Opinion: For a trade deal tomorrow, sacrifice these two dinosaurs

Prime Minister Mark Carney, left, and U.S. President Donald Trump during the Group of Seven Summit at the Kananaskis Country Golf Course in Kananaskis, Alta., on June 16. Photo by GEOFF ROBINS/AFP via Getty Images files

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It’s no surprise that five months after the Trump tariffs hit Canada, we still don’t have a trade deal. With no cards to play, Canada sits impotent at the table. Having brought only a large bowl of sour grapes to the talks, we face the prospect of a bad situation only getting worse as Trump tightens the screws. Until Canada is ready to give something up in exchange for a tariff-free relationship, our position will continue to weaken, bringing irreparable, long-term commercial and political disadvantage.

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To review: nothing happened at the much-anticipated Donald Trump-Mark Carney Oval Office meeting in early May. Nothing happened at the G7 in Kananaskis in June. And nothing happened before the Aug. 1 deadline. Now it’s “35 per cent, baby.”

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Instead of stubbornly clinging to a lopsided wish list that would benefit only us, let’s cut a deal built on a meaningful exchange of considerations. To get something from Trump we need to offer him something he wants. That’s not the “art of the deal.” It’s the definition of deal-making — a concept that so far has eluded Ottawa’s brain trust. The art of the deal is balancing value, clout and leverage for good outcomes. We could try that, too.

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At the moment, there’s no evidence Ottawa has an end game in sight. To date, it’s been either elbows up, a news cycle of aggression, a news cycle of patience, or jerry-rigging assorted clever counter-tariffs. Ontario’s needless cancellation of Elon Musk’s Starlink only adds more bitterness to an already nasty brew.

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So far none of our maneuvers have worked, mainly because of our governments’ myopic misunderstanding of who sits across the table. Everything else having failed, the pitiful mess that is Canada’s tariff policy must now turn to an out-of-the-box solution.

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We need to face facts about auto assembly and supply management. So far, we have sidelined these sacred dinosaurs for fear of backlash from their keepers. But nothing is strategically dumber than keeping them off the table. By now it should be obvious that until we bring them out of the shadows, no tariff deal is possible. In our own interest, it’s time to sacrifice these two industries that are directly responsible for higher prices and taxes (to finance “investments”). Erasing them will clear the way for economic optimization on both sides of the border and stop our endless, economically draining fealty to powerfully entrenched but essentially fringe interests.

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The two have grazed long enough on our pocketbooks. Their sacrifice very likely will bring long-term tariff peace that will spawn a broad range of mutual advantages. There will be a political fuss — no doubt of that. But it will be up to our prime minister to manage a transition for Canada’s greater good by eliminating economic models no longer viable in a global economy undergoing massive rationalization.

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In an exercise Trump almost certainly will respect, our ex-central banker can sign a deal that serves all our industries, including the many that are not verging on extinction.

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Michael Nitefor is founder and president of Toronto-based Air Lab, Inc.

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