By: Jen Gerson
It’s been an exceptionally noisy week on the U.S.-Canada front, of course. And while there are no shortage of weird truths and half-truths to pick apart — from the name of Lake Ontario, to the importance of French soup labels toward peace in our time — there was one item that stuck out to me.
Tucked at the very bottom of a “Fact Check” style press release charmingly titled “President Trump is Finally Ending Canada’s Free Ride” was this item: “FACT: The U.S. economy is approximately 13 times larger than the Canadian economy and home to over eight times as many people. The United States has the clear leverage.”
See, that statement is true, certainly. But what is the purpose of putting it in there?
I think the answer is self-evident. This is the logic of the bully. “We’re so much larger and stronger than you that resistance to our demands — no matter how unreasonable — is futile. You’ll only hurt yourselves trying.”
I think that presumption is worth examining. But first, we don’t have a full and complete account of what, specifically, collapsed the trade negotiations in the final hours before tariffs on select Canadian goods were about to come into effect. According to reporting in The New York Times and other outlets, it came down to a host of issues ranging from auto tariffs on trucks, to language requirements and digital streaming taxes, and the durability of any deal in the face of requirements to harmonize tariffs with other trading partners.
And while I don’t think we need to give Carney the most perfect benefit of the doubt on every detail, on the whole, I just don’t believe that we would have walked away with a trade deal with the U.S. if our negotiators believed that deal was in good faith, long lasting, or in Canada’s best interest.
I mean, if the deal really were so great for us, then why have so many senior U.S. officials spent the last few days just sputtering with indignation and rage over the fact that we said no? (Aside: Please tell me more about how Canada is letting its emotions rule its negotiations with the, uh, dispassionate, restrained and rational Americans. Was that legendary sangfroid on full display when Trump decided to change the name of Lake Ontario with a sharpie on a kiddie map? Do go on.)
Just another friendly reminder that the U.S. and Canada already have a trade deal. It’s called CUSMA. It was negotiated and signed by President Donald J. Trump. If the United States wants to abrogate that agreement on a whim for its own political interests, it can, I guess; but then it has no particular right to act so shocked and offended that we’re not keen to rush into another one.
But we don’t even need to ask ourselves whether we’re dealing with rational, good-faith actors to address the question of resistance.
Just as a matter of straightforward analysis, it’s completely absurd to accept the claim that resistance to American pressure is doomed.
The implication is that we can’t win because we are smaller. But what does “win” mean in the context of a trade war?
Can we “win” in the sense that we can extract more concessions from America than they can from us? Honestly, probably not. But that’s not Canada’s win condition. We didn’t choose to enter a trade war with our very large and powerful neighbours for fun; we don’t seek land, or domination, or unreasonable terms. The U.S. president started this, ostensibly, over a series of trade irritants that make no material impact to the overall American economy. Our posture is defensive.
Therefore, we win if we maintain our sovereignty with most of our economic capacity intact. If the U.S. seeks to break us, all we have to do to “win” is ... not break. And because Trump has repeatedly threatened annexation, and appears to be acting entirely in accordance with his previous threat to use “economic force” against us, Canada has the benefit of widespread moral resolve, which translates into an ability to bear economic pain that is not shared by most Americans.
Let’s consider the other side of the table.
What’s America’s win condition in this trade war? To be blunt, administration officials have spent a lot of time yapping about how awful Canada is, but not one of them has clearly articulated their actual desired outcomes to the American people. What objective aims are they seeking to acquire, besides more “fairness,” or not being “ripped off” in nebulous terms? What dairy quota or parts of origin percentage would need to be obtained for them to know that they had “won”?
I suspect the reason they’re not clearly articulating their goals in this trade war is that those goals, if stated openly and honestly, would be roundly rejected as unacceptable to a vast majority of ordinary Americans. I don’t believe any serious plurality of U.S. citizens would defend a punishing trade war for the purpose of subjugating a former friend and ally to imperial dominance.
It seems to me like the Americans haven’t even done us the courtesy of spelling out the terms of our surrender. What they seem to want is not a trade deal, but rather a political document that allows Trump to claim an entirely superficial “win” prior to the midterms, while giving us no guarantees of certainty. Each concession would lock us into a weaker starting position for the next round of negotiations, and those negotiations will be ceaseless. The end result is a concession spiral in which no deal is final until Trump, personally, feels superior and vindicated at our expense.
