Hoping for a Trump trade deal, Canada might as well be Waiting for Godot

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It is coming. Today. Okay, maybe not today. But tomorrow. Surely tomorrow. And if not tomorrow, the day after. It has to come. Doesn’t it?

And so we wait. Because if – when – it comes, we will be saved.

So goes Samuel Beckett’s play Waiting for Godot. So goes Canada’s quest for a comprehensive trade arrangement with the Trump administration. An agreement to end the trade war against us, save Canadian industries integrated into U.S. supply chains, restore the economic status quo and set things to right.

In Beckett’s version, a character named Boy delivers a message to the ever-expectant Vladimir and Estragon, telling them that the titular character can’t come today, but he will tomorrow. And the next day, again the same message.

In our reality, Howard Lutnick is the messenger. Whenever we get our hopes up that today is the day – Look how cordial the President was with the Prime Minister! Listen to how often he complimented him! – the U.S. Commerce Secretary is there to deliver disappointment.

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The Godot of continental free trade isn’t coming back, Mr. Lutnick has said many times before and is guaranteed to say again, because the Trump administration no longer wants it. Not for cars. Not for steel. Not for many other manufactured products. Not for many nonmanufactured products.

(Which industries will face permanent U.S. tariffs? At what level? That is uncertain. But all will be settled tomorrow. Or the day after. Or …)

The administration has also said it does not want to continue the trade pact, the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, that has been a foundation of Canada’s economic architecture since the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement and the North American Free Trade Agreement. The U.S. now says it wants separate bilateral trade arrangements with each country.

However, the new arrangements are not likely to be free-trade agreements. They could be the opposite. And they may not even be legal agreements.

The new trade terms reached with the European Union, Japan and others are ad-hoc things on slips of foolscap. They are real, but not solid. They are not treaties – binding international contracts spelling out mutual and enduring obligations – as used to be the norm.

They also involve the U.S. hitting countries with tariffs, and those countries agreeing to accept the blows, to not punch back and even to invest huge sums in the U.S. as a thank-you.

Beckett’s play is an example of what is known as the theatre of the absurd. So is trying to reach a trade “deal” with the Trump administration.

The trouble is that the President’s endgame is equal parts unfathomable and unmistakable.

The Carney government doesn’t know exactly what Donald Trump wants. Also, the Carney government knows exactly what Mr. Trump wants.

Absurd, no?

He wants more manufacturing in the U.S., and to make that happen, he would be happy to see Canada exporting zero cars to the U.S., no cars parts, no steel and no other manufactured goods. That also applies to lumber and other wood products, and some agricultural products. He doesn’t see free trade as a win-win. He sees exporting as winning, and importing as losing.

But however much Mr. Trump wishes to roll out policies to block imports, promote exports and compel businesses to shift manufacturing to the U.S., his administration also has to acknowledge the real world.

For example, by the end of this month, U.S. automakers will have paid an estimated US$10-billion in tariffs to Washington. Who is paying those tariffs? American manufacturers and American car buyers. The result will be some mix of lower profits for automakers, and higher prices for consumers.

It’s the same story when it comes to steel, aluminum, lumber and other tariffed products from Canada. These force up the prices of such things as new vehicles, new home construction and home renovations for Americans.

To the extent that Washington uses tariffs to impede the export to the U.S. of Canadian-made cars and car parts, U.S.-based vehicle manufacturers become less efficient. Canada is also the largest export market for American-made cars and trucks; moves to force the Canadian components of a currently continental industry to relocate to the U.S. will result in lower sales for U.S.-built vehicles in Canada.

But if the Trump administration is determined to kill the continental automobile industry, it has the leverage to do it. The result would be costly to for American consumers, and it would also make the U.S. industry less efficient and competitive. But if Washington can accept the downsides, it can make the President’s dreams come true.

Mark Carney has said repeatedly that the old economic relationship of ever-closer integration with the U.S. is over, and Canada should bulk up trade ties with the rest of the world. He’s not wrong. One way of doing that is with pipelines to the coasts, to make it possible to ship more oil and gas to destinations other than the U.S.

Yet earlier this month at the White House, Mr. Carney raised the possibility of working with Washington to revive Keystone XL, the north-to-south oil pipeline that Mr. Trump once championed.

Absurd? Yes. But in absurd circumstances, perfectly reasonable.