As His Fans Scream Victory, Trump Backs Down

There’s something … odd going on.

I’ve seen a bunch of comments around the place from pro-Trump Americans (and apparently wishing-to-pretend-they’re-Americans) this afternoon which have basically been, to summarize: “Trump threatened Canada with Tariffs, CANADA FOLDED!”

And therefore, Trump holding off on imposing his much-vaunted tariffs as the fruit of a victory won by wielding them as a negotiation tactic (well, “submission-demanding tactic” would be more how those fans are countenancing it, but anyway).

Except here’s the thing. The Canadian policy which they’re pointing to as what Trump “won” with this week’s tariff threats … was already announced a month and a half ago.

It’s true that Trudeau had re-mentioned some of the headline details of it (like the $1.3 billion dollar funding boost for Canada’s border security) in the course of his speech in reply to Trump’s tariff stick-waving, so I suppose I can see why it might have looked like it was in reaction to Trump’s threat.

Although during the course of said speech, Trudeau also mentioned a rather extensive suite of retaliatory tariff etc. measures which Canada would be implementing if America went through with Trump’s announced approach.

In other words – the only thing which actually changed as a result of Trump’s recent announcement he was going to impose tariffs on Canada, is Trudeau declaring that Canada would respond in kind.

But because, apparently, ‘object permanence’ is a bit of a difficult thing out there … a policy-set which was already announced in mid-December, is grasped by these pro-Trump commenters as having been swiftly congealed in early February in specific response to Trump’s tariff declaration late last week.

And therefore, Trump saying actually he’s going to not go through with his imposition of tariffs (for at least the next month – conveniently aligned with the time-scale announced by Trudeau for Canada’s rollout of ‘retaliatory’ tariffs … Trudeau had said that his government were going to give Canadian business several weeks to adapt and find alternate suppliers etc., hence why not simply emplacing their own tariffs immediately in response to Trump’s) … gets purported as proof of victory.

To say that again: Trump backs off on imposing tariffs on Canada following Canada saying it would respond in kind, and because Canada’s PM also re-mentions in his speech a policy his government had already come out with last year, this is presented as the direct consequence to Trump’s tariff imposition, so ‘Trump Victory’.

Rather than, say, Trump swiftly backing away from doing something, immediately following Canada showing an intent to retaliate significantly if he actually went ahead and implemented it.

Now, I’m not saying that there was no causal relationship between Trump making remarks last year toward Canada and Canada’s December announcement of a funding increase for its border security etc. (although considering the sheer size of Canada’s borders both on land and sea, I do rather wonder how much of an increase that $1.3 billion actually works out as).

However, considering Trump’s declared tariff imposition toward Canada last week happened over a month after that Canadian announcement … Trump rescinding (or, at least, “Pausing” for “at least thirty days” the actual implementation for) his tariffs on Canada cannot have been in response to what was already put forward within same.

Phrased more succinctly – Canada didn’t ‘back down’ to Trump this week.

It did the opposite.

It declared it was prepared to ‘push back’ directly – and Trump abandoned his attack (whilst phrasing it as a ‘pause’ for … long enough to be conveniently forgotten about, and for some other big flashpoint to have come to the fore for him to claim a victory on instead).

But because people really do rather like to ‘feel like [they’re] winning’, his enthusiastic online support-base (and, no doubt, their epochal predecessors in more traditional media) are jubilantly presenting things as if Trump’s tariff imposition a few days ago actually succeeded.

And yes, yes I suppose it did.

It succeeded in getting Trudeau to make a speech (he’s good at speeches – it was a pretty decent one, The Rev. Rolinson was watching it last night).

Some “win”.