The United States and Canada have spent the past several months behaving like two people in a bad marriage: each is convinced the other is taking advantage, each is speaking loudly enough for the neighbors to hear, and neither seems willing to acknowledge how much is at stake if the relationship truly breaks down.It is time to stop measuring each other's manhood across the border.Canada should return to the table.So should the United States.
Not to negotiate another small, defensive tariff truce, but to construct a new North American economic relationship worthy of the two most integrated economies in the democratic world.DAVID MARCUS: CANADA SEES TRUMP TRADE WAR AS ‘LIFE AND DEATH’ WHILE AMERICANS BARELY NOTICEThe first principle must be plain: Canada is a sovereign country.It is not the 51st state, and no good can come from language that treats it as one.
America does not need a submissive Canada.It needs a prosperous, capable, secure, and willing partner on its northern border—one that shares a continent, a NATO commitment, a vast energy system, critical supply chains, and values that are far more alike than different.The second principle is equally plain: sovereignty is not a license for permanent economic asymmetry.
If Canada wishes to preserve privileged access to the American market—and it should—then it must be willing to address the barriers that American businesses and workers reasonably see as one-sided.Banking, dairy, procurement, digital rules, industrial subsidies, and autos all belong on the table.
But they should be resolved through reciprocity, not coercion.Washington should stop treating Canada as a trophy to be won.Ottawa should stop treating distance from the United States as a measure of national success. The current approach has it backward.
Washington has too often treated tariffs and public humiliation as a negotiating strategy.Ottawa, understandably angered by that treatment, has increasingly treated diversification away fro...