Prime Minister Mark Carney speaks during a press conference, on the sidelines of the 47th ASEAN Summit in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, on Monday.Edgar Su/Reuters
Could we all please stop writhing and convulsing over every twitch of the Trumpmonster’s tail?
For months we have been repeating the same cycle. Donald Trump issues some ghastly threat to our prosperity. Negotiations ensue. The negotiations are said to be “going well.” Then – oh no! – suddenly they aren’t.
Immediately we are plunged into paroxysms of self-recrimination. Was it something we said? Did we come on too strong? Not strong enough? We’re like high-school seniors rehashing a first date.
Negotiations are all very well as long as we are under no illusions that there is anything to negotiate. Negotiations presume there is a rational actor to negotiate with. Debating what strategy to pursue – whether to offer concessions or threaten reprisals, to use the carrot or the stick – assumes there is some rational connection between our own actions and the response we might expect from the other side.
There is no reason to assume any such thing with regard to Mr. Trump. He has no coherent negotiating objectives, nor any vision of the Canada-U.S. trade relationship he would like to achieve. It is not clear whether he is using tariffs as bargaining chips, or just because he likes tariffs, much as he likes breaking things, being the centre of attention, and frightening people. Suppose they are bargaining chips: that is all he brings to the table. He offers no concessions of his own; only demands, backed by threats.
Were we to make concessions, what is more, as a way of averting those threats, we could have no assurance that he would follow through on any undertaking he made in return, or would not simply carry out the same threat at a later date. You don’t negotiate with a hostage taker, and you certainly don’t negotiate with one you have reason to believe will kill the hostages even if you do.
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Or rather, negotiate, only don’t, you know, negotiate. Everyone knows the thing to do with a psychopath is to keep him talking: play for time, that is, while you search for the exits. The only objective for Canada in these negotiations should be to keep the negotiations going, for as long as we can. The outcome, as such, is irrelevant, since there is nothing we can do about it, and since even if there were we have no idea what it is.
Just now, alas, negotiations are on hold, and naturally everyone is lining up to blame Canada, or at least Ontario. It was all the fault of that terrible Ford government ad, with its insulting allusions to what a previous American president actually said about tariffs. Whether that was actually the cause we cannot know.
The Government of Ontario released this TV ad which will be broadcast in the U.S. that uses a recording of Ronald Reagan to argue against tariffs.
Government of Ontario
It’s possible that this is all part of some ingenious “art of the deal” stratagem, wherein the President sends his men out for several weeks to negotiate, only to scramble all of their handiwork in a single tweet, just to mess with everyone’s heads. Or it’s possible that he really is that childish.
But what we do know is that many Americans, including some of Mr. Trump’s supporters, dislike tariffs, and even more dislike putting tariffs on Canada. An ad that appealed to that sentiment seems like a good use of our resources.
That’s one thing we can do. Mr. Trump’s popularity is already dropping; anything we can do to help that along we should. The weaker he is domestically, the less latitude he has to do bad things to us, since the only weapons he has to do that – tariffs and the like – are things that also hurt Americans. Which is another reason not to seriously negotiate. Even if we wanted a deal: why would we want to do it now, rather than waiting until he is in a weaker bargaining position?
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What else can we do? We can try to diversify our trade, and certainly every bit helps. But we’re not going to seriously dent our dependence on the U.S., not while Mr. Trump is alive at any rate, and to the extent we can it will be by doing deals with a pair of countries that have been doing their best to do us harm: China and India. If part of the deal was that they would stop meddling with our elections or killing our citizens, maybe, but again what assurance could we have that they would keep their word?
No, the only thing we can really do about Mr. Trump is to do something about us: to make our economy so ultra-productive and hyper-competitive that it can survive and prosper even in the face of his tariffs. The time to repair the roof, it is said, is when the sun is shining. But an even better time is when it’s pouring.