Prime Minister Mark Carney and U.S. President Donald Trump in Egypt in October.Evan Vucci/The Associated Press
John Ibbitson is a writer and journalist.
Every day, it seems, Donald Trump wields his presidential powers to undermine the Western alliance. Within the past week or so he has threatened new tariffs against Canadian aircraft exports, against South Korea and against any country (but principally Mexico) that sells oil to Cuba.
And of course, there was his threat in January to annex Greenland and to tariff countries that resist that annexation.
As one Korean commentator put it: “Donald Trump is using tariffs like a hammer: not to fix trade imbalances with countries, but to force compliance with what he wants. The message to his allies is clear: fall in line or pay the price.”
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But Prime Minister Mark Carney is offering an alternative: an alliance of European and Pacific countries, with Canada as the bridge. That is why Mr. Trump was so offended by Mr. Carney’s Davos speech.
The President realizes that Canada is proposing something radically new: The West without the U.S.
To understand exactly what Mr. Carney is proposing, we need to go back a few years. In 2013, under president Barack Obama, the United States began free-trade negotiations with the European Union. Canada was already in talks with the EU, and both Canada and the United States were negotiating with 10 other countries – Australia, Brunei, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam – to create a Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement.
It was possible to imagine that Canada, the United States and the European Union would merge their agreements, establishing a North Atlantic trading area that would then merge with the Trans-Pacific Partnership, creating a massive free-trade zone stretching from Finland west to Malaysia.
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“It puts the North Americans in a very strong competitive position,” America’s then-ambassador David Jacobson told The Globe and Mail back then. Canada and the U.S. could become “the bridge between the two other great trading blocs in the world … and I think that’s a very good place to be.”
Then came Mr. Trump, alas.
In his first term, he withdrew the United States from the European and Pacific trade talks. In his second term, he attacked the global economic order through tariffs and threats of annexation.
But in his Davos speech on Jan. 20, Mr. Carney stated that “we’re championing efforts to build a bridge between the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the European Union, which would create a new trading bloc of 1.5 billion people.”
The Carney government would very much like Canada to serve as that bridge. What seemed possible in 2013 seems possible again, only without the United States.
We’re not alone in this. In 2024, Britain became the first European country to join the Trans-Pacific Partnership.
Whatever trade vandalism Mr. Trump might wreak upon the world, the EU, Britain and the members of the TPP could continue to promote and protect free trade among themselves, with Canada serving as a hinge. We might call it the Atlantic-Pacific Trade Alliance, or APTA. (Has a nice ring, don’t you think?) There might also be a collective security element to the association.
Other countries would doubtless want to become part of the APTA. South Korea and Indonesia are obvious candidates. Both China and India might wish to become part of what would now be the world’s largest trading bloc.
If free trade dies, what happens to Canada?
And who knows: a future administration might realize what a terrible mistake the United States made by abandoning its allies under Mr. Trump and ask to join APTA as well. Globalization would be reborn.
But that’s all in the future. What matters now is for Canada to help preserve the Western alliance and the global economy by forging ties between European and Pacific nations in the absence of American involvement.
Negotiating an Atlantic-Pacific trade agreement wouldn’t supplant Canadian trade with the United States. Preserving as much of the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) as possible must be the federal government’s highest priority. The United States will always be, by far, Canada’s largest trading partner.
But the future of the USMCA is in doubt. Mr. Trump said in January that “it wouldn’t matter to me” if the USMCA were scrapped. “I don’t really care about it.”
If the USMCA does dissolve, then helping forge an Atlantic-Pacific trading bloc would offer Canada a trading alternative, even as this country adjusts to a relationship with the United States similar to what existed before the North American free-trade agreement (1992), the Canada-U.S. free-trade agreement (1988) and the Auto Pact (1965).
Hardly ideal. But it may be the best hope we’ve got.