Carson Jerema: A CanCon War with Trump isn’t even the dumbest thing going on

Article content

Carney said, the Times summarized, that “for the right deal on tariffs, Canada would consider bringing its side of the pipeline back to life.” Ultimately, “A Canadian official said that the trade deal on offer was not good enough to make the pipeline make sense.”

Article content

If the report is accurate, it’s strange that a government viewed increasing tariff-free exports of a key Canadian resource as a concession, rather than a goal. Except the Liberals have spent the past decade trying to strangle the Alberta-based energy industry.

Article content

The Liberals have clearly benefited politically from conflict with Trump, creating legitimate skepticism about why Canada walked away from trade negotiations. Take Carney’s behaviour over the past year, with him wildly over-promising on his ability to achieve a deal with the U.S, and variously presenting himself as the Trump whisperer, or leader of the anti-Trump resistance.

Article content

He fashioned himself as the only candidate capable of reaching a deal with the U.S., while also being the right person to lead the world’s middle powers, if you believe the tripe in his Davos speech. He at once promises to work with Trump, while seeking to usurp him, all out in the open, and all at once.

Article content

Article content

This approach has been particularly popular among Canadians over 65 and those who work in the public service, while doing very little to improve Canada’s economic position. This country is still saddled with onerous taxation and regulatory regimes, and as blessed as we are with natural resources, getting the infrastructure in place to extract and ship them to market is nearly impossible.

Article content

The government rides anti-Trump vibes to high poll numbers, while much of the country stagnates.

Article content

However, regardless of how poorly conceived our cultural and regulatory policies are, and how unserious the prime minster’s actions have been, the government has every right to behave this way, and to implement every transparently terrible policy it wishes.

Article content

That doesn’t mean, of course, that the Liberals should be free of consequences. In fact, if this was merely a regular trade deal being negotiated with the Americans, and the Canadians were behaving this way, it should have been the U.S. side that walked way, but these aren’t normal negotiations, with normal concessions being offered and received.

Article content

Article content

Even if Trump has good reason to want to have a say over who Canada can sign a trade deal with, or over our cultural and regulatory policies, his administration offered virtually nothing in return. Not only would it maintain high tariffs on Canadian imports, it reserved the right, according to media reports, to unilaterally change its trade policy towards Canada at any time.

Article content

And all of this was happening while CUSMA is still in effect and supposedly up for renegotiation. The outcome of these talks would merely be a prelude to those negotiations, and would mean entering them after already making massive concessions.

Article content

So no, despite the government’s obnoxiousness, Canada is not more to blame for this mess than the United States. Trump has been busy launching tariffs against the entire world, turning friendly countries all over the place into rivals. If the president wanted to get Canada, Europe and its East Asian allies to align against China, for instance, economic aggression was the wrong approach.

Article content

Unfortunately, Trump’s attitude towards his supposed allies has permitted the Liberal Party of Canada, at virtually no cost to itself, to embrace all its worst instincts.

Article content

National Post

Article content