Canada’s corporate sector is increasingly talking like the opinion piece attached below.

“If our goal is to re-engage the current administration in meaningful dialogue…”

“There is also geopolitical risk to consider. President Trump has repeatedly point to Canada’s retaliatory tariffs as justification for escalating his own.”

And of course this leads to a call for removing tariffs and making whatever deal we can with the White House.

The underlying theme in all these calls is wilful blindness.

Engage the administration in “meaningful dialogue”? Why on earth would anyone think Trump is capable of “meaningful dialogue,” or wants to engage in “meaningful dialogue”? There is global evidence to the contrary. It is gobsmacking that serious people continue to talk about this administration as if it were like all the other US administrations we have known since the Second World War.

And you would have had to miss the news for the past seven months to think we can avoid giving Trump a “justification” for his attacks. He will use literally any excuse. With Canada, he started with fentanyl, got action he liked, thanked Canada, then switched to other justifications, and now he’s back to fentanyl. He hammered India for buying oil from Russia. He hammered Brazil because he wants the prosecution of Jair Bolsonaro stopped. There’s always an excuse. Give Trump everything on his list and he’ll make a new list. Surely to God in heaven this is perfectly clear by now.

But if you are a corporate executive accustomed to thinking only several quarters ahead — and only about your little patch — wilful blindness to the brutal facts, and the true scope of the threat, make some selfish sense. Gin up a little “meaningful dialogue.” Take whatever deal is offered. If the nation declines into little more than a resource colony of the United States, well, you’ll be retired by then, right?