Re: Canada vs Trump. - And the Deal goes on...

On 8/19/2026 6:35 AM, Tara wrote:
> 
> This isn’t over.
> 
> U.S. President Donald Trump likes to win. He also often likes to play
> make-believe. He has a habit of declaring victory on social media based on few
> discernible facts, or none at all.
> 
> When he has something to market, he markets it. When he doesn’t, he’s liable
> to fake it until voters believe that he’s made it.
> 
> How many times has he announced that Iran is finished? That a peace deal is
> imminent? That the Strait of Hormuz is open, oil has never stopped flowing and
> Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia?
> 
> I can’t count that high without an abacus.
> 
> The former reality TV star also loves to engineer a cliffhanger. Hence his
> decision to build a tariff time bomb – a 50-per-cent levy on $28-billion a
> year of Canadian exports – and set it to go off at 12:01 a.m. on Aug. 19.
> 
> And then, just in the nick of time, he announced that all was saved, and he
> had defused the device.
> 
> Less than two hours before midnight, he wrote on Truth Social that the
> threatened tariffs were paused because, “Canada and the U.S.A., subject to the
> finalization of documents, have a DEAL!”
> 
> Prime Minister Mark Carney’s presentation of the situation, published an hour
> later, was rather more circumspect.
> 
> “Substantial progress has been made,” the PM wrote, “although there is
> important work still to be done.” He added that the U.S. had agreed to pause
> the tariffs because “this work is ongoing.”
> 
> Recent days of intensive talks between Canada and the U.S., like the months of
> not-much-talks that preceded them, have been marked by an extreme level of
> opacity. Neither Ottawa nor Washington has itemized in public what demands the
> U.S. has made of Canada, what Canada has asked of the U.S., what has been put
> on the table by both sides and what horse-trading has taken place.
> 
> And yet there are many things we know.
> 
> We know that Mr. Trump wants most imports, including from his partners in the
> United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, to be subject to U.S. tariffs. He’s
> made exceptions for products such as oil and potash – he doesn’t want to
> visibly raise the prices Americans pay for gasoline or food – but he appears
> set on subjecting manufactured imports to tariffs.
> 
> That is a rather large problem for the integrated North American auto
> industry, and many other Canadian industries.
> 
> He also wants the rest of the world to meekly accept his tariffs and not hit
> back. Mr. Trump hasn’t appreciated that Canada, unlike almost every other
> country, put up its dukes and retaliated.
> 
> But retaliation has given us negotiating leverage.
> 
> In the face of Mr. Trump’s demands for tariff acquiescence, Canada’s trade
> negotiators appear to have spent months ragging the puck. They had reason to.
> 
> The USMCA is a binding legal agreement, signed by Mr. Trump and ratified by
> the U.S. Congress. Standing on it makes sense. The President appears to want
> Canada to accept treaty-violating tariffs, and for Canada to agree to a
> rewrite of the USMCA that would render Mr. Trump’s treaty violations
> treaty-compliant.
> 
> That said, Mr. Trump could also do with a political win. Or at least something
> he can market as a win.
> 
> Right now, American voters have 99 problems with his administration, and a
> trade war with Canada ain’t one. If he can turn a trade war most Americans
> have never heard of into a claim of trade victory, it might subtract from the
> list of reasons to vote against his party in November.
> 
> The only specific detail Mr. Trump mentioned in his social media post
> celebrating a trade deal was the alleged possible revival of “the great
> Keystone XL Pipeline.”
> 
> It’s a long-time Trump obsession. It’s also a project that Canada badly
> wanted, but that two Democratic presidents blocked. If Mr. Trump thinks of
> restarting Keystone XL as a win for him? Hallelujah.
> 
> But there’s something else we know.
> 
> Trump trade policy – like Trump foreign policy – has become a dysfunctional
> version of Deal or No Deal. It’s Deal and No Deal.
> 
> No price is final, even after final sale.
> 
> Adversaries and partners have learned that Mr. Trump is not bound by law,
> treaty or friendship, and has no compunction about breaking written
> commitments he eagerly signed not five minutes ago.
> 
> If an interim deal between Washington and Ottawa really is inches from the
> goal line, that still leaves a whole trade relationship in the balance –
> because this president’s term in office still has 29 months left on the clock.
> 
> It remains unclear how this week’s talks connect with broader negotiations
> over the future of the USMCA.
> 
> Mr. Trump wants to turn what was the world’s most important free-trade deal
> into a creature with aspects of one-way free trade. He wants us to agree to
> give him the freedom to build tariffs walls against us, while demanding that
> we recommit to low or no tariffs against the U.S.
> 
> That’s why this isn’t over. It won’t be so long as that man is in the White
> House.
> 
> Tony Keller
> G&M
 >
It should go without saying that even if Trump brought world peace and 
universal prosperity for everyone on the the planet, some people would 
still hate him. Just saying.