Canada has suspended trade negotiations with the United States, Prime Minister Mark Carney said, after last-minute changes to Washington’s proposed terms were deemed “unfair” and “uneconomic”, a day after US President Donald Trump had said that US "should be able to have a deal with Canada."
I get it. False consensus aside, it’s a trope that Americans don’t much care about things outside their borders. Many Americans never cross a border, and for many people if it doesn’t affect them directly then it’s just noise in a busy day.
But with such long unguarded borders, minimal manufacturing, insufficient resources and a surplus of cash crops, it needs friends who will deal squarely with it and help secure those borders.
And when the oil and electricity run short, I hope America is cool paying “market prices” if we’re no longer best-buds.