Cana­da cur­tailed the wild­fires enough that Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump didn’t impose tar­iffs over the smoke. Now he’s slapped on 50 per­cent ones because Cana­di­ans are appar­ent­ly ingrates.

After trade talks between Cana­da and the U.S. broke down Trump wrote on his dubi­ous­ly-named Truth Social van­i­ty out­let: “Cana­da wants the ben­e­fits of being a State, with­out being one!!!”.
Sir. With more respect than is due, you seem to be what is  termed in pri­ma­ry schools, “a slow learner”.
From the moment you belched out the idea that Cana­da should become your 51^st state, we made it clear in as many ways as pos­si­ble  (includ­ing F*** You and Off), that thought­ful though the offer might be from your point of ambi­tion, it would nev­er, ever come to pass.
But maybe some­where in the deep recess­es of your ego-dri­ven real­i­ty, you realise that, which is why Vice-Pres­i­dent JD Vance played attack dog this time.
In what one sus­pects was as much an exer­cise in pan­der­ing to the MAGA crowd to boost his chances for a shot at being your suc­ces­sor as it was a con­sid­ered opin­ion, he told an audi­ence of Repub­li­can fund-rais­ers that Cana­di­an Prime Min­is­ter Mark Car­ney “comes in and puffs his chest out and says: ‘I’m going to, like, out-tough Don­ald Trump.”
I’ve nev­er met Mr Car­ney, but seri­ous­ly doubt that even in casu­al con­ver­sa­tion he is snme­one who would use “like” as a comma .
As for “out-tough­ing”,  rather than adopt­ing your boss’s school­yard bul­ly per­sona, Car­ney laid out Canada’s posi­tion in what the New York Times described as “a mus­cu­lar, 22-minute speech that let Cana­di­ans — and Amer­i­cans — know exact­ly where he stands.”
Has any­one ever referred to Trump’s CAPs-rid­den social media posts in even remote­ly sim­i­lar terms?

                      AS WE SEE YOU

Cana­di­ans view the U.S. through a lens pol­ished by more than 200 years of shar­ing a peace­ful, unde­fend­ed bor­der, the bur­den of fight­ing wars against com­mon ene­mies, inter-mar­riage, both spousal and soci­etal, many human­i­tar­i­an val­ues and just plain neighbourliness.
But, apart from being as proud and nation­al­is­tic as any nation on Earth, we don’t want any­thing to do with Amer­i­can ideas of health care and gun laws (or rather, lack there­of), and elec­tions on a what looks to us like a ham­ster wheel cycle.
In what pass­es for sar­casm (also known as the low­est form of wit), Vance sneered at Canada’s resis­tance to U.S. trade demands: “It’s hilar­i­ous because Car­ney presents this as some vic­to­ry for Cana­da when fun­da­men­tal­ly, like, they climb down on a lot of issues.”
Actu­al­ly, JD, that sounds more like a descrip­tion of the way His Trump­ness has dealt with the Ira­ni­ans in talks to re-open the Strait of Hor­muz, which was a zone of free pas­sage until he tore up an exist­ing agree­ment, sum­mar­i­ly aban­doned ongo­ing talks and launched a bomb­ing cam­paign that so far has had greater neg­a­tive effects on U.S. weapons stock­piles and the defense bud­get, than on the aya­tol­lahs will to defy and survive.
I’ve lost track of the num­ber of times Trump has declared a deal with Iran was in the off­ing, which prob­a­bly gives me some­thing in com­mon with the still uncowed Iran­ian lead­er­ship, whom Trump recent­ly referred to as “mani­acs” who are “on the ropes”.
So far, the ropes bear a more than pass­ing resem­blance to Muham­mad Ali’s famous “rope a dope” strat­e­gy — lean back and absorb and deflect blows until your oppo­nent is worn out, and then counter-punch.
He’s no dope, but U.S. Trade Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Jamieson Greer gave a good impres­sion of one when he called the break­down in trade talks “a missed oppor­tu­ni­ty for Cana­da to part­ner with the Unit­ed States,”
Real­ly?
So far, “part­ner­ing” with the U.S. has been on a par with includ­ing divorce papers in mar­riage vows.
The num­ber of times Trump has reneged on agree­ments, insult­ed allies and friends, and issued threats and warn­ing to any­one who looked side­ways at him are too numer­ous and odi­ous to list.
Oh, and an after­thought for per­spec­tive:  Car­ney has not won one, nev­er mind 43 and count­ing golf tour­na­ments Trump claims to have done.
But then, he’s been a bit busy, hav­ing run two cen­tral banks and a major invest­ment firm before becom­ing prime min­is­ter (and with no felony con­vic­tions or bank­rupt­cies on his CV).
He also is a man whose char­ac­ter would abhor cheating.
When talks resume, as they must and will, it would please us if the Trump admin­is­tra­tion came pre­pared to make a deal with a sig­na­ture that is not, as Prime Min­is­ter Car­ney put it, “writ­ten in pencil”.

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