If you’re reading this, you likely belong to one of three camps: those freaking out about the August 19 trade negotiation deadline, those who’ve shrugged it off, and those who have no idea it’s happening.
You can be forgiven for falling into the third camp, given the volume of daily tariff, trade, and Donald Trump drama. A quick (non-AI-generated) summary: at 12:01 a.m. on August 19, the United States will slap a new, 50 percent tariff on about $20 billion worth of Canadian goods, including some covered under the Canada–United States–Mexico Agreement, unless the two countries can reach a deal. Trump has signalled he’s willing to forgo the new tariffs and lower pre-existing ones on the auto industry in exchange for some concessions from Canada, including allowing the sale of US alcohol products in some provinces.
But it’s possible to simultaneously register that the tariffs are no idle threat while allowing that Trump has threatened tariffs multiple times in the past without following through, that he could decide to extend negotiations last minute, and that he could choose to comply with TACO (or “Trump Always Chickens Out”).
Given the caveats, how seriously should we take Trump’s deadlines? I spoke with Andrea Lawlor, associate professor in the department of political science and the public policy program at McMaster University, about the ticking tariff clock and the psychology, practicality, and effectiveness of deadlines.
When Trump sets a deadline, what’s your response?
I tend to react now with much less a sense of urgency than I did at the beginning of the second Trump administration. We have seen what appear to be firm deadlines come and go with little by way of an actual agreement and, sometimes, even little by way of consequences. We have been given repeated cues from the American administration that deadlines, formalities, and institutionalized agreements are far more fluid than we would have initially anticipated.
So there’s a whole psychology to the application of deadlines in this context that is meant to promote a sense of urgency, but when they are treated without the normal constraints of a deadline, then I think people start to wonder: What is the use of the tool? If it’s not actually to get to an agreement by a stated date, then is it really a veiled threat?
So what do you think is the point of deadlines, at least those coming from the White House?
We’ve seen evidence over the past few years, under the Trump administration, that the deadline is really a tool to draw attention to a grievance, and that is usually attached to a threat. His deadlines tend to come with sometimes arbitrary or incomplete information, sometimes arbitrary expectations—and sometimes assertions that seem out of sync with what the negotiation is presumably trying to procure.
That’s the other part of the negotiation tactic that is really disrupted with the current trade talks: we are not even sure what we’re trying to negotiate at this point. We’re trying to stop something from happening; we’re trying to stop a consequence. Canadians and the Canadian government are looking for predictability, but that doesn’t really exist in the way that deadlines are being employed in this current context.
We’re now hours from the deadline. What do you think it means for members of the public to see that the negotiations have come down to the wire?
The stakes are higher on the Canadian side, and the government cannot afford to be seen as being slow or hesitant to act. Many Americans, perhaps, are not as attuned to the consequences of this negotiation because it seems like they’re much steeper for Canadians than for many Americans.
To the extent that there is a public relations benefit, the American team is going to be perceived as negotiating hard to protect Americans’ interests; the Canadian team has an interest in playing a bit of hardball but ultimately coming to a deal for Canadians and Canadian industries.
Do you think deadline fatigue shapes public perception of these negotiations?
It’s not too dissimilar from having an election in the summer. We see lower levels of attentiveness, engagement; we are in the heart of summer vacation for a number of people. It’s a natural, cyclical thing, where July and August tend to be quieter periods in government generally. This is a bit of an exception, of course, but I would still say that most Canadians’ level of tuning in to government activity is objectively lower than it would be in the rest of the calendar year. It’s not that Canadians have stopped caring about the issue; it’s that they’ve stopped believing that any single negotiation ends the sustained anxiety of the broader CUSMA renegotiation.
What does that mean for the government? How does that posture affect its approach to the trade talks?
Public opinion polls still suggest that Canadians have a high degree of confidence in Mark Carney’s administration, both his government and the members of his negotiating team that he has selected to engage on the issue of trade with the Americans. There may be some belief that whatever deal is had is “the best deal.” That’s not to say that people will be happy with it, but I think, increasingly, the public is realizing that you’re negotiating with a deeply unpredictable administration, and, therefore, the normal rules of engagement don’t apply as they might otherwise.
