America's Friends Start Texting Other People

Canada and China have ended their trade fight. Last week, Ottawa announced it would cut tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles, and Beijing would reduce levies on Canadian canola oil in return.^[1][2][3] The deal was, by most accounts, overdue. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney described his government’s relationship with Beijing as ‘predictable’ — a word that, in the mouth of a head of government, does some work.^[4]

It does work because the obvious alternative is something else. America’s trade posture toward its northern neighbour has, in recent months, included a stated desire to acquire Canadian territory, tariffs imposed on what one can only describe as vibes, and the detention of Canadian citizens in a manner that, to put it gently, recalled an unpleasant historical precedent.^[10][11][12] ‘Predictable,’ then, is doing a lot of lifting. The bar, it turns out, is the floor. The floor, one notes, is being cleared for dancing.

The Canada-China détente is not an isolated event. It is the latest in a sequence. The European Union recently signed a trade agreement with a group of South American countries.^[5] The same EU has begun working with China to resolve outstanding disputes.^[6] And the EU has paused a separate trade deal with the United States, after Washington threatened to impose tariffs on European countries that declined to surrender Greenland.^[7][8][9]

The Greenland clause deserves a moment. The United States, under Donald Trump, asked a collection of its oldest allies to hand over Greenland, and then announced tariffs on those who declined.^[9][8] The response was not enthusiastic. The offer, one gathers, did not fly.

So a pattern. A traditionally American ally in North America signs with China. A traditionally American bloc in Europe signs with South America. The same European bloc agrees to cooperate with China. The same European bloc pauses a deal with the United States. The arithmetic is not subtle. Threaten your friends, and your friends start texting other people. Threaten them loudly and often, and they form a group chat without you.

One can argue, in fairness, that this is just how trade works — countries optimize, partnerships shift, blocs rebalance. One can also note that threatening to annex your neighbour, demanding Greenland for reasons no economic planner has endorsed, and arresting foreign nationals in a way that prompts Nazi comparisons is not, historically, the kind of behaviour that wins new customers. To be fair, it does win a particular kind of attention — the kind, one assumes, the United States can do without.

The Carney quote lingers. ‘Predictable.’^[4] In trade negotiations, the word is a small gift — it means the other side is consistent, the rules are legible, the talks will not be derailed by a social-media post at 3 a.m. Predictability is what you want from a counterparty. It is the absence of a particular kind of chaos. It is, in other words, the opposite of a particular kind of customer. It is also, in my opinion, the thing you have when your trading partner is not, in my opinion, currently in the business of being one. If I were China right now, I would be smiling very widely. Make of that what you will.