On making offers to the Americans, or not making offers...

We are one week away from the review date.

We are a week away from the CUSMA review on July 1, and there is no chance of us getting a deal.

Of course, if you’ve been reading me for a while, you already know this. We’ve had no significant talks with the Americans since last October, Trump doesn’t want to talk or deal with us, and Carney has done everything he can to sour the relationship.

To review what is on the agenda for next week, here are the options once again.

1. All parties agree to extend this for another 16 years

2. One or more parties gives six months’ notice that they are withdrawing from the deal, effectively cancelling it

3. We continue the deal for the remaining 10 years and the deal is subject to annual reviews

Now, let’s be clear, we’ve asked for option 1, I think we’re getting option 3. Some of the people I’m talking to believe that at a later date the Americans could go for a longer extension, but doubt that will happen.

I think that could be less likely that the Americans just pulling out of the whole thing.

Hearing from Ambassador Pete...

Ambassador Pete Hoekstra was on CTV’s Power Play, full interview on Question Period this Sunday, and he was talking about the lack of a deal.

You can watch the interview here, it’s the first 10 minutes or so of the program.

“We’re not anywhere close to announcing any type of a framework or an interim agreement,” Hoekstra told CTV.

What I found interesting is that he talked about the Americans asking us to make them an offer.

So far, other than last October when the Carney government made a pitch over lunch at the White House, we haven’t done it. We also haven’t put forward and offer since talks broke off at the end of October.

Now, after Hoekstra was on, Vassy Kapelos spoke to Derek Burney, Canada’s former ambassador to the U.S. and chief of staff to Brian Mulroney. While I have a lot of respect for Ambassador Burney, his claim that we shouldn’t be making any offers, just trying to force the Americans to respect our current agreement.

How is that working out for us?

A little truth about the 232 tariffs...

We keep hearing Canadian politicians and pundits claim that the tariffs Trump imposed on Canada are illegal.

Here’s the truth no one else will tell you.

The tariffs are not illegal.

We can call them wrong, unjustified, an afront, but not illegal.

If these tariffs were illegal, there would have been a court challenge to them like the IEEPA tariffs that were struck down. Section 232 tariffs are invoked under Trade Expansion Act of 1962, they haven’t been challenged because the law gives Trump the authority to use them.

If there were a way to challenge the tariffs under CUSMA, we already would have done that.

We haven’t.

This isn’t to justify Trump’s tariffs, but there is a reason he chose this way to implement the tariffs.

Now about making the Americans an offer...

Some Canadians seem to think making the Americans an offer is a sign of weakness, it’s not. As a country we have tremendous resources and strengths that we are not utilizing in our favour.

We know the Americans want more of our oil, we know they want our critical minerals, make an offer using these factors. We aren’t doing that, or haven’t been doing that.

Instead of using our critical minerals like a carrot, we are using them like a stick to beat the Americans with.

Instead of using our critical minerals to strike a deal to get rid of tariffs on steel, autos and aluminum, Carney is going around the world signing deals with Germany, France and Italy. He’s signing these other deals and studiously ignoring the Americans, something they are surely noticing.

They’re also obviously noticing that we haven’t made the F-35 decision but appear to be headed to a Gripen purchase.

Speaking of offers and the military, here is Christopher Coates, Director of Foreign Policy, National Defence and National Security at the Macdonald Laurier Institute speaking about how we could offer the Americans more by actually looking after our own defences.