Democrats won both chambers of Congress on Tuesday. The Senate flipped with wins in Texas, Iowa, Kansas, Ohio, Maine, North Carolina and South Carolina. The House fell too, with Democrats winning districts Donald Trump carried by as much as 18 points in 2024. Hakeem Jeffries is in line to become Speaker. It was, by any measure, a wave.
But the most interesting number from election night might not be a seat count. It might be $445 million. That is how much Elon Musk poured into the 2026 cycle, making him the largest disclosed political donor in modern American history. He gave $216 million to his own America PAC and $158 million to the Senate Leadership Fund. He spent more in Texas than anywhere else, trying to keep Republican Ken Paxton in the Senate race against Democrat James Talarico.
Talarico won. Musk's money did not buy the seat.
In fact, Talarico raised $146 million himself through mid-October, more than any other federal candidate this cycle and six times what Paxton collected. He made Musk's spending a central part of his campaign, telling rallies plainly that Musk was trying to buy the seat. Voters heard him.
There is a temptation to treat this as a feel-good story, the billionaire who could not buy an election. It is worth pausing on that, because it matters. But it is also worth asking what $445 million buys even when it loses. It buys attack ads in 43 House and Senate races. It buys AI-generated robocalls. It buys a media ecosystem where one man with 200 million followers on a platform he owns can set the terms of debate.
Here is another thing worth noticing. The Democrats won this wave without a household name leading it. Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer is not someone most voters could pick out of a lineup, and he was not the face of this campaign. The party did not win because voters fell in love with a particular Democrat. They won because voters did not like what Trump was doing. That is a different kind of victory, and it matters for what comes next, because a vote against something is not the same as a vote for something.
And here is where it lands for Canada. The midterms were supposed to be the moment the tariff wall might crack. Trump put 50% duties on hundreds of Canadian goods on August 22, after trade talks collapsed. Canada answered with counter-tariffs on $27.6 billion of American imports. Carney and Trump spoke by phone just before the vote, and Trump called it a "concept of a deal". The midterms were the deadline everyone was watching.
Now they are over, and the tariffs are still there. A Democratic Congress cannot simply remove them. The duties rest on presidential authority, and any bill to repeal them would go to Trump's desk for a veto. Overriding that veto needs two-thirds of each chamber, 290 votes in the House and 67 in the Senate. Schumer introduced the End Trump's Tariff Tax Act in September, which would repeal the tariff authorities and refund importers with interest. It is a real bill with real sponsors. It is also a bill that needs a presidential signature or a supermajority that does not exist.
The Bank of Canada estimated in October that about 80% of Canadian goods exports to the United States remained tariff-free, which sounds reassuring until you read the rest: the average American tariff on Canadian goods has risen to 7.5% from 5.0% in July, and the Parliamentary Budget Officer estimates trade measures since early 2025 could leave real Canadian GDP 1.4% below where it would have been without them. The damage is concentrated in specific industries, steel, aluminum, lumber, auto parts, where the tariffs bite hardest and the workers have the fewest alternatives.
Toronto strategist Marcel Wieder put it bluntly before the vote: the rupture is permanent. No matter how the midterms ended, he argued, the United States is no longer a trusted partner, and the rules of engagement have changed. Carney seems to agree. He has been diversifying, a strategic partnership with Turkiye announced in October with a $10 billion trade target, a push toward Europe, India and China. The midterms decide the pace of the rupture, Wieder said, not the direction.
That is the part that should sit with us. For months, the conversation in Canada has been about waiting: waiting for the midterms, waiting for a deal, waiting for American politics to correct itself. The midterms happened. Democrats won. And the tariffs are still there, because the tariffs were never really about who controls Congress. They are about a president who can impose them unilaterally and a system that gives Congress almost no practical way to stop him without his cooperation.
The fairness question is not just about tariffs. It is about who gets a say. Musk spent $445 million and lost, which is encouraging. But the fact that one person could spend $445 million trying to decide who represents Texas is itself the problem, whether he wins or loses. The fact that one president can impose 50% duties on a neighbouring country's goods, and a newly elected Congress cannot undo it, is the same problem at a different scale. Ordinary people, Canadian workers in steel towns, American voters in Texas, the 31% of Canadians skipping meals, do not have $445 million. They have a vote. The question is whether the vote still counts for as much as the money.
A nuanced take: the midterms proved voters can still beat a billionaire, but they also proved that no election in Washington will save Canada from tariffs, and the only reliable path forward is building a country that does not need American permission to thrive.