This is true about everything, in Trump’s mind, not just trade. Every single relationship, without exception, is defined by a winner and a loser. Any benefit on one side of the relationsip is balanced by a loss on the other side, and Trump is utterly pathological about ensuring he’s always on the “correct” side of that balance. Understanding this is crucial to understanding him.
Frankly, you and Cervaise have outlined the issue well enough to develop a strategy to deal with it. The question is how to frame Canada’s exports to the US to support Trump’s need for ‘winning’. I say Smith did that well with regards to Oil and Gas. But regardless, it isn’t something that a bright guy like Carney shouldn’t be able to do. If he chose to. So, why hasn’t he done so? Why hasn’t he voiced his strategy at all? FYI, to forestall it, being the ‘adult’ in the room is NOT a strategy.
Do you really think you need to point out that conservatives see no value in being the adult in any room? They’ve made it painfully clear. Canadians all see it, I assure you.
Listening to the conservatives rage, keeps me hoping Carney keeps doing exactly as he is. No rush to sign a deal with an unreliable neighbour, working quietly without the screaming bravado. Refusing to engage with schoolyard name callers.
That all of these admirable things are making conservatives amp up their impotent rage, is really icing on the cake. It’s driving their numbers down and their mates are crossing the floor, so, y’know, rage on!
No part of me believes he’s doing this to enrage the right. But it’s somewhat amusing to see that ‘good governance’, sets them off.
Prime Minister Mark Carney says it will take time for Canadians to see the results of efforts to grow and diversify the economy, but insists “we’ve got to keep on this track.”
There is no “magic solution” that can instantly re-set the relationship between Canada and the US. Most mature voters realize this. It will take hard work, sacrifice and time. These are things that those with short attention spans do not like.
The strategy that is being used has been laid out clearly in general terms. Some may want the details of every single strategic move to be explained to them. This is not how strategic planning works; One does not telegraph detailed plans to trading adversaries, particularly to ones who have said out loud that their goal is to economically destroy you.
Carney says ‘we’ve got to keep on this track’ as he looks ahead to 2026
So, how many Canadian jobs are you willing to sacrifice for your dislike of Trump?
When was the last time you voted for the conservatives?
You are conflating ‘strategy’ with ‘tactics’. A strategy of moving away from our 77% trading partner, isn’t just a few years, but decades, of work, nor is a winning strategy. Goods will always be cheaper to send south than by ship across the ocean.
Strategy is positioning yourself as a critical supplier of goods to the US defence industry, for example. Something Trump would likely consider. How to achieve the carve outs on tariffs for aluminum and steel are the tactics. You keep the latter close to the vest until a deal emerges.
Carney says in the article you posted, “After vowing to reach a new trade and security relationship with the U.S. this summer, Carney says he’s now looking ahead to the CUSMA review scheduled for next July.”
He’s already blown by two deadlines. Self-imposed deadlines, I might add. What happens when this doesn’t go his way, as it won’t.
And what the hell does this mean?
“Asked what he has learned from Trump, Carney said it’s mostly what not to do as a country less powerful than the U.S.
“We have to be a reliable partner,” he said. "We have to be straight up: 'There’s our objectives, this is what we’re going to do. If we sign a deal, we’ll respect a deal.”
Is he saying Canada hasn’t been a reliable partner? That we haven’t respected deals in the past? Elbows says the US is the unreliable partner, but Carney says Canada is. Or is he saying that things like the Digital Services tax was something that could have easily been prevented from pissing off Trump?
Looks like Carney has another fan. The premier of Saskatchewan. (For our American friends, Scott Moe is a right-wing Conservative).
Relationship with Carney ‘much more collaborative’ than Trudeau, Moe says
Maybe with the power of love, we can change Trump from an insane megalomaniac to someone who is willing to finish the very same trade negotiations he forced on us? Nah. Its our fault. Us and Carney.
ETA:
Canada cannot force the US to trade with us. Its THEM who are slapping tariffs and turning down our trade. Canada NEEDS to adjust to this by finding other markets. You ignore everything Trump is doing and placing all agency onto Canada in bad faith.
This is why these criticisms become meaningless and are just not shared by other Canadians. We all know who Trump is and what he is doing. He is destroying the US and Canada. Its him. Full stop.
Carney just said that we, I assume when he says ‘we’ he means Canadians’, have to and I quote again, “We have to be a reliable partner,” he said. "We have to be straight up: 'There’s our objectives, this is what we’re going to do. If we sign a deal, we’ll respect a deal.”
I’m not saying that. He is. So, when Trump says we are difficult to deal with and Carney agrees with him, this isn’t all on the US. Instead of whining about it, expect and hold the politician you are advocating to more than ‘No one can deal with Trump’ when he fails to meet his own self-assigned deadlines. Tell him to get out of the way and let someone else do it. Because if you think it is bad now, imagine these same lame ducks, who can’t make a deal on the ~5% of trade start negotiating on the other 95% under CUSMA. This should be the testing grounds for that and right now they are batting zero.
