My Thoughts on the Trade War response
The deal was not good. You don’t take a bad deal. Full stop.
Of course a fair deal is better than no deal but you don’t take a bad deal. A lot of opinions online and I have mine. As journalists have revealed details of the negotatiations, it’s increasing clear that walking away was the only option.
First of all, to all the Americans who are blaming Canada for walking away from the table: cool it. If you don’t know exactly who instigated this trade war, you’re living in an echo chamber. We had NAFTA; Trump blew it up. We had USMCA — Trump’s own deal — and he blew it up too. If you want a deal done, get that grifter and his team of clowns out of the White House. The reality is that the U.S. doesn’t have as much leverage as it thinks it does, especially when you factor in four-year leadership terms. If China doesn’t like current U.S. policies, it can just wait four years. Canada has its own term limits, but the same logic still applies. Unfortunately, waiting Trump out seems like the best course of action. If Canada made a bad deal now, it would be harder for them to renegotiate with new U.S. leadership later.
The reality is that the US doesn’t have as much leverage as it thinks it does, especially when you factor in the four-year presidential cycle. If China doesn’t like current US policy, it can simply wait. Canada’s political system works differently, but the same basic logic applies. Unfortunately, waiting Trump out may be the best course of action. If Canada made a bad deal now, it could be much harder to renegotiate with a future US administration.
The strange reactions I’m seeing online:
The last minute demands by the US weren’t last minute. Carney knew what the deal was and pretended it was a last minute screwjob by the US
Well, it does look like Lutnick’s hardline approach was a major factor. But does it really matter whether the US terms were presented at the last minute or had been there all along? If the US wouldn’t budge and the terms were unacceptable, Canada couldn’t make the deal.
Carney is a politician, and of course he’s going to spin this to his advantage. His Davos speech was essentially a sales pitch for a new world order after the US had burned a lot of bridges. This deal would have made Carney look weak on the world stage, and he knew it.
“I’m scared for Canada, this is going to be really bad.”
Look, there is no reality where taking a terrible deal is better than walking away. Trump has fewer than 900 days left in office, and a new, more reasonable administration will eventually get a deal done. If the US implodes in the meantime, Canada will be better off having diversified its trade relationships.
“There is no silver lining to this”
This one I heard when posting about www.CommonGoods.ca seeing a 300% spike in traffic.
Well, that is exactly what a silver lining is. Look it up.
I’m not saying a fair deal wouldn’t have been better. Of course it would have been. But the US wasn’t offering Canada a fair deal. It was offering a shitty one.
So Carney is doing the rational thing: bringing together countries that still broadly stand for Western values, along with some that clearly don’t, to diversify Canada’s trade relationships and offset what has been lost with the US.
“Pierre Poilievre would have gotten a deal done”
This guy isn’t just cringe, he’s wildly unqualified. He looks like an intern standing next to Carney.
Poilievre spent far too much time spouting culture-war BS instead of articulating serious policy, and that’s a big part of why the Conservatives didn’t win. I’m genuinely amazed they haven’t given him the boot.
“Carney caused Brexit, what does he know”
This is demonstrably false. Look it up. Carney is well documented warning about the economic consequences of Brexit long before the vote happened. He warned that Brexit could mean lower growth, higher inflation and even a recession. He was later branded an “enemy of Brexit” by Jacob Rees-Mogg, who accused him of opposing Brexit “the whole way through.”