Trade Deal Critics Need A Better Critique

“I’m deep inside myself, but I’ll get out somehow”

I’ve riffed on Neil Young’s Motion Pictures (For Carrie) enough at this point that it’s one of this site’s staples - a classic song that I have found meaning in many times. But every time I hear it, I find myself coming back to that one word - somehow - that punctuates my favourite lyric. The blithe assumption at the core of that line is the idea that there is a solution, if only we want badly enough for one. And that brings us to the tariff war and the deal we are negotiating, where I am fundamentally confused.

Everybody from Wab Kinew to the CPC and members of the commentariat are complaining that Carney’s signing a bad deal, but I have yet to see a single person actually articulate what it is they want the Liberals to do that they’re not doing beyond platitudinal nonsense about fighting. And I’m honestly done, because I’ve spent the last two days trying to figure out what those who disagree with my Wednesday column could possibly want Carney to do that he’s not, and I can’t come up with any actual tangible actions.

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“I do not know how you exact leverage on a president who thinks the tariffs are making his country richer and uses the stock market as a gauge — when really it’s artificial intelligence investment that is masking the underlying damage that essentially his trade and his foreign policies are inflicting on the U.S. economy.”

David Cochrane said that on CBC earlier today, and it’s a good starting point at what the circumstances are. No Canadian Prime Minister - whether Carney, Poilievre, Singh, Lewis, Mulroney, Harper, either Trudeau, or anyone else - would be able to get a perfect deal that ignores the American psycho down south and maintains perfect, tariff free access that Mulroney and Justin got in their deals.

There are two fundamental criticisms of the deal as we understand it - which is (as we currently understand it) basically booze back on shelves, Keystone, and repealing the Online News Act for sectoral tariff relief. The first is that any form of deal is unacceptable, because the government should somehow be able to turn back the clock to 2024 and get total tariff free access without any concessions, which is obviously ludicrous and not worth discussing. It’s of course the CPC’s position under Poilievre, and the unseriousness of the position merely underlines the unseriousness of the party.

The second, and more important to deconstruct, criticism of the deal, is that there’s no need to do this. Trump wusses out of every threat, and even if he nominally applied a 50% tariff, with the CUSMA exemption and some nominal supports Canadians would be fine, as we have been at every other trade hinge point in Trump 2.0. It’s closer to a reasonable argument, and something that we have to take seriously. But it’s still based on a false premise.

No deal was better than a bad deal in the past. That line, repeated currently, did use to be true, because in the last 13 months, a deal meant across the board tariffs to lower sectoral tariffs. That is obviously a non-starter, and unacceptable to Canadians and to the government. But that’s not the deal on the table anymore - it’s “wins” for America Keystone, booze, and the Online News Act standing in for the across the board tariffs we could never accept.

If you’re of the view that Trump has substantially dropped his demands - and he has! - it’s not unreasonable to ask whether holding out another few months would get even better results. But it fundamentally misunderstands why Trump is willing to take these fig leaves as a victory now, which is to say the 2026 midterms. We have a very limited runway where we have enough leverage to get a deal to lower tariffs without accepting across the board tariffs. Obviously we should fucking take it.

I defended Trudeau and the Online News Act in 2023, and I was told by people that I was wrong. Turns out they were right and I was wrong. Anyone who knows me knows that saying that hurts deeply, but it’s true. And it’s in nobody’s interest to deny that I was wrong. Hell, even Stephen Maher - one of the government’s staunchest critics this week - called the Online News Act “terrible” today. None of the argument in its defence seems to be particularly interested in actually defending it, but merely in claiming that the government should keep it even though it sucks, solely because giving in to Trump is bad.

If you can make sense of that argument I wish you well, cause I can’t.

In broader strokes, however, the argument is that this deal, while helpful to some industries, sets a precedent that will do more damage in the long term than it avoids in the short term. It’s a reasonable argument if you have the patience to undergo significant short term damage for the certainty of long term recovery, but the premise that recovery is certain is fictional. The argument seems to go something along the lines that we just need to get to 2029, when everything goes back to some form of normal. And that’s where I lose my mind again.

If we could be 100% sure - sure beyond a shadow of a doubt that Democrats would win the next Presidential election and that the next Democratic President would immediately offer to reinstate CUSMA as written in 2028, it would maybe be worth a conversation about holding out on a deal for the next 2 years and change. It would cost the Federal government tens of billions in supports to industries who aren’t getting sectoral tariff relief - which now includes softwood lumber, by the way - but you could maybe build an economic analysis that tells me it’s a good idea to take 2+ years of pain for the certainty of brighter days after Trump. But you can’t promise that at all.

The likely Republican nominee is an anti-free trader from Ohio who has no kinship for Canada. Of the likely Democratic nominees, precisely none of them have said fuck all about helping us. Even Democratic Senators and Governors from safe blue states have employed the strategy of trying to guilt Canadians with “we didn’t vote for this”, instead of staunchly standing by their neighbours. Plainly, the idea that either the Democratic Party or the American people can be trusted is for the birds.

So the plan from those opposing this deal is to live in fantasy land. It’s to believe that Carney could get a better deal somehow, or that a better deal is certain so long as he doesn’t sell us out now. I can’t agree because it’s nonsensical, and nobody who is making this case has yet persuaded me of what better actually looks like. Cause it’s not putting workers in steel, aluminum, autos, and lumber out to pasture to save the fucking Online News Act.

I’ve read a significantly larger amount of the criticism of my last piece than usual, and have engaged with my critics far more than usual. Plainly, I usually don’t care enough to read my comments or my replies, because I am usually quite sure I’m right. Here? I’m not positive at all, and so I’ve attempted to engage in good faith with those who see this differently. I’m so confused by the reaction to much of this that I keep thinking I must be missing something. There are smart people I respect greatly who are trying to tell me I’m missing something. And yet I can’t get there.

Every strategy or plan amounts to a prayer more than a strategy. It amounts to the idea that so long as we hold out, and have some form of righteousness on our sides, we will win - a form of “the moral arc of the universe bends towards justice” that needs to be left in the Obama era where it belongs. I am staggered by the number of smart people who cannot explain how we get back to what we had in 2024 without spending years suffering from sectoral tariffs we could lower tomorrow for what are, in my opinion, functionally no cost.

This is about Trump, sure, but this is about me being fundamentally unable to see what others claim is obvious. I have tried to see it, and I can’t. And I’m not prepared to leave workers in steel, aluminum, softwood, and autos in hell on the vague idea that maybe 2029 might bring relief. And until someone tells me what the strategy to undo those tariffs before 2029 is without giving on a bunch of fundamentally irrelevant shit, I’ll continue to think Carney’s doing as well as he can on this front. Because as much as I love Motion Pictures, somehow is not a strategy, it’s a hope.