Trust takes a generation to build and an eyeblink to destroy. The mere threat of tariffs is an illegal, unjustifiable breach of a treaty he negotiated only 6 years ago, It was an intentional abrogation and thus means that no treaty and no promise made by the US can be relied on. Clearly, as everyone knows, 'only a fool trusts Trump', but for the United States the much more serious and corrosive issue is how pervasive and long lasting the conclusion that 'only a fool trusts Americans' becomes. The evidence from behaviour of most Republicans, and many others, is that the problem extends well beyond Trump. As a result, it would be unwise for any country to consider cooperation or tighter integration in any activity - trade, military, security, banking, immigration .... - with the United States that in any way that results in any reduction of complete independence. And while nothing will be sudden, that in a nutshell foretells the inevitable and massive loss of US soft power.
It's not merely one generation. United States and Canada managed to build better relationship starting with Wilfred Laurier and Teddy Roosevelt, with Canadians finally seeing the growing giant sending doughboys to bleed with them by 1917, only to witness American withdraw to isolationist view while leaving the British Empire by their lonesome in the formation of the League of Nations, and then come the Great Depression while your Hoover administration levy destructive tariffs as the world plunged into the abyss along with America.
Come FDR, Truman, and Canada agreed with America's view, stood side by side with America to contain the spectre of the Iron Curtain in Korea. We did not see eye to eye during VIetnam war period. We Canada came to form closer ties with US during LBJ years with the auto pact of 1965, with the auto pact eventually leading to integration that really fostered during the Reagan years, that first came to be with the Canada-United States Free Trade agreement of 1988 with Mulroney Conservative government. By 1991, Bilateral talk with Mexico began, leading to NAFTA of 1992.
Trump's first term saw NAFTA being drawn anew as we made deal in good faith with the USMCA to supersede NAFTA, only to see USMCA worth less than the paper it's printed on just 2 weeks into Trump's second term. Oh, how the pendulum swings.
Yup. You would be surprised by the number of people who posted screenshots of their cancelled Netflix and Amazon subscriptions; the stores who flagged products in their shelves; and the vitriol on social media, wow. Trump is turning friends into enemies. Meanwhile Dimitry Medvedev applauded Musk's dismantling of USAID, which had done so much to overthrow his beloved Apartheid South Africa. And oh, here's what the new acting Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, Darren Beattie tweeted last year: "Competent white men must be in charge if you want things to work."
That deafening sound you hear is American prestige disintegrating in flight.
A substantial part of Canada's national identity is being NotAmericans. The combination of tariffs and threats of annexation are an ideal way to make Canadians angry.
Une part importante de l'identité nationale du Canada réside dans le fait d'être non-américain. La combinaison des tarifs douaniers et des menaces d'annexion est un moyen idéal pour mettre les Canadiens en colère.
Canadian here. The idea of Canada spending "2% of GDP on defence to meet NATO commitments" is now called into question. What *is* NATO if the United States is led by someone who openly admires autocrats and is threatening Denmark? If we spend on defence, who is the enemy we are preparing for? The answer is no longer obvious.
Trump's strategy is actually working. His objective? To divert significant foreign investment from Canada to the US. Given that Trump is so readily willing to ignore trade agreements, what CEO in the EU, the UK, Japan or South Korea would invest another dollar in Canada? Even Canadian CEOs are planning to invest their next dollar in the US rather than in Canada. This is a BIG problem for Canada. And it's all about Trump (and JD Vance) boasting in 2028 that they caused the massive increase in FDI in the US (and the attendant growth in high end manufacturing jobs) in the previous four years. Sigh.
Canada’s plan was announced in December, AFTER Trump’s November tariff threat. No threat, no package.
The timing matters. It undercuts the view that Canada got one over on Trump. In reality, Canada showed that we’re willing to pay up when extorted. The only question is how much it’ll cost us the next time, and the time after that. And the time after that. Right up to the USMCA renegotiation, and beyond.
Also, these aren’t valueless baubles. They matter. Changing the Criminal Code to reclassify organized crime as terrorism (possible human rights and Charter implications) or creating a joint strike force to go after these newly minted terrorists (almost certain to implicate Canadian officers in human rights violations) or allocating $1.3 billion that could’ve been spent on something important aren’t nothing.
Yes, I'm aware of what happened in November and December. But that makes Trump's weekend tariff threat and climbdown on Monday even more inexplicable. At best he conned his MAGA base into thinking he's wrung more concessions from Canada. But as the rest of my newsletter points out, the repercussions of this needless blow-up are a strategic net loss.
