Trade threats from Canada? U.S. Democrats are busy fighting their own internal battles

Here's a blunt reply from one U.S. senator when asked about an extraordinary threat-filled letter from the Canadian government.

"I don't care," Sherrod Brown, a Democrat from Ohio, told CBC News on his way into the Senate chamber on Wednesday.

Canada's letter threatened to apply tariffs and suspend bits of the USMCA trade deal if U.S. lawmakers press ahead with a tax credit that subsidizes electric vehicles assembled in the U.S.

Fearing the plan could kill assembly plants in Canada, Ottawa calls it discriminatory and a violation of international trade agreements — and at least some analysts agree.

When asked about the letter, Brown motioned to the chamber a few steps ahead of him and said what he cares about is undoing past trade policies enacted by the Senate.

"I don't care about other countries being upset," he repeated. "Other countries were really happy — China and American corporations were really happy — when that body continued to outsource jobs. And we're finally starting to fix it." 

"So I don't really care what Canada thinks. I care about the effect on American workers."

Brown's reaction is an example of the shifting political winds in Washington, and its cooler attitude toward trade. 

He's one of the more protectionist U.S. lawmakers, an industrial-belt Democrat from a traditional swing state, and his attitude is ascendant within the current Congress and its "Buy American" bonanza.

But Washington's eyes aren't on Brown this week.

They're on another senator threatening not just the electric-vehicle credit but everything Democrats want to achieve in this rare moment, when they control Congress and the White House. 

WATCH | Tension over tax break:

As Canada is threatening U.S. Democrats with a trade war, U.S. Democrats are busy fighting internally. At the epicentre of that intra-party power struggle? West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin.

It seems likely to last a while — certainly into 2022.