Discretion is the better part of valour with economic bully next door

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 27/02/2025 (191 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The stroking of U.S. President Donald Trump’s ego by Canadian officials continues to pay dividends.

Canada better get used to it. Because this will be the game it will have to play for the next four years as it tries to protect itself from an unstable, unpredictable authoritarian leader south of the border.

It appears Canada will be getting another 30-day reprieve from the 25 per cent tariffs Trump has threatened to impose on imports into the U.S. That’s according to White House officials who said Wednesday the tariffs are still officially on track for next week, but could be delayed again until April 2 through “negotiations.”

Negotiations on what is anybody’s guess. There is no trying to make sense of what goes on in the mind of Trump. The only thing Canadian officials know for sure is that trying to give the U.S. president some political wins to satisfy his ego is the only way to stave off punishing tariffs.

A 25 per cent tariff would plunge Canada into a deep recession and result in massive job losses. Federal ministers, premiers and diplomats have no choice but to play along with whatever gibberish comes out of the president’s mouth, no matter how distant it is from facts, evidence and reality.

Trump continues to peddle the lie that massive amounts of illicit drugs and numbers of “criminals” are crossing into the U.S. from Canada and that Canadian officials must do a better job.

It doesn’t matter that the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol’s own data shows that the number of people and volume of drugs crossing into the U.S. is tiny, compared to what flows into Canada from the south. That’s because Trump doesn’t deal in facts and rational discourse. He deals in fantasy, lies and manipulation.

The only way to counter that is to try to give the U.S. president some political victories, whether real or imagined. Trump is already boasting to Americans that he has forced Canada to tighten up its border and that his tactics are working, even though there have been no significant changes to how the Canada-U.S border is patrolled.

There have been some additions to border security since Trump was sworn in as president in January, when he announced that tariffs would be imposed on Canada and Mexico on Feb. 4. But they’re minor, mostly window dressing, such as the deployment of a few Black Hawk helicopters and drones to beef up patrols and the appointment of a fentanyl “czar.”

Nevertheless, the response by Canada worked, at least in the short term. It has given Trump the political win he wanted and he agreed to delay the tariffs until March 4. It appears he will delay them again for another month. But nobody knows for sure.

And nobody knows for sure what Trump’s real end game is. Even his own officials don’t seem to know.

Take the statement made Wednesday by U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick on the possibility that the March 4 tariff date might be pushed back another month.

“The fentanyl-related things, they are working hard on the border, at the end of that 30 days they (Canadian officials) have to prove to the president that they’ve satisfied him to that regard,” Lutnick said. “If they have, he will give them a pause — or he won’t.”

What does that even mean?

It’s unclear what will happen since Trump on Thursday contradicted the White House and said the tariffs will go ahead March 4. So who knows?

Maybe the president himself doesn’t know even what he plans to do. He has trouble keeping track of his own justifications for the tariffs. Some days it’s about illicit drugs crossing the border, other days it’s about trade deficits or his desire to make Canada a 51st U.S. state. What comes out of his mouth from one day to the next is nothing more than a series of disjointed, incoherent statements that are neither grounded in reality nor sanity.

But if he can show his supporters that he has forced someone or some sovereign state into submission, he may agree to call off his dogs.

And so goes the dance Canada (and apparently other countries) will have to partake in for the next four years. If it’s not tariffs, it will be something else.

Naturally, it makes good sense for Canada to try to diversify its exports, shop at home and reduce interprovincial trade barriers as a way of mitigating Trump’s protectionist threats. But there is only so much a small country such as Canada, which is heavily reliant on trade with the U.S. to maintain its standard of living, can do to seek markets elsewhere. It must do everything it reasonably can to prevent the imposition of tariffs.

If that means continuing to stroke the U.S. president’s ego, so be it.

tom.brodbeck@freepress.mb.ca