HALIFAX—It is said that the beginning of wisdom is the suspension of judgement.

With Prime Minister Mark Carney, time will tell. But these days, a lot of people are giving the thumbs-down to the elbows-up guy. 

Why have so many of these judgements—some of them written by yours truly—been unkind? No surprise there. 

In the often cruel world of public life, political honeymoons are shorter than Arctic summers. Campaign postures retreat faster than melting glaciers under the heat of governing. 

And the press dutifully records the gulf between the promises and performance of public office holders. No one has yet met the politician whose record in office remotely resembles what was promised on the hustings. 

Carney’s principle problem is having to deal with the fatally mercurial American President Donald Trump. Their trade talks have shown Canadians a different Carney from the one they voted for—very different from the muscular nationalist who warned them that the U.S. president was serious about taking over our country, as if we were a Kentucky Fried Chicken franchise and not a sovereign nation. 

In those trade talks, the former Captain Canada, who inspired a spike in national pride and purpose with his anti-Trump rhetoric, has seemingly changed. 

On the surface, Carney has morphed into just another fawning world leader trying to extract goodies from Trump by shameless flattery. He can call that “pragmatic.” 

But it also goes by another name. “Obsequiousness” is always hard to take, even when it is strategic rather than heartfelt. Still, it is hard to swallow Carney’s statement that the G7 is “nothing without U.S. leadership.” Or that Trump has been a “transformational” president. 

Reality check? All he has done is transform the U.S. from a democracy into a proto-fascist state.

Did Carney have to lather it on so shamelessly? Did United Kingdom Prime Minister Keir Starmer tell our PM to hold his nose and soak Trump in a torrent of compliments to get relief from ruinous U.S. tariffs? After all, that approach got Britain a “deal,” including exemptions for steel and aluminum.

Whatever the answer to that question, no one should underestimate Carney’s dreadful position in these critical trade talks. 

For starters, Trump’s word is as meaningless as any deal he might sign. He has walked away from deals in the past that he himself negotiated. The U.S. president is a stranger to shame.

No one should forget that Trump promised 90 deals in 90 days with his trading partners around the world over his new tariff regime. All he got when his own deadline passed were three “framework” agreements. 

The reason for this abject failure is simple. Trump doesn’t negotiate in the traditional sense of the word. What he does is dictate and bully. He coerces rather than converses. He offers “take-take” and “take-it-or-leave it,” not “give and take.” 

The latest proof of this was his decision to send threatening letters to countries that have not agreed to his terms. Either the recipients agree to his imposed terms, or they face the return of those huge “reciprocal” tariffs he brought in last April. To call that “negotiating” is the stuff of nasal coffee rockets. 

So, what should Carney do? 

One thing he shouldn’t do is rush into a deal with Trump. Two federal courts in the U.S.—including the country’s Court of International Trade which reached its conclusion in a unanimous decision—have already ruled that Trump’s sweeping emergency tariffs are illegal. 

The rulings of those two federal courts are currently under appeal in the U.S. Court of Appeals in the District of Columbia. The U.S. Supreme Court has refused to “fast-track” a review of those decisions until the issue has been fully dealt with by the lower courts. 

In other words, Trump may well be found to have exceeded his authority to negotiate foreign tariffs, a power that usually rests with Congress. Does Canada really need to hurry into a deal with Trump, only to find that he didn’t hold “all the cards” after all and that his tariffs were illegal from the get-go?

But if Carney insists on doing a deal by the artificial deadline of July 21, it would hardly come as a surprise even though trade deals normally take months—if not years—to properly consummate. 

There is, after all, a great deal on the table for Canada, given its historic dependence on the American market to sustain the economy. 

Tiff Macklem, the governor of the Bank of Canada, said that continuing trade tensions with the U.S. could trigger “one of the most significant economic shocks in over a century.” 

That is heavy stuff coming from the country’s top banker, and enough to get any self-described pragmatist down to cutting a deal.

The Disney ending for Carney in these trade talks, which would more than justify his alleged “bootlicking” and apparent giveaway on the digital services tax, comes down to this: if the prime minister could have tariffs removed on aluminum and Canadian automobiles and parts, it would be a wild success. 

It would preserve two vital industries in the country’s two most populated provinces, and it would show that a lot more political savvy was going on behind the scenes than anyone imagined. 

It would also show that the negative assessments of Carney’s performance were a rush to judgement. He would emerge as our political prince. That’s not out of the question. Remember, Canada was exempted from Trump’s “universal” 10-per-cent tariff.

That said, Disney endings happen mostly on the silver screen, and not in the dusty arena of public life. 

A more realistic outcome of what Carney might achieve would look something like this: a reduction—rather than a removal—of tariffs on key Canadian exports; and a new deal with the U.S., but something less than the relationship Canada has enjoyed for decades.

Will Canadians accept half a loaf, or blame the prime minister for coming away with less than we had before? In the pitiless business of politics, the answer is far from certain. 

Michael Harris is an award-winning author and journalist.

The Hill Times

 

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