the united states may have the ability to react to steep export taxes, but that shouldn't be a reason to avod enacting them. high export taxes is a less aggressive response than cutting exports. historians will tell you that denying empires from accessing resources has resulted in invasions and conquests. empires will fight wars to secure access to resources. but, i know of no example of an empire launching a war to cut taxes or reduce the price of imports. the americans should be reminded of that when they complain.
there is a good argument to make that the united states owes canada quite a lot of money in backpayments due to the discount on oil we've been giving it for the last 40 years.
nonetheless, i can acknowledge that there's reason to be incremental about this. i'm not an incrementalist, i'm a radical revolutionary leftist. i don't want to see small changes, i want to burn the system down. i do not naturally lean towards incrementalist policies. so, i wouldn't think in that kind of conservative way. i can make a moderate exception here, with caveats.
step one should be to ensure the americans are paying market prices for oil, aluminum, potash, uranium, electricity and other items crossing the border. let the export taxes be the next round. let this round be the imposition of market rates, as a consequence of abandoning the trade deal.
alberta is likely to complain, and the argument they use is atrocious. they will claim they don't have control over "their own" resources. what does that mean?
when alberta entered confederation in 1905, it did so under different conditions than the eastern provinces, in 1867. there is a section of the 1867 constitution act that determines jurisdiction over resources in the maritimes, ontario and quebec. but, control over resources in the prairies actually belonged to the indigenous groups, under the numbered treaties that were signed between 1871-1899. when alberta joined confederation in 1905, it had no control over resources at all, and the 1867 constitution was not applicable to them. rather, the numbered treaties were the legal documents that determined who had control over what, and most of the control fell to the indigenous populations, not to the colonial power. at the time, the indigenous population was drastically larger than the colonial population, which was mostly actually american settlers moving north back to the british empire. by the turn of the century (1900), the colonial government had largely given up on trying to convert the indigenous groups into farmers (which they fiercely resisted) and the canadian government subsequently put a lot of effort into getting people from northern europe - scandinavians, finns, scots, poles, balts, ukrainians, russians - to settle in the prairies and develop the land.
the situation from 1905-1930 was that the federal government took control of the resources, but only in it's position as the steward of the indigenous groups. that is, ottawa adopted a kind of fiduciary responsibility to oversee development on behalf of the indigenous groups. but these treaties rarely transferred outright ownership, and control was still legally in the hands of the indigenous groups.
this was altered by a manouvre undertaken by the british crown in 1930 to "extinguish" the treaties and place alberta under the 1867 constitution act. a subsequent large amendment to the constitution took place in 1930, which resulted in control of the resources being transferred from the indigenous groups to the prairie provinces and the federal government taking a step back. indigenous groups were not consulted and were ignored when they protested.
so, what does it mean for alberta to bitch and complain about not controlling it's resources? it illegally stole that control from the indigenous groups, when the federal government failed in it's fiduciary responsibility to administer them on their behalf. in fact, this historical wrong should be corrected and control of these natural resources should be transferred back to the crown. the 1930 transfer acts should be repealed.
the elder trudeau, to his credit, tried to correct this historical wrong, but alberta had a hissy fit and told the "eastern bastards" to "freeze in the dark". alberta, still populated mostly by americans at the time, decided it would rather sell to the us than to ontario and tried to block pipelines moving east to eliminate reliance on imported oil. the end result is that they gave the americans a whopping discount when they could have sold it at a higher price to ontario, out of spite and due to hatred for the rest of canada. the idiot mulroney included that discount in the fta, and it's still there in the reworked nafta.
so, complaints from alberta about losing control over their resources should fall on deaf ears as they were illegitimately granted control of them in the first place. ottawa should make decisions about the resources that are in the national interest, and uphold it's fiduciary responsibility to the indigenous peoples by consulting them in good faith.
canada should also ensure it is doing things like building refineries, so that it is less vulnerable to american retaliation. this was an important part of the nep that should have been followed through on but was foolishly cancelled by the foolish people that led us down this path and got us into this mess.