The unfinished USS New Orleans at Sackets Harbor decades after the War of 1812. Begun in 1814 as America's answer to Britain's escalating naval buildup at Kingston, the enormous warship remained on the stocks until it was sold and dismantled in 1883.
By Hans Wilder | Watertown Post
SACKETS HARBOR, N.Y. The United States and Canada are once again playing an expensive game of tit for tat. Washington imposes tariffs. Ottawa retaliates. Washington answers with additional pressure. Canada looks for another American industry to hit, and the United States reaches deeper into its much larger economic arsenal.
For Northern New York, there is something remarkably familiar about all of this.
I am writing this from my desk in Sackets Harbor overlooking Lake America, the same body of water known as Lake Ontario when Americans and British forces in Canada engaged in another extraordinary tit-for-tat contest more than 200 years ago. Back then, the weapons were not tariffs. They were warships.
During the War of 1812, Sackets Harbor became the principal American naval base on Lake Ontario while Kingston served as the British naval headquarters across the water. Control of the lake was critical for moving troops and supplies, so neither side could afford to allow the other to establish a permanent advantage.
That produced one of the strangest arms races of the war, remembered as the “Battle of the Carpenters.”
The contest began early in the war and accelerated through 1812 and 1813. If Sackets Harbor added enough ships and guns to gain an advantage, Kingston built more. When the British gained superiority, the Americans answered. Each side watched what the other was constructing and attempted to build something capable of beating it.
The same basic psychology is playing out today.
Canada has answered American trade measures with retaliatory tariffs covering billions of dollars in U.S. products. Washington has responded with additional restrictions and pressure on Canadian access to the American marketplace. Canada then searches for American products where retaliation will hurt politically or economically, while Washington identifies Canadian industries that depend heavily on American customers.
The carpenters have been replaced by trade officials, but the strategy is familiar. Make the other side pay for its last move, then prepare for the response.
The historical contest eventually became enormous. By 1814, Britain launched HMS St. Lawrence at Kingston, a massive ship-of-the-line carrying more than 100 guns. Its arrival shifted naval superiority dramatically toward the British.
America immediately prepared an answer.
At Sackets Harbor, shipbuilders began USS New Orleans and USS Chippewa, enormous ships intended to swing the balance back toward the United States. Peace arrived before either could be completed.
That was tit for tat with timber and cannon. Today it is tit for tat with tariffs, factories and market access.
There is, however, one major difference between the two contests.
Canada today is deeply dependent upon trade with the United States. The American market purchases the majority of Canadian exports, and generations of economic integration have tied Canadian industry to American consumers, suppliers and infrastructure.
Automobiles and components cross the border. Canadian energy flows south. American machinery and technology move north. Steel, aluminum, agriculture and manufacturing operate through supply chains that were built around easy access to both countries.
That makes a prolonged trade confrontation dangerous for both sides, but particularly dangerous for Canada.
The United States has an economy many times larger and an enormous domestic consumer market. Canada can increase trade with Europe and Asia, but it cannot change geography. The world’s largest economy remains directly beside Canada’s most populated and industrialized provinces.
Toronto, Hamilton and Windsor are physically tied to the Great Lakes economy. Canadian pipelines, highways and railroads connect heavily with American markets. Those relationships took generations to build and cannot simply be redirected because politicians in Ottawa and Washington are fighting.
That economic reality is where the current tariff battle could ultimately become much bigger than tariffs.
The Watertown Post’s Golden Age view has consistently been that North America’s long-term direction is toward greater integration, not greater separation. The current trade war may appear to contradict that argument, but it could ultimately accelerate it.
The harder Washington pushes, the more Canada has to confront the reality of how dependent its economy has become on access to the United States. Ottawa can retaliate, but Washington has considerably more economic leverage and a far larger market.
Eventually, economic reality wins.
Canada can attempt to diversify away from the United States, but replacing the American market is another matter entirely. Geography, infrastructure and decades of integrated manufacturing all pull Canada toward the United States.
The eventual result could be deeper economic integration once the tariff battle burns itself out. That could mean fewer trade barriers, greater integration of energy and transportation systems, and even closer military cooperation across North America.
Political integration is the much larger question. The Watertown Post believes that conversation will become increasingly difficult to dismiss if economic and military integration continues. What sounds radical today can look considerably different after years of economic pressure and changing geopolitical realities.
Northern New York could benefit enormously from that transformation.
Watertown, Fort Drum, Sackets Harbor and the Thousand Islands sit directly beside the Kingston, Ottawa and Toronto corridor. On a political map, Northern New York looks like the edge of the United States. On an integrated North American economic map, we suddenly sit near the middle of an enormous commercial and strategic corridor.
The original Battle of the Carpenters also provides a useful warning about where tit-for-tat escalation eventually leads.
America and Britain kept building larger ships because neither wanted to allow the other to have the final advantage. By 1814, both sides were pouring enormous resources into ships that were becoming bigger almost simply because the enemy’s ships were getting bigger.
Then the war ended.
USS New Orleans never went into battle. Within a few years, the Rush-Bagot Agreement dramatically limited naval forces on the Great Lakes. The massive naval arms race that had consumed so much money and manpower simply became unnecessary because the relationship between the two sides changed.
Today’s tariff battle will eventually reach its own version of that moment.
Canada can impose another tariff. Washington can answer. Ottawa can retaliate against the response, and Washington can find another Canadian industry to squeeze.
But eventually somebody has to ask whether two economies this interconnected benefit more from continually building barriers or from tearing them down.
From my desk here in Sackets Harbor, overlooking Lake America, the historical comparison is difficult to ignore.
Two centuries ago, Kingston built and Sackets Harbor answered. Kingston answered back, and the ships kept getting bigger.
Today Ottawa retaliates and Washington answers. Ottawa answers again, and the economic pressure keeps getting bigger.
The weapons have changed. The tit for tat has not.
The Battle of the Carpenters eventually ended when America and its northern neighbor stopped trying to outbuild each other.
The Battle of the Tariffs will end too.
And this time, the outcome could push Canada and the United States toward something that geography and economics have been pointing toward for generations: a more economically, militarily and eventually politically integrated North America.
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