Op-Ed: What happens if Canada becomes an associate member of the EU? You may not believe this.

The noisy response from Trump regarding the proposed associate membership of Canada in the EU now borders on pure slapstick comedy. He sees this as a “hostile” situation, and even refers to “bad intentions” on the part of the EU.

Canada and the EU have completely ignored him. That’s just the entrée to the wider situation. As the world has come to learn, Trump doesn’t seem to know he has no jurisdiction anywhere but the USA. In this case, the President of the United States is now no more than an irrelevant troll.

His attempts to dictate to Denmark about Greenland, NATO, and other worldwide debacles have also failed to achieve anything but irritating allies and creating ridiculous trade and diplomatic situations.  If Canada becomes an associate member of the EU, Trump fails completely. All he can do is make a fool of himself.

That said, maybe it’s worth looking a bit closer at the realities of the USA “ceasing to trade” with the EU.

For instance:

The US currently has a trade deficit with the EU, importing about $200 billion more than the EU does from the US.

That issue also relates to Trump’s tariffs, which are supposed to prop up US revenue.  The US imports around $600 billion or a bit less from the EU. Tariffs are about 15% with some variables for different goods.

This, believe it or not, is an actual revenue program, based on the stated and documented ideology of someone or something equally absurd, and the odd theory that charging your own people more for imports is better than allowing them to do normal business. It’s actually a much higher tax raised at the Federal level, with additional taxes paid on business income after paying the tariffs.

The US also imports slightly more with a smaller trade deficit from Canada, overlooking the well-known fact that the Americans have had to source affordable goods from Canada since that famous episode on The Simpsons. Canada can take or leave US imports and has been doing exactly that since this insanity started. Again, it’s only Americans on the receiving end of the negatives.

Ceasing to trade with the EU would be disastrous for the US and disrupt supply chains nationwide. It’s an astonishingly stupid idea.

Total bilateral trade is about $1.46 trillion. That trade includes profit margins at all levels of distribution. The entire US national supply chain is locked in. This also includes US agriculture, a highly sensitive domestic political issue in the US at the moment. Then again, maybe Americans don’t need food and money anymore. They can live on intravenous FOX News supplements, perhaps?

How not to conduct international geopolitics

Bizarre as the US/Canada situation has become, it’s interesting. This has become nothing but infantile rhetoric on the US side and nothing but a healthy level of understandable assertion of independence on the Canadian side,

It’s hard to imagine a more unnecessary or more futile conflict. Canada has nothing to gain from even pretending to tolerate the rhetoric. The US has nothing to gain from sabotaging its own credibility.

The net response from the world to US babble has been, “We had no idea you were such morons.” These constant faux pas haven’t exactly strengthened the US position with China, either.

Xi Jinping is coming for talks with Trump as this inglorious spat with Canada and the EU slobbers on to its next stone wall. In the past, the US had a fairly solid bloc of allies behind it. Now, it has cheap talk and hysterical postings on Truth Social. That is the sum total of the US position.

If you haven’t seen the memes on social media saying, “All Americans must be accompanied by an adult”, now is the time to join the dots. This series of absolutely suicidal failures in the geopolitical sphere has absolutely trashed the US position on any subject you care to name.

“Trash” is the other problem. There seems to be a lot of it in US foreign policy.  You don’t want your garbage running your global policies. The astonishing and continuous underperformance of US diplomacy and its floundering, hopelessly lost domestic economy are simply showing extreme weakness. The Canada/EU situation is simply defining incompetence on the part of the US.

November, Noschmember

The November midterms aren’t an issue for the rest of the world. There will be no budges from Canada or the EU. These are issues of sovereignty and self-determination. There can be no movement.

No amount of brattish whining from Washington will make any difference. This administration created the situation for itself. It did so in full knowledge that none of its demands would ever be acceptable to Canada or the EU.

The US need not expect sympathy. These constant self-inflicted idiocies are wasting the scatology, time, and money of 8.3 billion people. There is no USA in any sense the world recognizes it. It looks more like a very bad movie, two-dimensional and lacking any real substance.

Irrational behaviour has consequences. One of those consequences is disgust. Time to show your cards, America. Where are the adults?