This is hilariously analogous to the war in Iran that they’ve recently won for the 27th time. That is a war of tactics, not strategy. It has neither direction, stated purpose, nor buy-in. Therefore, no collective willingness to demand sacrifice of the American people in order to achieve ... some kind of golden victory-shaped Tchotchke for Trump’s desk in the Oval Office.
The war with Iran is another thing going for us, by the way. And not only because it’s juicing our commodity prices. America’s bandwidth is not limitless. The country is politically volatile and highly polarized. The attention span of its leadership is short.
Just by comparing the morale and narrative framing alone, Canada is in a very strong position to achieve its win condition. By comparison, America won’t even state what it’s trying to accomplish.
My brain keeps circling back to the fable of the coyote and the rabbit. If you see a coyote hunt its prey, it’s natural to be tempted to bet on the larger, meaner animal. Coyotes are big, they’re fast, and they look vicious. Rabbits, by comparison, are pathetic, weak, and fluffy.
But that instinct is wrong.
Predators lose their quarry far more often than they succeed, and are thus opportunistic, picking on the lame and the weak. Prey are well adapted to evade capture and survive.
The coyote runs for its supper. The rabbit runs for its life.
No bullshit, here. The case for Canadian resistance is strong.
Thanks to the negotiations that did take place, we now know what the path of non-resistance offered us — a deal that would have made certain types of auto manufacturing uneconomic over time, while locking us deeper into economic dependency with an unreliable trade partner. A deal that, according to Carney, would have restricted our ability to build trade relationships with countries not named America.
However this winds up in the long run, we’re unlikely to sign a deal that is worse than the one we just rejected as unacceptable — even if the medium term consequences will be significant. We are not trapped in the dreaded concession spiral. Further, I happen to think that showing Americans our rabbit teeth will play to our benefit in the long run. We have drawn a line. Now it’s up to us to hold to it.
But even beyond the specific and favourable conditions of the current moment, there’s a deeper merit to consider.
Resistance in the face of bad faith and coercion is a moral end in and of itself.
Acts of resistance may or may not be effective. They do not assure a win for the more righteous party. But resistance is never pointless.
Even tiny acts of resistance — boycotts, judicious export taxes, influence campaigns, and civil disobedience — compound in a system over time like fine sand wearing away the gears. They extract cost on the abuser. Friction and delay impose constraints on the other party, ultimately limiting the damage that party can do.
However, there’s a more important reason to decline to comply in advance. Resistance builds resilience in the weaker party. Self-respect, dignity, and agency are not divine rights bestowed upon us by circumstance and history. Sovereignty is an act. The capacity for independent action is a thing we choose to build, maintain, and practice over time.
Resistance is the only cure to learned helplessness and cultural malaise; it reminds us of who and what we are as individuals, and as a people. Resistance is the muscle that will demonstrate what we are capable of achieving.
Look, America is in a bad place right now. Our closest trading partner and erstwhile ally has turned on us, and I don’t think they’re doing it accidentally or irrationally. They have lost the capacity to exercise internal constraint upon their own worst impulses. That’s scary. Given their relative size and power, what they’re doing right now is downright terrifying, in fact. We don’t yet know how far they’re willing to go, nor to what end.
And I cannot promise you that Canada will win, but I do believe that we will be better off for trying.
Because if our resistance actually didn’t matter, if we were so weak and dependent on America, then why would Trump administration officials have to spend so much time convincing us to give up? Defeat would be a foregone conclusion if it were inescapable. What I think this administration has just figured out is that if adorable panda-eyed Canada can tell the mid-tier taurine-addled lackeys drawn from the Ivy League fraternity discard pile currently besmirching the White House to get fucked, then anybody can. If anybody can, more people will.
And they’re right.
Resistance is not futile, because resistance is never futile.
They know it. So must we.
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Using "resistance is futile" repeatedly without a single explicit Borg reference is just Jen baiting me, everyone.
We were all waiting for the Jen column this week given what's unfolded and this absolutely did not disappoint.