A week before Donald Trump fired off yet another tariff threat on his neighbors, Justin Trudeau and Claudia Sheinbaum had a chance to discuss how to tackle that scenario.
The question is: Would they join forces against their errant trading partner or was it going to be a case of every person for themselves?
The evidence points to the latter.
The two leaders huddled at the Group of 20 summit in Brazil, and what emerged was that the embattled Canadian prime minister was preoccupied with probing his counterpart on Chinese investment — such as whether BYD Co. would be making cars in Mexico — while the freshly elected president south of the border was looking for assurances Trudeau wouldn’t succumb to pressure to eject her country from their three-way trade pact with the US.
“The prime minister does not agree with taking Mexico out of the treaty, he told me so clearly,” Sheinbaum was at pains to tell reporters after their tete-a-tete. “He asked me about a Chinese company’s auto plant, and if there was a plant in Mexico.” She pointed out that BYD’s only North American plant was in California.
The real test of whether the duo would handle Trump’s hardball tactics as allies — or if they would turn on each other to earn his favor — came soon after. As they returned from Rio de Janeiro, Trump took to his social media platform Truth Social to announce he would impose 25% tariffs on all goods from Mexico and Canada.
Within two hours, Trudeau was on the phone with him. Four days later he was flying to Palm Beach to dine on steak and mashed potatoes with Trump at his Mar-a-Lago resort.
Diplomats and policymakers in the rest of the world are taking notes of what one G-20 official in Rio described as a form of psychological warfare unfolding in real-time. On the one hand, you have the economics of what tariffs will do. On the other hand, you have rhetoric, which can shift behavior.
Canada and Mexico are in the immediate firing line, but globally, they all know that soon enough, Trump will be coming for them, too. It didn’t take long, in fact, for the US president-elect to send another warning shot: this time to the BRICS, telling them they will face 100% tariffs if they dare set up a currency to rival the dollar in global trade.
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