Definitely a net loss, yes. As a Canadian, the more important thing is what all this means for the overall relationship and Canada’s potential for policy autonomy. Which is why it’s important to note that this was a concession made under duress.
I have a dark fear that when studying Trump's actions the Hard Working Staff is looking for logic in all the wrong places.
Psychologists (or fans or professional wrestling) might have an easier time explaining and predicting Trump's moves. Clearly he needs to be the center of attention and lives to confound expectations (we've seen for years that, like an empowered toddler, the one thing Trump *can't* do is something everyone says he must.)
Also, when everyone is shouting the guy (or gal!) with the biggest megaphone wins. Trump is not looking for calm, nuanced debate on this topic, or any other.
Well. Trump mumbling about annexing Canada, Greenland and Panama while cooler heads insist that Taiwan and Ukraine are off-limits to others will require an impressive effort by L'il Marco Rubio.
"Canada’s plan was announced in December, AFTER Trump’s November tariff threat. No threat, no package."
Yes, the US has a lot of leverage over Canada by dint of the economic structure of the two countries, but Trump has made use of that leverage in the most ham-fisted and counterproductive way possible. Trudeau was widely seen as an unserious lightweight on defence and security matters in Canada (with some justice) and was set for a historical beating at the polls. The incoming Conservatives would certainly have been more to America's liking on security issues, and they probably would have done every single thing that Trudeau just did on border security, entirely of their own accord. Trump has blundered in like an elephant and single-handedly made the next election competitive again.
It really does look like the US wants to turn us into Ukraine, and we're going to be planning accordingly going forward. If that's not the goal then what is the US trying to do?
It seems that Canadian voters were giving Trudeau a reason to come up with a border plan even before Trump was elected. The plan was released on December 17, so either it was developed quite quickly or work started on it before November 5. So in the absence of inside information, it’s hard to tell whether the plan was intended to convince Trump not to impose tariffs on Canada.
I sincerely doubt that Trudeau anticipated how events actually played out. Trudeau’s initial response to the tariffs was to threaten retaliation, not to point to the border plan. I’d guess that Trudeau’s border plan entered the negotiations only after Trump or some of the people around him realized that the tariff was a bad idea, and asked Trudeau to provide a face saving way for Trump to back down.
We Canada came to be due to the looming threat of annexation under the Monroe Doctrine, with memories of War of 1812 fresh on the minds across British North America. The Manifest Destiny argument is now back in full force under Trump, with he and his ilk making the same sort of belittling argument that Dugin and Putin have adhered to when it comes to Ukraine.
To them, Canada is not a viable country, a mere leech that lives on the auspice of American magnanimity, a couple acres of snow that have no semblance of cultural identity except being mere copies of America, who are better off being incorporated into the fold of the US. All the while Trump and his kleptocrats eye the riches of this nation.
We in Canada are witnessing Elon Musk taking over your federal institutions in the same vein that Hitler ended the Weimar Republic back in 1933, and knowing that one of the first things that the Reich did was to enact tariffs on the adjacent state of Denmark, a country that watched Hitler pitching lebensraum as Czechoslovakia, Sudetenland, and Austria being forcibly occupied as one after another appeasement agreement brokered by Chamberlain get torn to pieces.
Wanted to share this piece with you—it’s about how Trump manufactures crises, declares victory, and spins failure into success while the media plays along. It breaks down his predictable playbook and how the press keeps falling for it.
Would love to hear your thoughts when you have a minute
This is what malignant narcissists do; they derive pleasure from destruction, be it of relationships or even other countries. They cannot change; cognitive behavior therapy is not effective.
What an incredible own-goal. FWIW, I think the Ukraine analogy is a bit of a stretch, and Trump's economic pain threshold is hardly at Putin levels. All it takes is a 500 point drop in the Dow Jones Industrial Average for him to declare victory and move to the next grievance.
I disagree with that assertion. Trump's rhetoric and threat against Greenland isn't just a spur of the moment thing, and his threat extends to Panama, not merely to Canada.
I'm a dual US/Canada citizen who has lived in Canada much longer than in the US. No one's national anthems should be booed, because not everyone in the US voted or believes in MAGA. But Americans needed to get the point.
There may have been some inkling in Trump's brain that tariffs would be a good thing, but the better, most excellent thing would be to take over Canada, just like Greenland and Panama and now Gaza. Seriously!
There are big problems here, and like other esteemed commentators, you have correctly seen the end of American leadership in global affairs. No one trusts the US government and no one is ignoring China's advances. Give your head a shake USA.
