The U.S. is not our friend any more. Has anyone told Mark Carney?

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Blayne Haggart is a professor of political science at Brock University. His latest book, with Natasha Tusikov, is The New Knowledge: Information, Data and the Remaking of Global Power (Routledge, 2023).

If Canadians were confused by Prime Minister Mark “Elbows Up” Carney’s axing of the digital services tax in response to U.S. President Donald Trump’s threat to scuttle trade and security negotiations between the two countries, that’s understandable: Nothing about Mr. Carney’s U.S. strategy, particularly his pursuit of a “comprehensive” trade and security agreement, makes a lick of sense.

The DST cave, a walk-back of a bill passed in Parliament, got Canada less than nothing. In exchange for so grovellingly ceding our sovereignty, Mr. Carney got the promise of a serial liar to continue talks on an agreement that, because it’s not a treaty, will exist wholly at the whim of the capricious authoritarian in the White House.

The Prime Minister’s pursuit of a treaty itself faces the same objection. Given the ephemeral nature of any potential agreement, why does he think a comprehensive agreement is even possible, even without giving away the store?

To quote a former prime minister, “Make that make sense.”

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Mr. Carney and the Liberals’ inattention to such basic questions suggest they have completely misread the nature of the threat facing Canada. They’re acting as if the threat is purely economic and resolvable by normal, rational negotiations. In reality, the underlying problem is political: The United States’ descent into authoritarianism and fascism has dynamited the foundations of North American governance that made co-operation and agreements possible for decades.

For all his talk of embracing change, Mr. Carney’s pursuit of a far-reaching economic and security agreement to convince the United States to lower its tariffs reflects the dominant orthodoxy of the past 40 years: a belief in rational economic interest as the driver of politics and an understanding of North America that is years out of date.

Mr. Carney’s archaic understanding of Canada-U.S. relations is nicely captured by his Finance Minister, François-Philippe Champagne, who said “the competitiveness of North America depends on what happens between Canada and the United States.”

Ten years ago, appealing to “North America” as a shared economic space would have been entirely appropriate. Canadian economic development policy since the late 1980s has been built on the presumption of a single North American economy, nurtured through deliberate policy actions and binding economic treaties.

From this perspective, the main threat to Canada comes from Mr. Trump’s erratic nature and promotion of an absurd, unsustainable economic policy based on tariffs that threaten the viability of the Canadian economy and, by extension, the ability of the North American economy to compete globally.

If this assessment were accurate, it would make sense for Canada to push to eliminate and reduce trade barriers, as well as (economically rational) deeper integration while mollifying Mr. Trump, making the long-term argument that we’re stronger together than apart and hedging somewhat against U.S. risk through trade diversification and strengthening the economy.

The problem is that there is no more “we.” There’s a difference between a North America in which the U.S. is the dominant player and one in which the United States seeks to dominate. We now live in the latter world of us versus them.

The North America in Mr. Champagne’s and Mr. Carney’s minds no longer exists. As Wilfrid Laurier University professor of political science Jörg Broschek pointed out on Bluesky, this trade-only focus ignores the fact that the foundations of the North American economy are political, not economic.

Politicians and academics have long recognized that North America was built not just on commercial self-interest but on shared values and norms: the rule of law, respect for national sovereignty, and U.S. self-restraint.

The U.S. has turned its back on all of these, making any traditional trade agreement literally impossible. Mr. Trump is an autocrat, a fascist, dragging the United States into a despotism that will take years, if not decades, to overcome. His goal is domination, not co-operation or rational win-win scenarios. He doesn’t care about U.S. “security” or “economic prosperity.”

There is no win-win agreement on the table. As the DST cave suggests, and as was previewed in the Trump-negotiated (and then violated) United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), any agreement would come with independence-impeding restrictions on Canadian economic and social policies, existing and future.

Negotiating an agreement in the absence of the political foundations for an agreement is little more than cargo-cult policymaking.

Addressing the U.S. threat requires thinking and actions appropriate to our changed circumstances. Not just more guns, but weaning our military from U.S. influence, protecting our communication networks from U.S. software vulnerabilities and making peace with the loss of guaranteed access to the U.S. market.

Domestically, Washington’s evisceration of its regulatory and statistical agencies will require greater, not less, Canadian government capacity. Governments that truly believe they’re facing an existential crisis don’t cut taxes or cap the size of the civil service and slash government program spending, as Mr. Carney is doing.

The government must also start attending to the vital, non-tariff-related aspects of our relationship. Mr. Carney has been conspicuously silent on the Canadians being harassed at the border and detained by ICE, illustrated most sharply by Ottawa’s almost-comical intransigence regarding pleas to change its U.S. travel advisory to reflect reality.

On defence, the government is not taking seriously how our reliance on U.S. tech giants is a significant vulnerability, not least through software-enabled U.S. devices, from jet planes on down, that gives the U.S. a de facto veto over Canadian military missions.

Canada will always have to deal with U.S. issues and complaints as they come up. It comes with the territory. But we need to do so with the full understanding of who we’re dealing with, and what’s possible, should we want to maintain our independence.

That starts with ending comprehensive trade negotiations and getting serious about policies that will actually promote Canadian sovereignty. Until Mr. Carney realizes this truth, expect more of the same, giving away the store in pursuit of the fantasy of a return to a world that’s not coming back.