Andrew Coyne, The Globe and Mail: Understand: this was not the USMCA renegotiation. That process still awaits us. This was merely the prelude to that, the admission fee if you will. So take all the concessions the Trudeau government yielded just to get USMCA signed in 2018. Add the concessions the Carney government has made, from scrapping the digital services tax to dismantling our retaliatory tariffs to the Gordie Howe Bridge debacle, to keep hopes of renegotiating USMCA alive. Then add whatever concessions they were prepared to make in the latest, abortive round.
Where does that leave us? At the starting line of the next round of negotiations. And should we get a deal, by means of whatever further concessions were required? That would set us up for the next round of talks, and the next round of concessions.
That is why we were having these talks in the first place: the tariffs Mr. Trump has just imposed – and the further tariffs he has just announced, to take effect Jan. 1, 2027 – are explicitly prohibited by the free trade deal Mr. Trump himself signed in 2018. If Mr. Trump could abrogate a deal he negotiated once, he could do it again. And again. And again.
This is not a negotiation in any meaningful sense of the word. It is an extortion racket. A negotiation involves an exchange of offers. But there is no offer on the American side. There is only a threat: Give us what we want or we will hurt you. The demands, what is more, as often as not have nothing to do with tariffs, or trade, or the economy.