A bad trade deal in virtually all ways

You can’t fix stupid.

And you can’t sign a contract — or a trade deal — with a proven liar, cheat and blackmailer.

And sometimes, you end up having to fight.

Yes, we are referring to U.S. President Donald Trump, a politician who obviously confuses might with bright.

Is it smart to pick a fight with a major trading partner — one you depend on for oil, electricity, uranium, potash for fertilizer, aluminum for your own manufacturing operations, and wood for home construction?

Does extending that “trade” battle into issues of a nation’s sovereignty, such as the languages that nation speaks, its dealings with other countries and its ability to set its own health and safety regulations look anything like a trade deal — and does it seem in any way what another sovereign nation would agree to?

Does penalizing that major trading partner by adding tariffs that your own citizens will pay as a tax on products they buy make sense? Only about as much sense as crushing your own beef industry by allowing the import of cheap foreign ground beef.

But here we are.

Prime Minister Mark Carney was right to put the brakes on trade negotiations with the United States on Friday — negotiations that were a step above an ultimatum in name only.

Canada cannot trade away its power to make law, its power to set its own trade rules with foreign nations, surrender control over our own pesticides and health regulations and give in on our cultural industries. Especially not in exchange for the trade crumbs the Americans were offering: they were essentially promising “we’ll only hit you in the face half as much as we were threatening to do.”

It all only makes sense to a stupid man.

A stupid man who, insulated by money, has never had to fight his own fights, actually get his hands dirty on a real job, or understand what it is to have his pay run out long before the next meagre paycheck arrives.

It certainly didn’t make sense to the Wall Street Journal, in which the Monday editorial pronounced “The Dumbest Trade War Revisited: Trump’s decision to escalate a tariff brawl with Canada makes no economic or political sense.”

Where are we now? Prime Minister Carney has paused Canadian retaliatory tariffs until Sept. 8, perhaps to let cooler heads — and smarter people — prevail south of the border.

That is a reasonable direction to take. At least 30 U.S. states count Canada as their major trading partner, and everyone from Republican governors to members of Congress to business leaders must be asking how their states’ employment rates and costs of living will be affected by bad-faith deal-making by the Trump administration.

Here at home, we have to stay united, work to maintain a unified message and move slowly but surely towards as much economic independence from the U.S. as we can muster, recognizing that there will be significant economic pain for Canadians, and that we have to jointly and proportionately shoulder that pain. We have to also realize that many Americans are getting justifiably tired of a president who prefers spectacle over substance, and cares little about the needs of citizens who can’t afford to buy their way into his moneyed circle.

But some things could change as we move slowly forwards, protecting Canada and Canadians.

One thing that appears to have rankled the American president is collapsing booze markets and tourism and travel by Canadians to the United States.

So that we can all properly honour the president’s concerns, perhaps the Canadian government could make a small change to legislate prominent, front-of-packaging labelling requirements for made-in-America products, so Canadian consumers can demonstrate exactly where we stand.