Munk Dialogue with Andrew Coyne: Carney walks away from Trump and turns his Davos speech into action
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What is the context of the Canada‑U.S. trade dispute and the Prime Minister’s decision to walk away?
Yeah, we're more dependent on trade with them than they are with us. But as we've seen in other types of conflicts, in asymmetric conflicts like this, the smaller party, if it's more unified, more determined, um, more um solidly based, um, can do a lot of damage and can can can stand its own against uh a larger, less re less solidly based, less unified adversary.
Welcome to a special monk dialogue. Today, Monday, we're getting together in the afternoon with our regular contributor, Global Mail column coyne, to break down the weekend's big news, the trade fallout between Canada and the United States. And a war of words taking place, at least from the president's side, uh, on his truth social account today Monday. Andrew, your top line thoughts on what we're witnessing.
Well, I don't think the Prime Minister had any choice but to walk away. Um we were talking about it, you and I, before we knew before any of that happened, before we knew exactly what was in the deal, not that we know precisely what's in even now. But I think there was mounting alarm at where the negotiations were going even before this. I mean the the official line from the Prime Minister's office is, Oh, the the Americans threw in all these last minute demands, uh th you know, in the final written text that we hadn't anticipated. Maybe that's true, but even before some of those demands, um some of the terms that w had emerged were pretty hard to understand why we would even be entertaining this.
For example Um the Americans had agreed supposedly to reduce what were previously fifty percent tariffs on I think it was uh s um uh steel. uh to twenty-five percent. Well, twenty-five percent is not particularly uh um uh uh a good uh outcome for us to be accepting. It's one thing to have the Americans putting on a fifty percent tariff and us protesting it, but for us to sign on and agree to twenty-five percent tariffs, basically locking those in, uh, would have been uh really tough to swallow. Um but what really made an absolutely uh uh intolerable outcome was the suggestion, and again we don't know the details, but the suggestion the Americans were going to place limits on our ability to strike trade agreements with other countries or to have an independent trade policy.
Now there was an element of that in the original Cosma Agreement in twenty eighteen that for forbade the parties to the to the uh treaty from s striking free trade agreements with non market economies. That was troublesome at the beginning, but you could sort of say, well, we don't have any intention of striking a free trade agreement with China anytime soon. Um, but if this is as it's been presented, a more broad ranging uh prohibition or limit, um, that just is utterly a non-starter. It that just goes basically to to our sovereignty at a time when that is our exit strategy from American domination, is to be able to diversify our trade via trade treaties with other countries. So there was stuff even before the last minute, stuff I'm sure that came in at the last minute.
It all added up to a very troublesome exercise to begin with. Because the premise of Even negotiating. Was that we were with a negotiating partner who was bargaining in good faith. And how could that be when The president regularly announces that he would like to annex the country, the the Canada, that he would like to use quote unquote economic force. I mean trade as a weapon to to reduce our freedom of movement, to reduce us to a vassal state. The whole thing had much more of the exercise of of negotiating with a kidnapper rather than honorable trading partners and I'm not sure there was ever any really good reason for us to get involved in the first place.
A lot of truth there, Andrew, especially uh as of today when we're now finally starting to see, as we probably could have predicted, uh a series of kind of angry uh truths uh from the president on his truth social platform his comments this morning, and I'll just paraphrase here uh for our listeners if you're watching this, you you see the tweet up on the screen.
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Chapters
4 chapters
1
What is the context of the Canada‑U.S. trade dispute and the Prime Minister’s decision to walk away?
0:00–4:33
2
What are the specific tariff demands Trump is threatening for cars, trucks and steel?
4:33–5:26
3
Why did Prime Minister Trudeau feel forced to abandon the trade deal with the United States?
5:26–11:35
4
How does the Davos speech translate into concrete action for Canada’s middle‑power strategy?
11:35–32:35
Speakers
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