“Just The Way It Is.”

In his Oval Offixce meeting with Canada Prime Minister Carney, Trump simply restated in slightly different words what his negotiating position has been ever since Justin Trudeau paid him a visit last November at Mar-a-Lago.

MEDIA: “Is there anything the Prime Minister can say to you today to change your mind on tariffing Canada?” … “Is there anything he can say to you, in the course of your meeting today, that could get you to lift tariffs on Canada?”

TRUMP: “No.”

MEDIA: “Why not?”

TRUMP: “Just the way it is.”

He expanded in a Truth Social post:

“We don’t need their Cars, we don’t need their Energy, we don’t need their Lumber, we don’t need ANYTHING they have, other than their friendship, which hopefully we will always maintain. They, on the other hand, need EVERYTHING from us!” he went on.

“That will be, most likely, my only question of consequence,” the president wrote.

The implication is that if Canada wants to remain a separate country, there will be tariffs if they try to sell into the US. If they want to become a state, there won't be tariffs. He also restated his position on how much of Canada he wanted -- we're not going to mess around with just Alberta:

Trump later gave more extensive commentary on a possible North American political union, calling the US-Canada border an “artificial line” and saying it would lead to a “massive tax cut” for those north of the frontier.

“When you look at that beautiful formation [on a map] when it’s together — I’m a very artistic person — but when I looked at that, I said, ‘That’s the way it was meant to be,'” Trump said.

“But we’re not going to be discussing that unless somebody wants to discuss it,” he went on, adding that “it really would be a wonderful marriage because it’s two places that get along very well.”

But let's put this in the context of Alberta Premier Danielle Smith's remarks on Monday, which I discussed in yesterday's post. In raising the possibility of negotiating with Ottawa, she's trying to triangulate, the way Henry Kissinger used to do in negotiations with the Soviets:"I have a reasonable position here, but I can restrain Nixon only so far. I can probably get him to buy into this, but if you won't go along, he'll become enraged, and I can't predict what he'll do otherwise."

Premier Smith is taking a similar tack with Ottawa. "I've got this separatist element to deal with. They're more than just a fringe, and I don't agree with them, but if they want to put separation on the ballot, I can restrain them only so far, and I can't predict what might happen if they get out of control. I do have this list of grievances that for some reason sound a lot like Jefferson's grievances against King George, and this might remind you of what could happen if we can't work things out."

If Alberta were to join the US by itself, it would be the rough equivalent of Arizona joining Mexico, but only a very, very rough one. It would mean two border checks like Tijuana or Juarez for trucks and cars driving from Texas to California via I-10 or I-40, but for the US, that's just a relative nuisance, the traffic would just detour via Colorado, Utah, and Nevada. Not so for Canada, there's no serious detour north around Alberta, the weather wouldn't allow it (remember the Ice Road Truckers TV show?).

Ottawa will never tolerate any situation where it loses control over its link to British Columbia. That's going to be a given as long as Ottawa is Ottawa. Any polite demand for negotiation from Premier Smith based on the idea that Alberta will separate if Ottawa doesn't agree to talk is going to be a non-starter, Ottawa will always determine the terms on which a province separates, and especially for either Alberta or Saskatchewan, that will be never.

I suspect Trump had already gamed this out even before Justin Trudeau paid him a visit last fall. Ottawa might theoretically tolerate it if, say, Nova Scotia wanted to separate, but Ottawa knows Nova Scotia will never want to do this, so it doesn't matter. On the other hand, Ottawa will never tolerate Alberta separating. As a result, the only way part of Canada can join the US is if all of it joins.

I suspect this is behind his saying, “Just the way it is” in the Oval Office yesterday. He also restated the view of negotiation he expressed earlier with Time that I quoted yesterday:

[T]he deal is a deal that I choose. View it differently: We are a department store, and we set the price. I meet with the companies, and then I set a fair price, what I consider to be a fair price, and they can pay it, or they don't have to pay it. They don't have to do business with the United States, but I set a tariff on countries.

As he put it yesterday,

Think of us as a super-luxury store, a store that has the goods. You’re going to come and you’re going to pay a price, and we’re going to give you a very good price.

The US doesn't need Canada's cars, oil, aluminum, or lumber. Canada needs the US markets. How much is Canada willing to pay? Put differently, Canada has been getting stuff for free up to now, but that's got to change. Canada naturally has the option not to do business with the US. This is what dawned on Justin Trudeau. I suspect things will change, faster than we might expect. I'm more convinced that Alberta separatism is a dead end, an unnecessary complication.