HALIFAX—Let’s start with the good news.

In his recent face-to-face with United States President Donald Trump, Prime Minister Mark Carney pulled off mission impossible. What’s more, he did it with grace and style.

What happened in the first meeting between these political polar opposites was nothing short of remarkable. 

In Carney’s world, two plus two always equals four. In banking and finance, facts matter. In the navel-gazing nightmare of intuitive Trumpism, two plus two equals whatever the president says it does.  

Yet Carney’s reason and emotional suppleness neutralized Trump’s multiple lies and ego-liberation—at least it did this time.

That is all the more surprising because negotiating with Trump is like patting a wolverine. As Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy learned the hard way, that could cost you political life and limb.  

But Carney entered what one wag called “the golden abattoir” of the Oval Office, faced down Trump and his bevy of bobblehead cabinet secretaries, and finessed his way through it all. There was no obsequious flattery of his host, no cow-towing, and no burning of a very important bridge.

Now for the bad news.

No one should conclude that Carney has turned the page on the once-solid relationship with the U.S. that he himself has said is now “over.” He has not. Though Carney avoided a Zelenskyy moment, and kept the talks going into the future, Trump made clear that he is still determined to damage Canada’s economy in a big way. In fact, he wants to bring the True North Strong and Free to its knees. He wants to annex us.

Trump reiterated his goal of killing the Canadian automotive industry. He told Carney that he didn’t want cars made in Canada, didn’t care that 50 per cent of those cars are made up of American parts, and repeated his threat to keep tariffs in place that would eventually make it uneconomic to manufacture cars in Canada. Warren Buffett has called those tactics an act of economic war.

When asked if there was anything that PM Carney could say in their meeting that would make him drop the tariffs, Trump’s reply was a terse “no.” Recent major layoffs in Windsor and Oshawa automotive plants show how deadly those tariffs could be, and how right the Sage of Omaha—Buffett—has it. And it’s not just automobiles. It’s steel, aluminum, potash, and even films.

Although Carney grabbed the headlines with his stout defence of Canadian sovereignty, Trump stubbornly continued to muse about this country becoming America’s 51st state, reducing us to Greenland without the invasion.

In the tangled web of Trump’s fact-free mind, he clearly still believes that he can use tariffs to make life miserable for Canadians. And if they get desperate enough, he supposes, then they might revisit the notion of living under the Stars and Stripes rather than the Maple Leaf. Carney unambiguously said “never.” Trump’s rejoinder? “Never say never.”  

The point here is that despite Carney’s impressive performance in Washington, D.C., at the end of the day, it will still be the mercurial and mendacious Trump who will be calling the shots on the American side. As he has made clear on many occasions, he—and only he—is The Great Decider.

There is no evidence to suggest that Trump will abandon his false claim that the U.S. is subsidizing Canada to the tune of $200-billion a year, that fentanyl is pouring across the northern border into America, or that this country is “screwing” the U.S., just as he claims the rest of the world has been doing for decades.  

Former New Brunswick premier Frank McKenna praised Carney for not rising to the bait of this torrent of “lies” from the president.

But how do you negotiate with someone who brings fake facts to the table, a person who believes that his opinion is the only fact that matters? The short answer is that you can’t.  

Canada’s best hope is that the domestic situation in the U.S. will become so bad under Trump’s shambolic stewardship that Americans will force him to change course. Hard to believe that it might come down to the price of Barbie dolls and Hot Wheels at Walmart.

But if Americans—like the Republican Congress, the courts, and a pathetic portion of the U.S. media—continue to applaud their own demise by allowing Trump to lie them into an authoritarian state, you can bet the farm that Trump’s stretchers will only get worse.  

Consider what the head of the Federal Reserve, based on the facts, has said about the Trump tariffs.  

In deciding against an interest rate cut, Jerome Powell declared that the tariffs will lead to inflation, a slowdown in the economy, and increased unemployment.   

Trump’s view of Powell? He can’t be terminated quickly enough. The reality? Neither the president nor Congress can fire the Fed chairman before the end of his term.  

If you want proof of how far Trump is willing to go in his vengeful assaults on those who disagree with him or who he simply doesn’t like, consider his absurd claims about why “millions” are dying in the Russia/Ukraine war. 

The CBC reports that Trump blames it all on—are you ready?—Justin Trudeau and Barack Obama. That’s right. Never mind that Russia started the war by invading Ukraine. Or that at the time, Trump called Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion a “brilliant” move.  

It was all Trudeau’s fault, with an assist from Obama. Why? Because it was Trudeau who lobbied to have Russia thrown out of the G8. And that, Trump said, was a “very bad decision.” An understandable assertion from a man who has annexationist plans of his own.

Only one problem.  

Russia was booted out of the G8 a year before Trudeau became prime minister. It happened under prime minister Stephen Harper’s government and with Harper’s full support. Like most members of the G8, Harper was appalled—and rightly so—by Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014.  

This is just one more example of the absurdities and travesties Trump has brought to America and the world.  

Who would have thought that an American president would authorize the arrest of a third-grade student from her classroom, with burly ICE agents placing her in handcuffs?  

Or the occupant of the Oval Office disappearing people—including U.S. citizens—to dreadful prisons or foreign countries without an iota of due process?

Or the leader of the Western world slow-walking—or simply ignoring—judicial orders, including from the Supreme Court?

Or grossly violating the Emoluments Act by making millions on a bitcoin with his own face on it, at the same time as Trump, as president, is loosening restrictions on crypto-currency?

Or walking away from America’s foreign aid commitments through USAID in such a disgusting way.  As philanthropist Bill Gates put it: “The picture of the world’s richest man killing the world’s poorest children is not a pretty one.”

And who could have ever thought that an American president would ever claim, as Trump has, that he didn’t know if he had to uphold the Constitution?

It is true that the Canada-U.S. relationship is worth fighting for, as Carney is trying to do. But there is another truth.  

When dealing with a person like Trump—a demagogue, a liar, a convicted fraudster, and a con-man—no deal is better than a bad deal.

Michael Harris is an award-winning author and journalist.

The Hill Times

 

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