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

On Thu, 20 Aug 2026 10:10:36 -0400, Wilson <[email protected]>
wrote:

>On 8/19/2026 6:52 PM, Dude 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.
>
>The question is what's more important, effectiveness or surface 
>appearance, actual function or form? The answer to that separates the 
>people who've had enough experience to understand long term effects from 
>those who's highest goal is to follow the herd because it meets their 
>short term social needs.

This interests wilson because he thinks he does not do that and others
do.

>Possibly related: The theory of time preference.
-- 
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