Canada has received an invitation from the EU to join the body as an associate member. Precisely what that means has yet to be defined, and it will probably involve long and detailed negotiations. But it does make one thing perfectly clear. The United States has damaged its relationship with Canada so badly that the Canadians are looking more to Europe for trade and support than they are looking to America. That is second-best for Canada (which would be better off the the US relationship-it had around 2014). At the same time is a disaster for the US, which will lose out on trade opportunities with its neighbor. Naturally, Mr. Trump has threatened everyone with tariffs if they do make a deal. There is never a situation so bad that the American president cannot make worse.
The Associated Press said:
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen on Wednesday set out her priorities for the European Union in the next year, including closer ties with Canada, protection for children online, climate change and Russia’s war on Ukraine.
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney was the special guest as von der Leyen spent well over an hour setting out her vision for the world’s largest trading bloc in her State of the European Union speech to the European Parliament in Strasbourg, France.
For his part, Prime Minister Carney embraced the offer without reservation. The AP noted “He explained in his speech what he was proposing: deeper integration across trade, defense, critical minerals, artificial intelligence, energy, space, research and financial services to make both sides less vulnerable to economic and geopolitical pressure. He later told reporters he was not pursuing full membership of the EU.”
“We do not seek power to dominate others,” the PM said. “On the contrary, we are pursuing resilience so that no one can control our open markets, impair our sovereignty, threaten our territorial integrity, or undermine our freedoms, our democracies, our rule of law.”
“Canada’s been a terrible trade partner,” President Trump told reporters at the airport in Charlotte, North Carolina, when asked about the proposal. “If I think it’s at all a hostile act, I will put very serious tariffs or stop trading with Europe on many things,” he added.
Once again, the Mar-a-lago Moron has demonstrated an ignorance of what tariffs are. To punish Canada and the EU, he proposes raising taxes on US consumers.
There was one phrase in Mr. Carney’s speech that seems under-appreciated and under-reported — “our rule of law.” One of the things an economy needs to grow is certainty. Business leaders hate not being able to anticipate reactions of markets, customers and regulators. The idea that one must pay a bribe to an official to get permission to do business has been proved to hurt economic growth. And Mr. Trump has ensured that the rule of graft in the US supersedes the rule of law. What has been lost is the certainty of the American legal system.
Today, the US has an FCC that tries to tell TV broadcasters what they can air. It has a DoJ that prosecutes not on the evidence but on orders from the criminal in the White House. It has a Pentagon where merit does not matter unless the Secretary of Defense (not War) likes the way one looks. Canada and Europe have made a conscious decision here to retain the rule of law and exclude the US from their discussions. The US can go its own corrupt way as far as they are concerned.
The Canadians and Europeans deserve credit for seeing an opportunity in all the chaos and taking it. What their relationship finally looks like is up to them to decide, but the Ottawa-Brussels relationship will matter more than the Ottawa-Washington one as the months and years pass. There is no way to categorize that other than as a defeat for American foreign policy.