Trump gets ready to rumble with Carney in Canada

Let’s be brutally honest, United States President Donald J. Trump is very happy to see the globalist elitist technocrat Mark Carney to get elected as Canadian Prime Minister earlier this week. He will serve as the nation’s leader for the next four years. His main challenger, Pierre Polievre, a conservative, was ill-suited to govern the country at this moment.

Mr. Polievre not only lost his electoral bid to lead Canada, but also ousted from his parliamentary seat. Polievre had claimed to endorse conservative values on the campaign trail but he had crumbled by pushing back against President Trump. He pledged to back “Canada First” principles, which had doomed his campaign.

Polievre entered elections’ season with a 20 point lead in nationwide polls against Carney a month ago, but still found a way to lose. How was that possible? Well, he’s living proof in politics that you can be a hero one day and a zero a day later. His political career has just entered the ash heap of history.

Nonetheless, President Trump stands eager to wage trade wars against Canada and had Polievre won Canadian elections - this would have led to an awkward scenario with two conservative national leaders in North America attacking each other on the world stage.

Carney is the perfect type of politician that President Trump can charge after and humiliate on a daily basis. Trump is the tough talking New Yorker with a ‘take no prisoners’ attitude. He won his bid to the White House by promising to ‘Drain the Swamp,’ deconstruct globalism and support ‘America First’ values.

Pay close attention to Carney and you see a man, who looks weak, spineless and cowardly. He didn’t hit the campaign trail, running at full speed. Instead, he avoided press conferences, debates and speeches. He did more hiding than campaigning.

And when speaking in public, he conveys the technocrat image. He’s a former banker beholden to the Wall Street investment firm, Goldman Sachs. He also had a US Passport.

He’s the Canadian version of former US Secretary of State Antony Blinken. They both come from elitist family backgrounds, have nervous dispositions and yes, they are so vain.

Canadian Prime Minister Carney thinks he can fight President Trump in trade wars but he doesn’t hold the cards. If he doesn’t fold like a cheap suit soon, he will destroy Canada’s economy, while unwittingly strengthening the US position for Trump.

Canada has enjoyed having a massive trade surplus with the US, while enforcing isolationist trade protectionist policies. President Trump will demand Ottawa mend its ways or face the inevitable consequences. Of course, Carney will choose resistance against Trump and that will lead to catastrophic results for all Canadians.

Trump will raise tariffs on Canadian imports and hold the line. PM Carney will likely run to Beijing anticipating China will rescue him, but Washington can ramp up the pressure by informing Ottawa that siding with China could spark US-Canada decoupling.

Do you believe that PM Carney has the fortitude to fight Trump to the bitter end and never kneel down? That’s impossible, since Canada makes more money from the US than from China and if Ottawa sides with Beijing that will deliver a crushing blow to the Canadian economy for the foreseeable future.

PM Carney is only bluffing and faking support for the Chinese government. He’s a former employee of Goldman Sachs and playing double-dealing negotiations’ tactics. If push comes to shove, Canada will agree to sign on lucrative trade deals with the US and throw China under the bus.

Canada has no winning path to win trade wars against the USA. They can ask the United Kingdom and European Union to support them, but Washington is the biggest sponsor of NATO. Accordingly, Europe remains in a vulnerable position, while Russia is winning the war in Ukraine.

Brussels and London won’t back up PM Carney as the European leadership understands that such actions would be suicidal for both the EU and UK. Hence, Canada will find itself more isolated and China won’t be a reliable partner for them.

President Trump is seeking to demonstrate that he won’t surrender on trade wars and Canada can become his proverbial punching bag. Washington can strike hard against Ottawa by placing much higher tariffs on Canadian imports.

Carney is a typical globalist liberal, who thinks that he can avoid the tough impact of trade wars. When Trump criticizes Carney in public forums, the Canadian prime minister will play the victim to elicit more sympathy from other countries.

Yet, other nations will have a different interpretation of Carney’s shameless “I’m the victim” role playing. They will conclude that President Trump is a tough guy and it’s a fool’s errand to fight him in trade wars. More sovereign and regional governments will get the message and try harder and faster to make win-win trade deals with the Trump administration before it’s too late for them.

Carney by playing the victim will make Canada look weak and losing to Trump. However, if Ottawa takes a different approach by raising tariffs on US imports and hinting at endorsement of Canada’s decoupling of the US, Trump can hit back by announcing Washington will close the US-Canada border, as well as temporarily halting Canadian trade and investments with the USA.

Perhaps for a few weeks, Carney will talk tough against Trump but after a month of relentless pressure from the US side, he will bend the knee and back down.

Canada can’t win trade wars against the USA and PM Carney already knows that. We are witnessing Kabuki Theater play out with Carney taking center stage. He will keep it going until the Canadian economy starts to collapse. He will then close the curtains and beg for a US-China trade deal from the Trump administration.

 (Tom Pauken II., author of US vs. China: From Trade Wars to Reciprocal Deal, AFAI Senior Fellow, Geopolitical Consultant based in Beijing, China) 

X:  @tmcgregochina    

Footnotes

NBC News, “Canada’s Liberal Party and Prime Minister Mark Carney are projected to stay in power as the country digs in on Trump’s trade war,”

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/canada-election-results-prime-minister-carney-poilievre-rcna203321