Update: Chicken con Carney to go with TACO?
I believe the answer to "Why?" is gamesmanship. Carney is taking a page out of Trump's go big to go small "negotiating strategy". Points one and two below are correct. Number three is wrong. Carney's threatened tariffs go into effect SEPTEMBER 8.🙄 Carney may well follow through on his own tariffs but there is no way Mark Carney, professional economist and Canada's guardian, is going to tariff the Toilet Nation out of spite for Trump. Trump threatened 50% tariffs a month ago. Carney walked away from negotiations and those tariffs went into effect. That's a L for Canadians. But it will be short-lived. It's still risky for the Canadian people but Carney has got sixteen days until his bluff is called, as Trump's was Friday night. Considering how close they were this week, that is an eternity to negotiate the details left.
Carney's better play imo would have been to announce his his own tariffs the day after Trump announced his. Then both sides would have had tariffs triggered to go into effect and Carney could have negotiated from some strengthened position.
But Carney didn't take this sage, after-the-fact advice. There now is risk for the negotiators in this duel of the chickens. Who calls who first? There are going to be Iran-like claims by both sides. "Carney called me and BEGGED for new negotiations." Mr. Prime Minister, don't take the bait. Be an adult. No more games. Just. Get. It. Done.
9:57 pm, August 22
Canadian Pencil: "Why does it feel like today Mark Carney is going to war (pause), trade war, the tone?"
Carney: "Because we were attacked."
(47:58 of video linked in previous post)
"We were attacked"? The 50% tariffs were an attack? It was hardly a Pearl Harbor-like surprise. Trump announced a month ago 50% were going to happen if an agreement wasn't reached. That's what the deadline was about.
I watched all of Carney's speech, I'm not as familiar, obviously, with his tone as a veteran Canadian journalist would be, but I didn't get that from tone.
It does puzzle me, the collapse of the negotiations, that has puzzled me ever since I read about it. I did get the sense from reading every article that I could that "today" Carney was different. Nothing that I read said that he was different today, it was just the penumbras and emanations. It's also who he is.
1) Carney is one of the most esteemed practicing professional economists of his time. This is going to hurt the Canadian economy more than it will the American. Carney said today that this coming week he will announce retaliatory tariffs on the U.S. Jamieson Greer, the lead U.S. negotiator said today they were working on a retaliation to Carney's retaliation. Are we all six years old? Canada was "attacked" today and Canadians got hurt; Canadians will be hurt more when Carney's retaliatory tariffs go into effect; they will be hurt more when the American retaliation to Canada's retaliatory tariffs kick in. I can't balance my checkbook but I know enough economics to know that this tit-for-tat is the classic trade war cycle where everyone gets hurt.
2) Carney is a politician. He's the Prime Minister of Canada. His constituents, and some of his fellow politicians, are royally pissed at the U.S.--with eminent, multiple good reasons. But this is going to hurt Canadians.
When rationality fails...
3) Carney is also human. It just seems to me that "today" there was a wire that was tripped and Carney just pulled the plug. He did pull the plug. Late Friday night, before the 12:01 am Saturday deadline, he ordered his negotiating team back to Ottawa. The deadline had been extended once, by Trump. Maybe they couldn't ask for another extension, I don't know. The shock of this...everyone was taken by surprise. Trump had announced the extension because there was a "DEAL!" Carney was not as certain but was positive. I'm not saying that Carney was at fault, just "Why does it feel like today Mark Carney is going to war?"
