OTTAWA — It’s every country for itself in the era of Donald Trump.
Ottawa is seeking allies but allies are seeking cover. They see what’s going on, and undoubtedly hope they can avoid the same fate.
The unpredictable U.S. president hammered Canada and Mexico on Tuesday with punishing 25 per cent tariffs and 10 per cent on energy. Then the flip-flops began.
On Wednesday, under pressure from America’s car companies, Trump exempted automakers. On Thursday as stock markets roiled, Trump “paused” the so-called border-related tariffs and dropped the rate of any future tariffs on critical Canadian fertilizer to 10 per cent, only to turn around Friday and threaten new tariffs on Canadian dairy and lumber in the days ahead. Still looming are steel and aluminum tariffs next week, and bigger tariffs to come — if you believe Trump — on April 2, on every country that deals with the U.S.
When the Star asked Prime Minister Justin Trudeau how he would characterize dealing with Trump and his shifting tariff deadlines after his foreign affairs minister had called it a psychodrama, Trudeau deadpanned: “Thursday.”
The past eight days have laid bare the challenge for the world in dealing with the mercurial president, from his confrontation with Ukraine’s president and siding with Russia to his condescending treatment of Canada and its outgoing prime minister, slagging Trudeau on social media as “governor” of Trump’s would-be 51st state, while praising Mexico’s president as “a wonderful woman” he respected.
President Claudia Sheinbaum basked in Trump’s flattery. She flashed his Truth Social post about their great relationship up on a big screen at a news conference. Unlike Canada, Mexico has not revealed its retaliatory plan of counter-tariffs, with Sheinbaum winning plaudits from some corners for keeping her cards close.
Meanwhile Trudeau, who has been publicly discreet about his private conversations with Trump, has been clear. On the day the 25 per cent tariffs took effect, Trudeau launched Canada’s previously-announced retaliation plan, filed formal trade complaints, while telling “Donald” that he should heed the Wall Street Journal, and recognize that launching a tariff war is a “very dumb thing to do.”
In fact, Trudeau’s counterpunch prompted a heated conversation between the two leaders on Wednesday. Trump and Vice-President J.D. Vance accused Canada of “killing our people,” and Trump was swearing during their call as he railed against restrictions on American access to Canada’s dairy markets, Canadian officials confirm.
In other talks, as the Star first reported, Trump and his officials have listed many grievances, from Canada not meeting NATO defence spending targets to complaints about trade issues. “They’ve put military co-operation on the table, and they put water management on the table. They’ve put intelligence sharing on the table” along with many other issues, Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly told the Star’s editorial board. Trudeau called the border concerns a “legal pretext” to use unjustified trade tariffs against Canada with Trump’s real goal annexation.
Trump has outright told Trudeau the Canada-U.S. border could be erased. In the face of all that, there are no international allies stepping up to defend Canada.
Every country faces Trump’s threatened broader commercial “reciprocal” tariffs on everything they ship to the U.S. Yet every country still wants a piece of the U.S. market.
Trump instructed his commerce and trade officials to report by April 2 on the “unfair” trading practices employed by America’s trading partners that impede U.S. goods and services, aiming at national systems of sales taxes, digital services taxes, or sectoral supports like agricultural subsidies or export financing. He’s targeted Canada’s GST, and said Canada and France will have to drop their taxes on U.S.-based Big Tech companies.
On Friday, Trump lumped Canada in with China, the EU and India for particular ire, saying that they’re all taking advantage of the U.S., and reiterating reciprocal tariffs on April 2 will hit them hard.
Despite appeals to allies by Joly to work together to confront the challenge to the rules-based global trading order, the minister conceded there is no actual matching of Canada’s action.
They’re barely even paying any lip service to Canada’s entreaties.
U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer publicly and privately declined to speak up for Canada within Trump’s earshot. In Washington last week, he sought to protect Britain’s own economic interests, while European countries are scrambling to figure out how to push back when it’s their turn, as they grapple with Trump’s growing pressure on Ukraine.
European leaders are only suddenly alive to the reality of Trump’s threats after Vance slammed them at the Munich security conference and then he and Trump attacked Volodymyr Zelenskyy last week, say Canadian officials not authorized to speak publicly about their discussions.
Joly told the Star she has given Mexico and European allies Canada’s list of counter-tariffs and politically sensitive American sectors and products to target.
But to date, none has either adopted a similar approach or publicly revealed their retaliatory plan for when Trump’s reciprocal tariff threat hits their own products — not Mexico, not the European Union nor any of its member states.
For now, Mexico and Canada have won a reprieve until April 2 for CUSMA-compliant products and sectors (which the two countries did not navigate or negotiate together), and it’s doubtful that President Sheinbaum will unveil Mexico’s planned list of counter-tariffs on the weekend as she was previously expected to do.
In fact, no one in Ottawa is holding their breath that Mexico and Canada will be strategic partners closely aligned this time around.
Relations between Mexico and Canada have been characterized by a lack of trust going back to the summer of 2018 during the NAFTA renegotiation with Mexico, when then-president Andrés Manuel López Obrador and his team quietly broke from Canada’s side and tried to negotiate a bilateral deal with the first Trump administration. For a time, Canada also was willing to cut a separate free-trade deal with the U.S., but in the end the three countries finalized an agreement — known legally here as the CUSMA but as the USMCA in the U.S.
Trudeau cautioned this week that Canada is going to be in a trade war with the U.S. for the “foreseeable future,” and on Friday urged the public to hang tight.
“The strength of unity from all different sectors right across the country is our greatest strength right now as a country. We just have to hold on. We have to look out for each other, and we have to make sure we come through this not just intact, but stronger than ever before,” he said in Montreal. It was his next to last public event as prime minister before bidding goodbye to the Liberal party which selects a new leader Sunday.
So nobody should expect there will be any international cavalry coming to Canada’s aid any time soon.
Self-preservation is a powerful instinct.
