There's something almost comically brash about the trade complaint Canada has launched against the United States. In cartoon form, it's Dudley Do-Right firing a pistol at Mount Rushmore.
The charge sheet we've delivered to the World Trade Organization lists nearly 200 cases stretching back some 20 years and includes trade disputes involving dozens of other countries. The American trade czar has called it "ill-advised" – in roughly the way a mob boss calls incursions on his turf ill-advised, before sending a few dead fish in the mail.
So just what is Canada up to? Why are we strafing the U.S. on the world stage with NAFTA talks due to resume later this month?
A few possibilities present themselves, all of them related, and all of them likely at play.
The complaint centres on how and why the Americans retaliate to alleged "dumping" – the export of subsidized products at artificially low prices. The simplest explanation, then, is that we're punching back against tariffs the U.S. has slapped on softwood lumber, newsprint and Bombardier jets in the last few months.
But the move also comes amidst rumblings that Canada thinks the U.S. will soon announce its intention to pull out of NAFTA. This may very well be a stab at showing the U.S. how irritating a world without continental free trade could be, and at showing a domestic audience that for all the Trudeau government's courtship of the Trump administration, it is willing to play hardball if needed.
That's already two or three rationales nested in one another, and there may be something else at work, too – something more idealistic and risky than mere trade pugilism.
Given how wide-ranging the complaint is, Canada seems to be auditioning for a role as defender of the rules-based global trade regime writ large.
It won't be news to anyone that the current order needs defending, what with a proud protectionist in the White House. But what has not been widely reported is the degree to which the U.S. has been trying to discredit and hobble the WTO. In particular, the U.S. has used its powers to leave vacancies on the WTO appeals court unfilled, threatening the organization's ability to hear disputes.
Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland has been a vocal defender of the rules-based international order that the WTO represents, rightly arguing that it has undergirded 70 years of peace and prosperity in the West, and has especially benefited middle powers like Canada. Calling the U.S. to account for flouting WTO rules fits into that intellectual framework.
This is speculative, by definition. The strategies behind trade disputes can't be fully explained to the public; that would mean showing one's hand. But each of the goals Canada seems to have in mind with this complaint makes sense in isolation.
Ottawa has been complaining about U.S. anti-dumping policies for ages, and Canada has taken a bruising lately, so fighting back on that is sound.
So is getting feistier with the U.S. on NAFTA. Team Trudeau's charm offensive – taking Ivanka Trump to a Broadway show and so on – seems to have failed. In Team Trump, we are dealing with hardened nationalist ideologues who are convinced free trade and the WTO are harming the U.S. Making them like us won't work; showing them they have something to lose might.
Meanwhile, reaffirming the clout of the WTO and what it represents as the Trump administration huddles behind its America First palisades is a noble undertaking.
But a policy that tries to do too many things can end up doing none of them. Imagine, for example, if the administration retaliates by redoubling its fight against alleged Canadian dumping, calls for an end to NAFTA in a fit of Trumpian pique, and sours further on the WTO, now that even a friend and neighbour is using it as a cudgel.
Those outcomes would be bad for the U.S., but we can't count on a rational cost-benefit analysis from the Trump administration. And the fact remains that any of those outcomes would be even worse for Canada. That's the problem with elaborate gamesmanship with the U.S.: We need them more than they need us.
None of this means we should be timid in the face of Mr. Trump's erratic, bullying style. But optics aside, the trouble with the WTO complaint may not be that it's too brash, but that it's too clever by half.