The National Post reports in its Friday edition that President Donald Trump's trade war with Canada was based on the idea that the larger U.S. economy could impose favourable terms on its smaller, dependent neighbour. The Post's Tristan Hopper writes that the Canadian economy, however, proved more resilient to U.S. tariffs than expected. Now, with tariffs impacting key Senate races in U.S. border states, the Trump administration is backing down on some trade barriers against Canada. Add it all together and, according to an analysis published Wednesday by the U.S.-based Council on Foreign Relations, Canada is where Mr. Trump's "hardball" approach to trade has gone sideways the most. Mr. Trump's White House confused "economic size with bargaining leverage," it says. As a result, the U.S. is now "mired in a losing trade war with its economically much smaller and militarily much weaker neighbour to the north." It adds, "Given such complex relationships, there are sharp limits to how far any U.S. administration can push Canada around." The first cracks seem to be emerging from the U.S. side. Canada is the only country other than China to have responded to a Trump trade war with countertariffs.