Given what’s going on with climate change I fear the maple syrup is ephemeral, especially as Trump and his gang continue down the path they’re on. The bitterness that’s being created is for the longer term.
How about when Feb 1 rolls in, tRump sez he's "suspending tariffs for now" coz he's seen "significant progress by Canada and Mexico" in reducing migrant traffic. TRump has done this before, as it's all a part of - wait for it - "The Art of The Deal".
Easy call...performative bullying, and predictable climbdown, all the while proclaiming a "win". Same thing with the moron's "20 million illegals will be deported" bullshit...plenty of videos depicting straggling bunches of shackled males marched onto military aircraft, threats galore, armed- up ICE officers going into buildings, etc. Net result: daily haul below the average in 2024 under Biden.
If concessions were already in place, why the arm-waving and breathless denunciations by Mexico and Canada? Nothing about concessions being in place was reported before. Why now? None of this makes sense.
I think that Mexico and Canada thought that Trump was serious. And I think that Trump was serious--he thought that either the tariffs would go into effect and reduce the Unites States trade deficit, or that Canada and Mexico to make actual concessions to get the tariffs lifted.
Right. All parties were serious, and the rest of the world reacted in the strongest possible way. However, Dr. Drezner is saying the opposite. It was all kabuki. Somebody's got to be wrong, either him, or the rest of the world. Take your pick
Ah, but you see those nations understood tRump's game...they first denounced the tariffs - well advertised before imposing - then feigned "agreement/concessions" because Sheinbaum and Trudeau knew that they HAD TO BE SEEN to "obey" tRump publicly - even though all that was agreed to was already in place - as their rôle in pacifying the spoiled child...win-win, nobody gets hurt, we all go home happy.
Trust takes a generation to build and an eyeblink to destroy. The mere threat of tariffs is an illegal, unjustifiable breach of a treaty he negotiated only 6 years ago, It was an intentional abrogation and thus means that no treaty and no promise made by the US can be relied on. Clearly, as everyone knows, 'only a fool trusts Trump', but for the United States the much more serious and corrosive issue is how pervasive and long lasting the conclusion that 'only a fool trusts Americans' becomes. The evidence from behaviour of most Republicans, and many others, is that the problem extends well beyond Trump. As a result, it would be unwise for any country to consider cooperation or tighter integration in any activity - trade, military, security, banking, immigration .... - with the United States that in any way that results in any reduction of complete independence. And while nothing will be sudden, that in a nutshell foretells the inevitable and massive loss of US soft power.
It's not merely one generation. United States and Canada managed to build better relationship starting with Wilfred Laurier and Teddy Roosevelt, with Canadians finally seeing the growing giant sending doughboys to bleed with them by 1917, only to witness American withdraw to isolationist view while leaving the British Empire by their lonesome in the formation of the League of Nations, and then come the Great Depression while your Hoover administration levy destructive tariffs as the world plunged into the abyss along with America.
Come FDR, Truman, and Canada agreed with America's view, stood side by side with America to contain the spectre of the Iron Curtain in Korea. We did not see eye to eye during VIetnam war period. We Canada came to form closer ties with US during LBJ years with the auto pact of 1965, with the auto pact eventually leading to integration that really fostered during the Reagan years, that first came to be with the Canada-United States Free Trade agreement of 1988 with Mulroney Conservative government. By 1991, Bilateral talk with Mexico began, leading to NAFTA of 1992.
Trump's first term saw NAFTA being drawn anew as we made deal in good faith with the USMCA to supersede NAFTA, only to see USMCA worth less than the paper it's printed on just 2 weeks into Trump's second term. Oh, how the pendulum swings.
Yup. You would be surprised by the number of people who posted screenshots of their cancelled Netflix and Amazon subscriptions; the stores who flagged products in their shelves; and the vitriol on social media, wow. Trump is turning friends into enemies. Meanwhile Dimitry Medvedev applauded Musk's dismantling of USAID, which had done so much to overthrow his beloved Apartheid South Africa. And oh, here's what the new acting Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, Darren Beattie tweeted last year: "Competent white men must be in charge if you want things to work."
That deafening sound you hear is American prestige disintegrating in flight.
A substantial part of Canada's national identity is being NotAmericans. The combination of tariffs and threats of annexation are an ideal way to make Canadians angry.
Une part importante de l'identité nationale du Canada réside dans le fait d'être non-américain. La combinaison des tarifs douaniers et des menaces d'annexion est un moyen idéal pour mettre les Canadiens en colère.
