Kelly McParland: Bowing to Trump would betray Canada

National Post

3 days ago

Prime Minister Mark Carney's post-midnight response to Washington's latest escalation of its tariff war was calm, measured, sensible and appropriate, everything the current regime in Washington is not.
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Canada, Carney said, will continue to negotiate in search of a reasonable agreement, notwithstanding the absence of any indication the U.S. is open to reasonable negotiations. What Washington wants is to continue operating what amounts to a global extortion racket, threatening all America's best customers with dire consequences if they refuse to bow to its demands and offer up supplication to whatever notion occurs to President Donald Trump at any given moment.
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It's well and good that Ottawa should keep up the attempt, even if the odds seem set against success. There's no use pretending this is a situation that can be handled in the traditional manner of friends and trading partners: a search for a fair-minded and equitable agreement that serves the interests of both parties. But we should keep trying, if only to demonstrate that the qualities of civility haven't broken down altogether, despite the U.S. administration's every apparent effort to ignore them.
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From the Trump administration's point of view, extortion has been working marvelously well to date. Japan has reportedly agreed to more than a half-trillion dollars in investments and loans in return for lowered tariffs. South Korea, according to Trump, will 'give to the United States $350 Billion Dollars for Investments owned and controlled by the United States, and selected by myself.' The European Union accepted a pact to buy US$750 billion in energy and invest US$600 billion in the U.S., a deal virtually none of Europe's leaders were happy with, and which France openly denounced.
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Lesser entities have been similarly cowed. Paramount Pictures agreed to a $16 million payoff rather than risk challenging a spurious suit that threatened a much-sought US$8 billion merger. Columbia University is to pay the government US$221 million rather than lose access to federal funding. Harvard initially put up a determined effort to resist federal threats, but is said to be open to a $500 million settlement.
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Many of the agreements are fuzzy and open to interpretation. All have resulted from one thing: the fear and uncertainty generated by the knowledge that the U.S. government has become a one-man operation that operates solely by the whim of a president shown unfailingly to be unpredictable, unreliable and contemptuous of the law, of accepted standards and even of his own word. There is nothing to be gained by betting the prosperity of Canadians on any assurances offered up by Washington as long as Donald Trump remains president. What must be done is to defend the country's integrity, its sovereignty, its independence and its standing as a place where fairness, trust, honesty and dignity are still treated seriously as core values, even if other entities are willing to bargain theirs away.