“Canada has to be confident in walking away from a bad deal,” said Brian Clow, who served as U.S.-Canada relations adviser to former prime minister Justin Trudeau during Mr. Trump’s previous term. “If you let them push you around, if you just roll over to their demands, that’s not going to work for the country, not going to work for the economy, and the Canadian public doesn’t want that.”
At least part of the gap between Canada’s defiance and the decision by some much larger economies to rush into punitive deals is the question of economic integration. Because Canada’s economy is so tightly tied to the U.S.’, the stakes are much higher, as are the potential consequences of a bad deal.
“It’s just much more existential in Canada’s case,” said Prof. Lamp, director of the Institute on Trade Policy at Queen’s University. “By keeping the trade relationship unsettled, Canada is accepting more short-term pain, but the benefit is not resigning itself to a longer-term death of its car industry.”
Adrian Morrow, Globe and Mail: Hardball stance with Trump sets Canada apart from all the trading partners that acquiesced