Vive le Canada libre!
When I lived in England, the greatest compliment was to be mistaken as a Canadian.
Canadian here. The idea of Canada spending "2% of GDP on defence to meet NATO commitments" is now called into question. What *is* NATO if the United States is led by someone who openly admires autocrats and is threatening Denmark? If we spend on defence, who is the enemy we are preparing for? The answer is no longer obvious.
Trump's strategy is actually working. His objective? To divert significant foreign investment from Canada to the US. Given that Trump is so readily willing to ignore trade agreements, what CEO in the EU, the UK, Japan or South Korea would invest another dollar in Canada? Even Canadian CEOs are planning to invest their next dollar in the US rather than in Canada. This is a BIG problem for Canada. And it's all about Trump (and JD Vance) boasting in 2028 that they caused the massive increase in FDI in the US (and the attendant growth in high end manufacturing jobs) in the previous four years. Sigh.
Canada’s plan was announced in December, AFTER Trump’s November tariff threat. No threat, no package.
The timing matters. It undercuts the view that Canada got one over on Trump. In reality, Canada showed that we’re willing to pay up when extorted. The only question is how much it’ll cost us the next time, and the time after that. And the time after that. Right up to the USMCA renegotiation, and beyond.
Also, these aren’t valueless baubles. They matter. Changing the Criminal Code to reclassify organized crime as terrorism (possible human rights and Charter implications) or creating a joint strike force to go after these newly minted terrorists (almost certain to implicate Canadian officers in human rights violations) or allocating $1.3 billion that could’ve been spent on something important aren’t nothing.
Original policy announcement: https://www.canada.ca/en/public-safety-canada/news/2024/12/government-of-canada-announces-its-plan-to-strengthen-border-security-and-our-immigration-system.html
Yes, I'm aware of what happened in November and December. But that makes Trump's weekend tariff threat and climbdown on Monday even more inexplicable. At best he conned his MAGA base into thinking he's wrung more concessions from Canada. But as the rest of my newsletter points out, the repercussions of this needless blow-up are a strategic net loss.
Definitely a net loss, yes. As a Canadian, the more important thing is what all this means for the overall relationship and Canada’s potential for policy autonomy. Which is why it’s important to note that this was a concession made under duress.
I have a dark fear that when studying Trump's actions the Hard Working Staff is looking for logic in all the wrong places.
Psychologists (or fans or professional wrestling) might have an easier time explaining and predicting Trump's moves. Clearly he needs to be the center of attention and lives to confound expectations (we've seen for years that, like an empowered toddler, the one thing Trump *can't* do is something everyone says he must.)
Also, when everyone is shouting the guy (or gal!) with the biggest megaphone wins. Trump is not looking for calm, nuanced debate on this topic, or any other.
Well. Trump mumbling about annexing Canada, Greenland and Panama while cooler heads insist that Taiwan and Ukraine are off-limits to others will require an impressive effort by L'il Marco Rubio.
Name anything Canada offered that any American president could not have gotten with some phone calls and discrete pressure.
"Canada’s plan was announced in December, AFTER Trump’s November tariff threat. No threat, no package."
Yes, the US has a lot of leverage over Canada by dint of the economic structure of the two countries, but Trump has made use of that leverage in the most ham-fisted and counterproductive way possible. Trudeau was widely seen as an unserious lightweight on defence and security matters in Canada (with some justice) and was set for a historical beating at the polls. The incoming Conservatives would certainly have been more to America's liking on security issues, and they probably would have done every single thing that Trudeau just did on border security, entirely of their own accord. Trump has blundered in like an elephant and single-handedly made the next election competitive again.
It really does look like the US wants to turn us into Ukraine, and we're going to be planning accordingly going forward. If that's not the goal then what is the US trying to do?
I suspect, Cubicle Farmer, that a new Conservative Prime Minister will now find it politically costly to make policy changes that Trump would like
It seems that Canadian voters were giving Trudeau a reason to come up with a border plan even before Trump was elected. The plan was released on December 17, so either it was developed quite quickly or work started on it before November 5. So in the absence of inside information, it’s hard to tell whether the plan was intended to convince Trump not to impose tariffs on Canada.
I sincerely doubt that Trudeau anticipated how events actually played out. Trudeau’s initial response to the tariffs was to threaten retaliation, not to point to the border plan. I’d guess that Trudeau’s border plan entered the negotiations only after Trump or some of the people around him realized that the tariff was a bad idea, and asked Trudeau to provide a face saving way for Trump to back down.
