Are you a Canadian suffering the ill effects of the trade war between your country and the USA on the heels of Prime Minister Mark Carney walking away from the USMCA at the last minute back in August? Could it be that the reason that Carney surprised almost everybody by backing away from an agreement was due to politics?
That's not Canadian politics, but American politics. Specifically, did Mark Carney back away from the USMCA agreement in August in order to help the Democrats in the midterm elections?
Who could be making such a serious charge? Some kooky right wing conspiracists? Nope. It turns out the source for this claim comes from the leftist oriented Politico. In fact you don't have to dig very far into the Politico story published on Saturday to find that assertion written by Liz Crampton, Zi-Ann Lum, and Daniel Desrochers since it is boldly claimed right in the title, "How Canada Inflicted Maximum Midterms Pain on Trump."
Canada (via Mark Carney) playing midterm politics south of the border is seconded by the subtitle: "Ottawa spent a decade trying to appease, match and outlast Trump. This year, it read the electoral map."
Politico set the scene right away with Mark Carney, who "read the electoral map," sparking the USA-Canada trade war by walking away from the USMCA just before the deadline when they seemed close to agreement:
A trade deal was imminent. Top negotiators from the United States and Canada were holed up in a dreary building in southwest D.C., working on the details of an agreement to finally end hostilities that had wreaked havoc on both countries’ economies and a once close diplomatic and military relationship. But then, two hours before the Aug. 22 tariff deadline, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney instructed his negotiators to walk away. That night, the U.S. responded, imposing a 50% tariff on $20 billion worth of Canadian goods like wood pulp, hockey equipment and industrial machinery.
So why did Mark Carney make such an economically disastrous decision to suddenly back off and walk away from the agreement? Politico provides the explanation:
Carney’s government had been watching the trade negotiation deadline with an eye to a different clock ticking down: two months until Trump’s constituents went to the polls. For Canadian leaders who had spent a decade testing strategies to confront an increasingly adversarial neighbor, the electoral calendar was a new source of bargaining power to explore.
For months, embassy officials in Washington had been working with analysts from the federal finance department and foreign ministry in Ottawa to scour the country’s tariff schedules to understand where changes would be felt on the midterm electoral map. Experiencing a localized hit in their states and districts, Canadian officials knew, might be the only thing that would inspire Republicans to reconsider their acceptance of Trump’s trade policies. That leverage would only intensify as Election Day approached with affordability concerns atop voters’ minds.
Translation: Mark Carney made the decision to play midterm elections political games by harming the Canadian economy in order to help the Democrats as you can see in this Politico explanation:
New Canadian tariffs took effect on Sept. 8, with ramifications rippling down from the world’s longest peaceful border and across House and Senate battlegrounds. Democrats aired $72.6 million worth of ads mentioning tariffs in the general election. It informed attacks in debates at the Kansas State Fair and on Iowa Public Television and a common thread in stump speeches from Maine to Texas.
It seems that Politico, in their urge to continue gloating about the Democrat midterm election victories, accidentally threw Canadian Prime Minister Carney under the bus by chortling over how he helped the Democrats by backing away from a trade agreement and sparking a trade war which despite helping Democrats also harmed Carney's fellow Canadians.
