It would seem Europe got the message. In her State of the Union address to the European Parliament in September, Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, if anything, came on too strong. Tearing the corset of EU precedent, she proposed a wholly invented new category of “associate member” for Canada. “We share one ocean, one set of values, one way of seeing the world,” she fawned. “And we will now build our shared future as well.”
What, exactly, “associate member” would mean is anyone’s guess; officials on both sides soon played it down with mild embarrassment. In his response, Carney referred only to “an alliance for the future.” Some members of the European Parliament responded with the bitterness of a rejected suitor. “It was an absurd and unrealistic knee-jerk reaction,” Siegbert Frank Droese, a far-right German MEP, lamented. Europe simply wanted “the closest possible” relationship, President of the European Council Antonio Costa clarified. “I don’t think we should get too bogged down with words and labeling,” Mark Camilleri of the Canada EU Trade and Investment Association told me, channeling the consummate bachelor.
In Carney’s Don Draper–esque world of jet-setting luncheons and grenadine ties, this was a play well-executed. Just look, he seemed to say. They’re throwing themselves at us. His oblique references to America’s boorishness on the world stage—“economic integration is now being weaponised, and tariffs are being used as a means of pressure”—likewise hit their mark. “Laughable,” Trump huffed, before striking the paternalistic note of the bitter ex. “If it’s a good intention, that’s fine,” he said. “If it’s a bad intention, we’ll put very heavy tariffs on Europe.”
Source: newrepublic.com
