Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and former U.S. president Donald Trump arrive to take part in a plenary session at the NATO Summit in Watford, Hertfordshire, England, on Dec. 4, 2019.Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press
The Canada-U.S. relationship, Pierre Trudeau once opined, sets “the standard for enlightened international relations.”
Before him, president Harry Truman reasoned that the two neighbours “have reached the point where we don’t think of each other as foreign countries.”
And there was this from president Dwight Eisenhower to the House of Commons in 1953: “Nothing will corrupt the Canadian-American partnership.”
Ike can be excused for not imagining that a corruptor-in-chief of the likes of Donald Trump would one day emerge. Mr. Trump is challenging the notion that the relationship is an enlightened model like no president before him in at least the last century.
Canadians got used to Mr. Trump’s ill will in his first four years, with his tariffs and his threats and his insults. He has not yet even begun his second run but has already upped the antipathy with his ridiculing of Justin Trudeau as a “governor of the 51st state” and his wild exaggerations to justify a 25-per-cent import tariff threat.
Regarding the border issues that he is concocting a crisis over, our Washington Ambassador Kirsten Hillman put their minuscule magnitude in perspective, tweeting: “Last year 0.6 per cent of illegal crossings and 0.2 of fentanyl seizures by U.S. authorities were at the northern border.”
As for the trade deficit with Canada that Mr. Trump also wants to use as an excuse for imposing towering tariffs, he said in an NBC interview Sunday that it was US$100-billion. In fact it is US$41-billion. He was only off by US$59-billion.
Other presidents have had some insulting things to say about prime ministers. Richard Nixon called Pierre Trudeau a seven letter word beginning with an “a” and ending with an “e.” John Kennedy had some choice phrases for John Diefenbaker. The difference was that they were made behind the scenes.
But while Mr. Trump deserves a special ugly place in the pantheon of presidents and their dealings with Canada, the mutual dependancy of the two countries is so strong, as outgoing U.S. Ambassador David Cohen recently observed, that it will survive him.
That’s what history tells us. Since Confederation, bilateral crises have come along regularly but normalcy always returned. The integration of the two economies proceeded apace. Geographical dictate rode herd.
The great challenges that the bilateral relationship has endured are worth a reminder.
Speaking of punitive levies, there was the brutal Smoot-Hawley tariff of 1930. It brought on retaliatory measures from Ottawa and crippled cross-border trade.
There was Richard Nixon’s declaration of a 10-per-cent import surcharge in 1971. Initially there was no exemption for Canada and it spread panic like we see today. There was also the Kennedy administration’s fury at John Diefenbaker’s government for his refusal to buckle under their orders on defence issues. It triggered the defeat of Dief’s minority government in 1963.
Not to be forgotten is Lester Pearson’s speech in Philadelphia in 1965 opposing Lyndon’s Johnson’s Vietnam War escalation. It prompted LBJ to take Pearson by the lapels and holler, “You pissed on my rug!”
Major consternation was caused by Jean Chrétien’s decision not to join George W. Bush’s coalition of the willing (or was it the deluded) in the invasion of Iraq. Likewise was the rage from the Reagan administration over Pierre Trudeau’s National Energy Program in 1980.
Finance minister Walter Gordon’s hyper-nationalist budget measures in 1963 stirred such opposition in Washington he was forced to rescind it and later resigned.
In addition, in the early decades following Confederation there was the fisheries war between Ulysses S. Grant and John A. Macdonald in 1870. Grant told his cabinet he was ready “to take Canada and wipe out her commerce.”
In 1888, Grover Cleveland proposed an embargo on all trade with Canada following another fisheries conflict. In 1903, the Alaska Boundary dispute between Teddy Roosevelt and the Laurier government led TR to threaten to send in his military to assert control.
In dealing with Mr. Trump’s showboating provocations, the strategy Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland has used – don’t escalate and don’t back down – is a good one.
Mr. Trump will likely be talked down, at least to some degree anyway, on his tariff threat as it applies to Canada. If he isn’t, there will be retaliation and each country will pay a steep price.
But in the end, a restoration – it may have to await the arrival of a president of sounder mind – of bilateral harmony will come about. It always has.