Trump’s Colonial Ultimatum To Canada
When Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney walked away from the negotiating table with Donald Trump on the night of Aug. 21, it was because U.S. negotiators had slapped down a list of demands that read less like a trade agreement proposal and more like a colonial surrender treaty. Read individually, each item comes off as one more entry in the typical corporate wish list that accompanies any U.S. trade negotiation. Added together, though, they amount to something bigger: a demand that Canada hand over its economic sovereignty—control of its own resources, its own culture, its own foreign policy, and its own industrial base—to a foreign power.