President Donald Trump calls tariffs a “beautiful thing” and the road back to the United States’ economic glory days. While he’s held that position for decades, we discovered how tariffs against Canada fit into an agenda that appears to be guiding Trump’s early days in office. You might have heard of “Project 2025,” a 900-plus-page document on how to expand presidential power and impose a “social vision” in the United States. Trump’s executive orders — from eliminating diversity initiatives and denying transgender identity to dismantling federal agencies — echo positions in the document. Many of Project 2025’s key authors were in Trump’s inner circle during his first term and are there again now, including Trump’s trade adviser, Peter Navarro. Navarro is a staunch loyalist who promotes baseless claims that election fraud cost Trump a win in 2020. He is also all for stiff tariffs to restore the country’s economic self-reliance, even as a chorus of experts warn this could lead to job losses and higher prices for Americans and Canadians alike. Jeff Ferry, the former chief economist of the Coalition for a Prosperous America, one of the conservative think-tanks that contributed to Project 2025, acknowledges he’s an outlier. Ferry’s mantra echoes Trump’s: that free trade has gutted the United States' manufacturing core, leaving generations of disaffected Americans on their couches playing video games. He has more to say about Canada, too. The logic brushes past the complex interdependence of global economies but the nationalist message behind it does fit into Project 2025. Tariff threats may play well with Trump’s MAGA base, but will they actually improve the lives of the “little guy” Trump claims to defend? Watch "The Second Term: Project 2025" now on YouTube or tonight at 9 p.m. on CBC-TV and CBC Gem. Ioanna Roumeliotis, Co-host, The Fifth Estate | 