At this point, the Carney government is still benefiting quite remarkably from a very sustained honeymoon post–2025 election, and a lot of that is a consequence of the fact that he is still viewed as the most capable at negotiating with the Trump administration.
There are, looming ahead, some very real deadlines in the form of fall elections: the US midterms, Quebec’s provincial election, and the referendum in Alberta. How do they shape these talks?
I think, for a long time, people thought that the midterms would be a useful counterpoint to Trump’s authority because the expectation was that he would—as often happens—lose some support in the Senate or House. I think, increasingly, people are acknowledging that these midterms are less likely to truly dampen this administration’s enthusiasm for pursuing protectionist policies. Even if a few seats are lost or gained by Republicans or Democrats respectively, it won’t likely translate into a big agenda shift. The Trump administration has very powerfully shown that normal institutional constraints are not something they let interfere with the execution of their agenda. The long and short of it: I don’t think the midterms are coming to save anyone.
And what about in Canada? We’re two months away from a provincial election in Quebec and a referendum in Alberta, both of which could open the door to secession referendums.
The Quebec election and referendum context is interesting. The stakes are high internally for the Carney government, because no prime minister wants to see the election of a party that has a stated platform item of putting a vote to the people about the sovereignty of a province. But if you remember eighteen months ago, the support for Paul St-Pierre Plamondon, the Parti Québécois leader, was extremely high. It seemed like not only was a Quebec referendum in the cards but it could very well be a successful referendum because it would be built around personal success of the party leader. That looks very different today.
The flashpoint in Quebec, for the federal government, could be supply management. If the Quebec dairy industry is hit hard in any of these trade negotiations, we may see a bit of uptick in support for the PQ. (Editor’s note: In a post on X on Tuesday morning, St-Pierre Plamondon announced that his party would not hold a referendum as long as Trump remains president.)
The outcome of these negotiations may also affect support for Alberta sovereignty. It’s not clear that the latest negotiations are as focused on the industries that are core to Alberta’s regional economy. But, still, this is a difficult time for a prime minister to look like he is capitulating on any core industry.
What are we not paying enough attention to when we focus on the immediate deadline?
The actual CUSMA agreement often gets lost in all this. When we are constantly responding to individual deadlines or the threats of new tariffs, we tend to forget about the core agreement.
Canadians may be letting go of the expectation that we will have a multiyear, stabilized agreement, with clear mechanisms for disputes and renegotiation, because that no longer seems like it’s in the cards. Canada and other allied countries may have to replace the predictability of long-term agreements with small incremental adjustments to trade agreements over time.
I always like to flag that this is not a short-term problem. We should expect that this is a start to a new era of trade politics. And I don’t think it ends with the Trump administration. Whether it’s a Democrat or a Republican following Trump in office, I don’t think we should expect to return in full force to that type of stabilized agreement and multilateral trade policy that we have become used to since the enactment of the North American Free Trade Agreement.
And that is why the conversation around broadening our trade relationships with other countries is so important. Will it ever be a replacement for what has been lost in the departure of our decades of free trade with the US? No, there’s just simply no way to make up for those losses in trade volume or the convenience of trading with our nearest neighbour. But we might be able to blunt some of these effects by building up trade with other, more amenable countries.
What makes you say things wouldn’t change after Trump?
The second most protectionist American government that we have seen in the postwar era is the Joe Biden government. Even under a Democrat who had very positive relations with Canada and knows the importance of trade, the US maintained some protectionist policies. It would take a fundamentally different type of Democrat to change the US’s overall approach to trade, and I’m not sure that Democrat is electable right now.
Speaking of CUSMA, July 1, the deadline for that deal to be renewed beyond 2036, came and went without much public fanfare. How much did that missed deadline affect where we’re at now?
I think it really clarifies or crystallizes for everyone who’s attentive to trade politics that we are going to be working in three- to six-month increments from here on in. And that is an extraordinary tax on government resources on both sides. It is an exceptional loss of productivity both for government and for industry.
What’s remarkable to me in all of this is that nobody is winning. It’s really about who’s losing less. And right now, Canadians are losing a considerable amount of their economic security and ability to forecast into the future. That is really worrisome not just for Canadians but for the government as well, because economic instability costs governments.
So what we have to look forward to is . . . more deadlines.
Until there’s a sea change—yes, expect more deadlines and more edge-of-the-seat politics.
