and that the nature of the posts and engagement has turned almost entirely negative, with many U.S. posters criticizing Canada while most Canadian users criticize Trump and U.S. policy.

Rolli IQ Emotion Map for "Canada" and "trade" 2025

The bottom line is that the analysis using Rolli IQ to look at social media posts about Canada and, more specifically, trade with Canada, shows a huge difference in the nature and attitude of posts between 2024 and 2025. Much of this change coincides with Donald Trump's many calls to annex Canada, put tariffs on its imports and retaliate against a World Series ad using Ronald Reagan's own words to criticize Trump's tariffs.