The careful, necessary art of this particular deal

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 04/12/2024 (306 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

As a former negotiator, I am interested in U.S. president-elect Donald Trump’s threat to increase tariffs if the problem of illegal immigrants and fentanyl crossing the Canadian and Mexican borders into the United States isn’t resolved. But we should all be concerned about our response to it.

I am no fan of Trump. He is a negotiator with a huge ego whose main strategy involves threats and ultimatums. But you don’t get to pick who is on the other side of the bargaining table.

When Prime Minister Justin Trudeau met with Trump at Mar-a-Lago to discuss the issue, there was no chance he would get assurances that tariffs were off the table. The threat was intended to get our attention and to demonstrate the seriousness of the issue. It certainly has done that.

Trudeau’s trip was the right thing to do — respond to threats with direct communication focused on the issues. Trump is a transactional negotiator and he will not abandon his threats until he has achieved his goal.

Unfortunately, Canadian promises of good intentions will no longer be acceptable. When Trump pressed Canada to meet its long-standing funding commitments to NATO, Trudeau said we would work towards meeting our commitment by 2032. Trump would be entitled to think that if he removed the tariff issue from the table, he would likely get a similar response from Trudeau.

Our handling of NATO funding has raised a trust issue so Trump will insist on an immigration/fentanyl agreement in which Canada makes specific commitments and fully honours them.

The good news is Trump has a problem. He was elected partly based on a promise to address illegal immigration and the impact it allegedly has had on crime, housing/rental prices, drug addiction, employment, the economy and various other problems. It is “good news” for us because he needs our help to resolve his problem.

But it’s also good news for us because we have a problem. Trump intends to deport large numbers of illegal immigrants in the near future. Many of them may flee to Canada and we need his help to solve the problems that will create for us.

A tariff war achieves nothing. Given that Canada’s GDP per capita just dropped for the sixth straight quarter and the federal government has posted a $13-billion deficit in the first half of the fiscal year, we are not well positioned for an economic dispute.

Similarly, increasing tariffs does nothing to help Trump solve his problem and in fact, creates other problems for him.

The stage is set for a win-win agreement, or more accurately, a win-win-win agreement.

Some of our politicians, including provincial premiers, seem to think that Mexico is the real problem and that Canada isn’t the priority for the U.S. (Trudeau has suggested that Canada may prefer to negotiate separately with the U.S.)

However, in June 2024 two dozen Republican politicians formed the Northern Border Security Caucus and proposed the Northern Border Security Enhancement and Review Act. The “longest undefended border in the world,” as we like to call our U.S. border, was referred to as a “major threat” by those Republicans.

The number of apprehensions including those on their suspected terrorist watch list at the northern border has increased exponentially in the last three years. Once the United States clamps down on the southern border, human traffickers will try to move more immigrants through the northern border. The Canadian border may be much less of a problem numerically. But it is still a problem — with the potential to be an even bigger one.

NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh and others are demanding that Trudeau “fight like hell.”

That may play well with anti-Trudeau voters, but it would be a big mistake. The negotiation aphorism “never get into a pissing contest with a skunk” applies. A confrontational approach to dealing with Trump will only result in escalating threats.

The question those who advocate fighting need to answer is this: “What is our best alternative to a negotiated agreement?” And the problem is we don’t have a good one, never mind a best one. So while we can and should examine which American exports we would put tariffs on, let’s not pretend that outcome would be anything less than a disaster for Canada.

Unfortunately, our long-term interests in these critical negotiations are in the hands of a lame-duck prime minister who is desperately trying to hang on to his position.

Negotiators whose future is threatened are prone to reckless risk-taking in negotiations in an attempt to score a big win and somehow save themselves. It is important that the provincial premiers be directly involved in the process to ensure that Trudeau does not take unreasonable risks that could negatively impact our interests.

Finally, Trudeau has often negatively linked Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre with Trump and his supporters. Poilievre and Singh will also be tempted to exploit these negotiations for political gain.

Dragging Canadian politics into these negotiations is a mistake that will not serve Canadians well and would be putting the politicians’ short-term political interests ahead of the long-term interests of Canadians.

An agreement is definitely attainable in these negotiations — even with a difficult negotiator on the other side. Reaching an agreement requires an acknowledgment on our part that the three countries have a serious problem and a commitment to working with the United States and Mexico to resolve that problem.

Failure to do so will hurt all three countries but Canada definitely has the most to lose.

There will be many more issues that have to be addressed in the next four years. And Trump will continue to use threats and ultimatums. It is important that we demonstrate that our approach will always be a principled one in which we focus on the issues and bring a problem-solving approach to the bargaining table.

For many years, Robert Pruden negotiated collective agreements and taught negotiations across Canada.