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Luckily for Trump, the other parties have been even more desperate than him: Europe, South Korea, Japan have all inked bad deals with the unpredictable president.

Now that we can plainly see the miserable terms Trump has to offer, Canada needs to steel its resolve and get ready to say “no deal.�

Just look at where other countries have ended up. The United Kingdom thought it would gain an advantage by being the first to sign, acquiescing to 10 per cent across-the-board tariffs and a quota on its automobile exports. The Europe Union’s agreement, , was even worse, imposing a 15 per cent tariff rate and a requirement that it buy USD $250 billion in American energy products per year.

As for Japan and South Korea, they negotiated tariff rates ranging from 15 to , but were also expected to cough up huge sums of direct investment — USD $550 billion from Tokyo and USD $350 billion from Seoul. Trump claimed that the deal requires 90 per cent of the profit of that investment remain in America and said he would personally direct the capital.

Trump’s shakedown was effective. French President Emmanuel Macron conceded as much when he declared last month that “to be free, you need to be feared. We were not feared enough.� Instead, they feared being left out — but as Trump himself wrote, showing fear “makes the other guy smell blood, and then you’re dead.�

But inherent in these deals is a recognition that these trade wars are costly and damaging: That’s why Trump had to push his trading partners for billions in outlandish bribes.

The EU’s proposed energy purchases are , and would require the bloc to triple its American oil and gas imports next year. Tokyo, meanwhile, says the proposed half-trillion dollar investment fund is more of an than a promise.

In truth, these goodies are really flashy theatrics intended to placate emperor Trump. That is an unbelievably naive gamble. If there is one thing Trump hates, it’s being cheated. Even the perception of deception is enough to spark an economy-wrecking tantrum, as Canada has seen repeatedly.

Countries signed these loser deals because they offer the illusion of stability. But Trump doesn’t want stability. When he lacks leverage, he creates it by knocking his opponent off-balance. In Trump’s gangster economics, you never shake down a mark just once: You keep coming back.Ìý

These deals — a hodgepodge of preliminary, half-compete, and framework agreements — offer no guarantees. Japan’s deal wasn’t even Ìý

Worse still, underneath the shaky foundation of these Potemkin agreements is an even more rotten core: They are all built on one-way tariffs. The rates may be lower than Trump’s initial threat, but they are still much higher than zero. If Trump ever leaves office, why would his successor ever agree to drop those tariffs without more concessions?

We should deny Trump, and America, this long-term leverage. We need to draw the line in the sand: No tariffs, or no deal.

To stand firm, we need strength, which in turn comes from solidarity. Prime Minister Mark Carney’s critics need to stop creating the expectation that a good deal is likely or even possible, as Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre did this week when he hectored Carney for not already getting a tariff-free agreement signed.

That same advice can go for Carney himself. At the G7, he set a 30 day deadline to “pursue negotiations toward a deal� — which many took for a deadline to end the trade war itself. Over that month, Carney even nixed our Digital Services Tax to keep talks on track (a strategic retreat, but a retreat nonetheless.) In recent days, he has continued signalling that success could be on the horizon.

On the campaign trail, Carney frequently told Canadians that he would prefer no deal over a bad deal. It’s clear now that there are only bad deals on offer. It’s time he dropped the optimistic tone.

Signing on America’s terms will mean dropping our retaliatory tariffs and plowing billions into a Trumpian slush fund. Instead, let’s use those billions to harden our defences. We can and should buy up steel and lumber to build ships and homes; compensate sectors hard-hit; build new trade infrastructure to extend our economic reach elsewhere; and help small businesses manage the regulatory complexity brought on by this trade chaos. Carney has talked a good game about all of these things, and now is the time to turn more focus towards them.

The fact is, we don’t need a deal because we already have a deal: As the mad president hikes tolls on the bridge, we still have a tunnel. Under CUSMA, of our exports to the United States are tariff-exempt. Some of Trump tariffs may still hit that protected trade, but that doesn’t mean we should help him weaken it.

Another useful axiom from Trump’s book: “Protect the downside and the upside with take care of itself.�

Trump has been so able to bully those other countries because, with the exception of South Korea, it doesn’t have free trade agreements with them. But we have a legally-binding agreement: CUSMA. Signing a deal with Trump today which tolerates tariffs, even at just 10 per cent, could weaken CUSMA in both the short and long term.Ìý

If we codify tariffs, be it in CUSMA or some side deal, they are likely to outlive Trump’s time in office. Whenever sanity returns — be it in three years or 30 — we want to be the country that has never agreed to this economic blackmail.

If we expect to resist that outcome, we will need solidarity with our third partner, Mexico.Ìý

This week, Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne and Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand were in Mexico to do exactly that. “We have been neighbours,� Champagne told reporters from Mexico City, “but we need to get to know each other a bit better.�

All three parties to CUSMA are due to review the deal on July 1 next year. Anand says “momentum has been building� to get on the same page ahead of the CUSMA review, and it began with President Claudia Sheinbaum’s visit to Canada during the G7 summit last month. That’s encouraging.

Together, Canada and Mexico can exert massive leverage on America. Despite his bluster, he knows he can’t afford a prolonged North American trade war on two fronts.

Gaming out this scenario, Trump is likely to do what he always does: Threaten to quit.Ìý

Under the CUSMA agreement, any party can leave the agreement six months after they first announce their intention to do so. That means America could exit the deal as soon as early 2027. Fine, let him.

We will never gain advantage by playing into the delusion that Trump’s beggar-thy-neighbour tactics are good economics. They are not. These deals are bad, and they are being made by a fundamentally unreliable man who wants to finance his illiberal incompetence with other peoples’ money.

After all, there is one more lesson from “The Art of the Dealâ€� — not from Trump, but from the guy who actually wrote it: The book’s co-author, Tony Schwartz. He gained valuable insights into Trump’s mind in the process. “He lied strategically. He had a complete lack of conscience about it,â€� Schwartz told the in 2016. Lying, Trump believed, “gave him a strange advantage.â€�Ìý

Our allies will soon find out exactly how much a deal is worth with the liar-in-chief. Canada would do well to avoid the game altogether.