Trump regularly changes his rationale for tariffs – either to coerce diplomatic change, to deal with trade imbalances or to raise significant revenues.
These policy objectives cannot all be achieved simultaneously.
For example, learning from the experience of Trump’s first term “China deal”, Western diplomats have been scrambling to find lists of US goods they might buy more of, in order to give the White House some wins.
Europe could say it is increasing its purchases of US shipments of liquefied natural gas, or arms, or specialised magnets for wind farms.
It doesn’t really matter if these trends were already in train, as long as the US president can be allowed to chalk up a “win”.
But is changing trade deficit numbers really the aim here?
Officially, the rationale for Trump’s move is punishment for the trade in the synthetic opioid fentanyl, but that is widely seen as a legal pretext for “emergency” action that would normally require a congressional decision.
Canada has signalled it will take a robust approach to Trump, best articulated by the contender to be the country’s next prime minister, Mark Carney.
“We will retaliate … dollar for dollar” he told the BBC, ridiculing the fentanyl rationale and saying Canada would “stand up to a bully”.
This is significant whether or not Carney succeeds Justin Trudeau and ends up chairing the G7, which is the group of the world’s seven largest so-called “advanced” economies.
As a former governor of the Bank of England, Carney witnessed Trump on the world stage at G20 and G7 meetings first hand and has clearly concluded that the US leader only respects strength.
He had a coded warning for any nation seeking to stay quiet and not catch the eye of the president: “Good luck.”
In recent conversations I have had with European trade negotiators, they have stressed cooperation and partnership, as well as deals with the US. When asked, they avoided directly criticising even the extraordinary suggestion of using tariffs against Nato ally Denmark over the fate of Greenland.
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