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

On Wed, 19 Aug 2026 15:52:00 -0700, Dude <[email protected]> wrote:

>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.

Grab a pussy and be happy.
-- 
Noah Sombrero mustachioed villain
Don't get political with me young man
or I'll tie you to a railroad track and
<<<talk>>> to <<<YOOooooo>>>
Who dares to talk to El Sombrero?
dares: Ned
does not dare: Julian  shrinks in horror and warns others away