ANALYSIS | Canada’s resistance to Trump’s trade demands offers Europe a blueprint. Will the EU take it? | CBC News
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When European Union head Ursula von der Leyen sat alongside Donald Trump at his Turnberry golf resort in Scotland last year, she promised Europeans that accepting a blanket 15 per cent U.S. tariff on EU exports would buy the continent “predictability and stability.”
Some critics now see the trade deal as a one-sided capitulation that instead paved the way for an ongoing cycle of American economic coercion.
First came U.S. efforts to reclassify certain European industrial goods to impose higher tariffs. Now, a fresh battle has emerged over European efforts to levy a digital services tax on U.S. tech giants — a dispute that echoes Washington’s recent attempts to dictate tax terms to Ottawa.
No sooner was the Turnberry deal ratified by the European Parliament than Trump was on Truth Social, threatening to override the entire accord by slapping 100 per cent tariffs on any European nation that implements or expands tech taxes.
As European resistance to Trump’s demands stiffens, some lawmakers are looking at Mark Carney’s dramatic exit from the U.S. trade table not as a reckless gamble but as a lesson in how to stand up to a bully.
Former French ambassador to the U.S. Gerard Araud posted that “Canada should show the way to the EU: with Trump, only firmness pays off.”
“Countries that are committed to democracy and the rule of law — and do not accept the law of the jungle — must work together,” wrote Bernd Lange, a German parliamentarian who chairs the EU’s trade committee, on X. “We stand by Canada’s side.”
And from former Swedish Prime Minister Carl Bildt:
“With Canada, China and Brazil showing that you can stand up to the United States in trade and related talks, I guess there will be a discreet discussion in the EU and Japan on whether they did the right thing.”
Quiet support
For the moment, “discreet” appears to be the operative word.
Few, if any, of Europe’s current leaders have publicly rushed to Carney’s defence in the trade dispute, likely seeing no obvious need to provoke Trump’s ire.
But observers say that behind closed doors, Canada’s strategy is viewed with admiration.
“The fact that Canada has walked away, I think, is an interesting and good example for the Europeans in that [it says] you don’t have to swallow everything,” said Tobias Gehrke, a senior policy fellow with the European Council of Foreign Relations.
“You might have to be able to walk away and increase the pressure on Washington in order to arrive at a better deal.”
Up to this point, Europe has only been willing to draw absolute red lines with Trump over territory rather than trade.
The U.S. president’s dramatic efforts to coerce Denmark into ceding the semi-autonomous territory of Greenland to American control sparked EU-wide condemnation, U.S. diplomatic isolation and even a modest Danish and European military response.
It was only after his annexation threat put the NATO military alliance at risk that Trump backed off, at least somewhat, pivoting instead to some kind of vague future framework for developing Greenland’s re
Gehrke notes that while Greenland involved the territorial integrity of Europe, fights over commerce fail to stir the same pan-European passion.
“On simple trade issues, whether the tariff rate is 15 per cent or 13 per cent or 17 per cent, there was much less appetite from the Europeans to escalate, to really push back,” Gehrke said.
Tepid trade deal
Britain’s push for trade stability with Trump has certainly amounted to far less than advertised.
Former Labour prime minister Keir Starmer was among the first leaders to line up to cut a trade deal at the start of the president’s second term.
Like Europe, many in Britain now see that deal as having rapidly lost its lustre. British exporters were forced to accept a baseline 10 per cent tariff on most goods sent to the U.S., with steel and aluminum facing even steeper penalties.
But the real kick came when Trump quickly offered similar trade deals to global competitors such as Japan and South Korea, instantly eroding the U.K.’s competitive edge.
When Washington threatened 100 per cent tariffs over Britain’s existing digital services tax, it made Downing Street hyper-anxious. Instead of matching Trump’s aggression, British officials paved the way for a climbdown earlier this summer, publicly signalling that the domestic tech tax could be “reconsidered.”
Carney flagged precisely this pattern of behaviour following the breakdown of Ottawa’s talks, explicitly warning that a U.S. signature under the current administration is often “written in pencil.”
Sophisticated audience
But trade experts warn that a fundamental barrier prevents Europe — or the U.K. — from easily replicating the Canadian model: the trade sophistication of the Canadian public and the grim reality of economic endurance.
“I think in Canada, you have a unique situation where you have a population … that is very much behind a position of needing to defend what people see as Canada’s interests,” said Arun Venkataraman, a trade lawyer and former U.S. Commerce Department official who worked as a negotiator in the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative in the Biden and Obama administrations.
Venkataraman notes that because Canadians intimately understand how deeply integrated their economy is with the U.S., their collective willingness to absorb the pain of a failed negotiation is highly unusual.
“For the Canadian population to be where it is today, in strong support of the position the prime minister has taken, I think is not easily replicable in other countries,” Venkataraman told CBC News.
But he warns that the theatrical, public nature of Carney’s “no” is only the opening scene of a much longer, more painful conflict.
“It is one thing to be intellectually willing to take the hit that you anticipate comes with a failed negotiation with the Trump administration,” Venkataraman told CBC News.
“It is quite another thing to take that hit, and then to take the hit over the duration. The duration of these types of conflicts has a significant impact and has a tendency to wear down what political will might have existed at the beginning.”
Volatile shift
The erosion of political will is exactly why European allies are currently keeping their heads down while the rhetorical bullets fly.
“Your willingness to make compromises and take certain deals at the negotiating table is coloured by what you think that long-term relationship is,” Venkataraman said, adding that the volatile shift in Washington’s reliability “ultimately comes to the detriment of the United States.”
WATCH | What Canada is targeting in U.S. trade fight:
Canadian counter-tariffs target appliances, fish, cosmetics
August 25|Duration3:13
The federal government laid out Canada’s plan to strike back at the U.S., announcing billions in counter-tariffs on hundreds of America products including fish, cosmetics and furniture.
That declining confidence extends far beyond Ottawa, Brussels or London.
A June 2026 survey by the Pew Research Center found that a global median of just 23 per cent of adults expressed confidence in Trump’s leadership.
The report noted that this downward turn has taken place “in several nations with which the U.S. has longstanding economic and security ties,” highlighting that the plunge in reliability ratings was steepest among America’s closest traditional allies, including Germany and Canada.
Still, Venkataraman says whatever setbacks Europe, the U.K. and Canada have encountered, it’s worth remembering final deals — or non-deals — are rarely ever final.
“The history of trade negotiations is replete with failed negotiations that were then resurrected,” he said.
“Never say never — we always know that sometimes it takes a couple of these failures, and dramatic, theatrical failures even, to get to the right outcome.”
Source: www.cbc.ca
