When the leaders of Canada and the United States hold an in-person meeting, the reason for the get-together and its intended results are normally choreographed and telegraphed well in advance.
There are no surprises, because the future has already been written. If there’s anything to be announced – any actual news – it has already been agreed, down to the last comma and semi-colon.
A heads-of-government meeting is a scripted show. It’s not an improv act. Normally.
And then there’s Tuesday’s sit-down between Prime Minister Mark Carney and U.S. President Donald Trump. Because the host does not do normal, it’s unclear what the outcome will be, or even why the PM is there.
The Carney government hasn’t clearly signalled what it expects on Tuesday. It has also for weeks been lowering expectations for Canada-U.S. trade talks.
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What if the PM’s trip to the White House yields no change in the tariff status quo? That wouldn’t be such a bad outcome. Things could always be worse.
If Ottawa hasn’t foreshadowed what Tuesday’s news will be, it may be because it has little to share. Months of radio silence on the progress of Canada-U.S. trade negotiations appear to be less about secrecy than faintness of signal.
“May every day be another wonderful secret” is the creepy birthday-card wish for Jeffrey Epstein allegedly penned by Mr. Trump, but politicians with even modestly good news don’t normally keep it under wraps. If Ottawa had something positive to tell Canadians on trade, it would be sharing. And oversharing.
The government instead regularly points out that, while Mr. Trump has slapped tariffs on a long list of Canadian goods, the rest of the world is facing even higher and wider levies, making these new U.S. trade walls against Canadian exports the world’s least onerous and least bad.
It’s starting to sound like the Black Knight in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, who after his arms are chopped off insists that “it’s just a flesh wound.”
Mr. Carney’s oft-repeated pitch – that even now, 85 per cent of Canadian exports to the U.S. are tariff-free – can come across as protesting too much. It nevertheless has the virtue of truth. Canadian trade with the U.S. faces barriers not seen in decades, but this country still has, for now, the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement. The rest of the world is in a worse position. And if the USMCA disappears, we might be, too.
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That’s why ragging the puck hasn’t been a bad strategy for Canada. The European Union, Britain, Japan and South Korea all signed quick “deals” with the Trump administration – vague commitments that are not legally binding, in which they agreed to accept tariffs on most exports to the U.S., while promising not to retaliate with tariffs of their own. They also pledged, again vaguely, to invest huge sums of money in the U.S. – US$550-billion from Japan, US$600-billion from the EU, US$350-billion from South Korea – as a payoff for the right to continue selling to the Americans.
Should Canada agree to something like that? Not unless and until we have no other choice.
Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre never misses an opportunity to slam Mr. Carney for his failure to deliver a tariff-lowering trade accord, and fair enough. The job of the Leader of the Opposition is to criticize the government, not empathize with it. But Canada is facing an American leader who believes that free trade is nonsense, that tariffs strengthen his economy while filling his coffers, and that the U.S. can impose this new trade model on the world. And the rest of the world is mostly going along to get along. Canada has limited leverage, no matter who is PM.
Mr. Trump and Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick have said time and again that they don’t understand why the U.S. is buying cars, steel or anything else from Canada. Last week, the administration announced new 25-per-cent duties on kitchen cabinets, bathroom vanities and upholstered furniture, with no USMCA exemption. On Monday, Mr. Trump abruptly announced a 25-per-cent tariff on medium and heavy trucks, to take effect on Nov. 1.
Unlike previous U.S. administrations, the Trump White House sees little benefit in lowering trade barriers, and much upside in raising them.
It may, however, be willing to adjust course in the face of pushback from American voters, consumers and industry, all of whom are paying the price for tariffs on Canadian lumber, steel and other products. Hitting Canada with tariffs is not free for Americans. That’s Canada’s strongest card, and it may yet yield wins.
We can hope for the Trump administration to change course, and there could even be some concessions on Tuesday. But it would be foolish to expect Mr. Trump to begin removing all of his tariffs on Canada. That would constitute a complete reversal of his trade policy.
In the long run, the best hope may be that Mr. Trump becomes so preoccupied with other issues – a war in Gaza that he dreams of parlaying into a Nobel Peace Prize; the continuing shutdown of the U.S. government; his bid to take over everything from the U.S. Federal Reserve to the nation’s talk shows – that he mostly forgets about us.