EDITORIAL: A good trade deal isn't just any deal

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The purpose of negotiating with U.S. President Donald Trump isn’t to get any deal on trade and security.

It’s to get a deal Canadians can live with.

Thus it’s best to withhold judgment on Prime Minister Mark Carney’s statement that Trump has agreed to negotiate a new economic and security deal with Canada within 30 days, meaning by mid-July.

That announcement by the Prime Minister’s Office at the G7 meeting on Monday, hours after a morning meeting between Trump and Carney, was peculiar.

While Trump said at the end of it that a deal between Canada and the U.S. was achievable, that’s not the same as Trump saying he’s committed to doing it within 30 days or what it will contain.

Trump’s advisers often get it wrong in predicting what Trump will do on an issue, so for the PMO to speak for Trump on an economic and security deal with Canada should be viewed in that context.

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Carney appears to have a better relationship with Trump than former prime minister Justin Trudeau — which couldn’t have been worse — so that, at least, is a positive.

During the election, Eurasia Group President Ian Bremmer, who has multiple ties to Carney through Gerald Butts, Evan Solomon and Diana Fox Carney — they all work or worked for him — predicted what appears to have been Carney’s strategy.

As Bremmer wrote in a March 26 column titled The end of the transatlantic relationship as we know it: “Canadian leaders have a political incentive to put up a bigger fight (than Mexico) because Trump’s threats toward Canada’s economy and sovereignty have sharply inflamed nationalist sentiment north of the border in the run-up to the April 28 elections. However, I expect Ottawa will quietly fold shortly after the vote to ensure that ongoing relations with the U.S. remain functional.”

Bremmer said, after the fact, he was talking about Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre, but what he said was “Canadian leaders” and the strategy he outlined appears to apply to what Carney did.

As for Carney praising Trump at the G7 compared to his “elbows up” election rhetoric, if it gets a better deal for Canada we can live with him being two-faced.

But first, Canadians need to see the deal.