We Canada came to be due to the looming threat of annexation under the Monroe Doctrine, with memories of War of 1812 fresh on the minds across British North America. The Manifest Destiny argument is now back in full force under Trump, with he and his ilk making the same sort of belittling argument that Dugin and Putin have adhered to when it comes to Ukraine.
To them, Canada is not a viable country, a mere leech that lives on the auspice of American magnanimity, a couple acres of snow that have no semblance of cultural identity except being mere copies of America, who are better off being incorporated into the fold of the US. All the while Trump and his kleptocrats eye the riches of this nation.
We in Canada are witnessing Elon Musk taking over your federal institutions in the same vein that Hitler ended the Weimar Republic back in 1933, and knowing that one of the first things that the Reich did was to enact tariffs on the adjacent state of Denmark, a country that watched Hitler pitching lebensraum as Czechoslovakia, Sudetenland, and Austria being forcibly occupied as one after another appeasement agreement brokered by Chamberlain get torn to pieces.
Yeah, history certainly rhymes.
Wanted to share this piece with you—it’s about how Trump manufactures crises, declares victory, and spins failure into success while the media plays along. It breaks down his predictable playbook and how the press keeps falling for it.
Would love to hear your thoughts when you have a minute
https://jasonegenberg.substack.com/p/the-art-of-the-cave-how-trump-got
This is what malignant narcissists do; they derive pleasure from destruction, be it of relationships or even other countries. They cannot change; cognitive behavior therapy is not effective.
For Trump, the only real policy is displaying dominance. Or attempting to.
OTOH, he is likely at least imperiling what would have been an easy win by the Conservatives, and maybe making Freeland not just an interim PM.
What an incredible own-goal. FWIW, I think the Ukraine analogy is a bit of a stretch, and Trump's economic pain threshold is hardly at Putin levels. All it takes is a 500 point drop in the Dow Jones Industrial Average for him to declare victory and move to the next grievance.
I disagree with that assertion. Trump's rhetoric and threat against Greenland isn't just a spur of the moment thing, and his threat extends to Panama, not merely to Canada.
Betrayal is Trump's superpower.
I'm a dual US/Canada citizen who has lived in Canada much longer than in the US. No one's national anthems should be booed, because not everyone in the US voted or believes in MAGA. But Americans needed to get the point.
There may have been some inkling in Trump's brain that tariffs would be a good thing, but the better, most excellent thing would be to take over Canada, just like Greenland and Panama and now Gaza. Seriously!
There are big problems here, and like other esteemed commentators, you have correctly seen the end of American leadership in global affairs. No one trusts the US government and no one is ignoring China's advances. Give your head a shake USA.
Given what’s going on with climate change I fear the maple syrup is ephemeral, especially as Trump and his gang continue down the path they’re on. The bitterness that’s being created is for the longer term.
Posted this 22 Jan on Substack:
Lance Khrome
Jan 22
How about when Feb 1 rolls in, tRump sez he's "suspending tariffs for now" coz he's seen "significant progress by Canada and Mexico" in reducing migrant traffic. TRump has done this before, as it's all a part of - wait for it - "The Art of The Deal".
Easy call...performative bullying, and predictable climbdown, all the while proclaiming a "win". Same thing with the moron's "20 million illegals will be deported" bullshit...plenty of videos depicting straggling bunches of shackled males marched onto military aircraft, threats galore, armed- up ICE officers going into buildings, etc. Net result: daily haul below the average in 2024 under Biden.
And the beat goes on.
If concessions were already in place, why the arm-waving and breathless denunciations by Mexico and Canada? Nothing about concessions being in place was reported before. Why now? None of this makes sense.
I think that Mexico and Canada thought that Trump was serious. And I think that Trump was serious--he thought that either the tariffs would go into effect and reduce the Unites States trade deficit, or that Canada and Mexico to make actual concessions to get the tariffs lifted.
Right. All parties were serious, and the rest of the world reacted in the strongest possible way. However, Dr. Drezner is saying the opposite. It was all kabuki. Somebody's got to be wrong, either him, or the rest of the world. Take your pick
Ah, but you see those nations understood tRump's game...they first denounced the tariffs - well advertised before imposing - then feigned "agreement/concessions" because Sheinbaum and Trudeau knew that they HAD TO BE SEEN to "obey" tRump publicly - even though all that was agreed to was already in place - as their rôle in pacifying the spoiled child...win-win, nobody gets hurt, we all go home happy.
So it's all a charade? And the media's in on it? This is a whole lot a crazy