Has business tuned out Trump’s temper tantrums?

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MONTREAL — Like exhausted parents, Canada’s business community seems to be increasingly tuning out the temper tantrums coming from downstairs.

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On Thursday, U.S. President Donald Trump announced he was halting trade talks with Canada over an anti-tariff ad campaign run by the Ontario government.

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“Canada cheated and got caught!!!” Trump wrote in all caps on his social media platform Truth Social on Friday morning.

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He claimed the ads, which play clips of former president Ronald Reagan warning about the risks of protectionism, are “trying to illegally influence” the U.S. Supreme Court ahead of hearings on the president’s sweeping tariffs.

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Ontario Premier Doug Ford said Friday afternoon he would pause the ad campaign, but only after they run during the first two games of the World Series, reaching a massive American audience.

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“It couldn’t get any more tragically comical. If it was a sitcom, we’d be laughing,” said Preetika Joshi, assistant professor at McGill University’s Desautels Faculty of Management.

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“But it’s not a sitcom.”

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At first glance, corporate Canada seemed to shrug off the outburst. Canada’s main stock index rose half a percentage point on Friday. The Canadian Chamber of Commerce called for calm, with CEO Candace Laing stressing the “long game.”

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Markets have paid little heed to trade tensions in recent months. After a dramatic drop in April, benchmark indexes in Canada and the U.S. have gone on to hit record highs.

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But even as investors and companies become more desensitized to White House hysteria, the instability it stokes has added to the angst and frustration mounting among businesses over the past year.

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Firms’ forecasts remain subdued despite a gradual improvement in sentiment, the Bank of Canada said this week in its quarterly business outlook survey.

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“No one knows what’s going to happen a week from now,” Joshi said.

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“This is creating speculation and so much uncertainty. And one thing we know that happens when there is uncertainty is businesses delay big investments.”

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Joshi pointed to the multi-year timelines that major manufacturers such as automakers and steel mills base their plans on, with targets ranging from capital expenditures to pricing and procurement harder to pin down.

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Thursday was not the first time the president has abruptly suspended trade talks. In June, he halted negotiations over a planned three per cent levy on the revenue of technology firms such as Google and Amazon, prompting Prime Minister Mark Carney to rescind the digital services tax.

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The erratic nature of Trump’s trade pronouncements has taught Canadians to take his utterings with a grain of Windsor salt, including around negotiation breakdowns.

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“His suggestion that it’s terminated is part and parcel with his sort of theatrics and hyperbole,” said Mahmood Nanji, a policy fellow at Western University’s Ivey Business School.

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“The reaction from the Trump government is not a surprise … He uses every opportunity to get leverage in a negotiation.”