I already explained how we don’t have the port capacity or the shipping to replace the US markets. Even a small increase will saturate them assuming that the same things that Trump is complaining about aren’t the things that will block trade in other places: e.g. the Dairy supply management. It has already been a thorn in negotiations previously for CPTPP, CETA, and the UK bilateral talks. Now that parliament is locking in supply chain through legislation. It seems Canada can’t help but stick a finger in Trump’s eye and potentially all other negotiations with other countries interested in free trade with Canada. Yeah, it’s all Trump’s fault. Keep telling yourself that.
Canadians would be happy to stick a finger in Trump’s eye, why do you think the provinces are independently banning US alcohol. As for supply management, do you think there are actual homegrown and local political concerns for why Canada keeps insisting its survival? Something that isn’t Trump related? Perhaps that Canadian dairy producers have some sort of vested interest in ensuring it?
Things are very simple with this mentally. Carney needs to run to Washington and sign some deals. If Carney isn’t signing deals its because he is sabotaging trade. There isn’t any hint at acknowledging Trump’s chaotic insanity, nor the value of the trade positions that Canada needs to hold.
I’m sure I just don’t understand things Canadian since I’m American, but why would you want to trade with trump knowing he wants to make you the 51st state? I’d say fuck off America until you get a sane leader again. sheesh.
IMHO there is a current of conservative thought in the world that values money more than national sovereignty and/or pride. Specially when it comes to dealing with the U.S., double specially when it comes to dealing with this Trump-led U.S.
I used to see their point (paraphrasing Uzi above, “how many jobs are you willing to lose to keep your national pride?”) but I’m drifting more and more to the opinion that the possible short term gains do not justify the eventual long term losses. (In the worst case scenario becoming a sort of colony of the U.S.)
Not to mention that Canada is VERY willing to get into free trades deals with the US. The entire past 30 years was Canada integrating its economy with the US. That was the trajectory for the future. Trump burned it all down to rebuild it in his image… then he burned THAT down too.
He doesn’t want free trade. He doesn’t want an integrated economy. He wants an economy where the US produces everything at the expense of the industries of neighbouring countries. There is no space to allow Canadian industry to exist in unison with American industry. Canada cannot exist except to be a raw resource exporting country THAT IS ALSO tariffed to keep US producers exporting.
Carney has brilliantly managed to sidestep feeding the rage machine that feeds the conservative base. They want a deal, at any cost, because whatever else it amounts to, good or bad, will be fresh, ripe pickings for their rage machine.
As it is, all they can do is keep singing those same old hits. It’s wearing so thin people are switching sides. Their own reps can’t stand listening to it any more.
(Maybe if they just say ‘Trudeau’, a little more, they can turn things around?)
We aren’t “trading with Trump.” He’s a temporary gatekeeper. We’re trading with the U.S. economy, U.S. companies, U.S. consumers, and U.S. supply chains that will still be there long after Trump is gone. Treating trade as some kind of personal endorsement of Trump misses the point entirely.
The “51st state” talk is Trump trolling, and the Liberals have decided to amplify it because it fits their “elbows up” narrative. There’s no serious pathway where Trump annexes Canada, and no incentive for him to want millions of new Democratic voters anyway. Turning that rhetoric into a national existential crisis might be politically useful, but it doesn’t save a single job.
What’s actually happening is that the Liberals are buying into a rage narrative (who say it is the Conservatives who are raging when they stand up to their insanity) that plays on Canada’s inferiority complex about the U.S. Schoolyard talk about standing up to bullies while real economic decisions are being made elsewhere. Companies aren’t leaving out of spite or ideology; they’re leaving because it makes economic sense. That reality doesn’t change just because we’re offended by it.
Trump doesn’t represent Americans any more than Carney represents all Canadians. But Canada benefits enormously from its geography, scale, and US policy choices, and when Trump points that out bluntly, instead of fixing our own competitiveness problems we get defensive. The result is that we sacrifice jobs and investment while telling ourselves we’re morally superior. It never seems to be the jobs of the people making the decisions, of course.
You can dislike Trump and still understand that refusing to deal pragmatically with the world’s largest economy is self-harm, not principle.
Supply management is, in a vacuum, bad for Canadians.
Unfortunately, the US government has an enormous subsidy/handout system for their dairy farmers that props THEIR dairy farmers up artificially. So when they drop that, we can drop ours.
It looks like the new law Canada implemented that I posted above prevents that discussion.
So… apparently we just negotiate trade deals with the US as if Trump does not exist or has no influence on US trade? Or do we just time travel to January 2029?
I’m not sure what exactly you suggest we do in the next couple of years. Or what Carney is supposed to do to magically get a trade deal in the next (checks watch) 15 minutes.
No one is stopping you from discussing anything.
Prevents people who are negotiating trade deals from discussing dairy supply chain management.
Of course they can discuss it.
Practically, we all know the USA will never, ever drop their massive subsidy system, so it’s not like that’s on the table either. Therefore, supply management won’t be.
BOTH systems are destructive, but they’re political non starters to get rid of.