On August 21st an extraordinary thing happened. A foreign government attempted to make a deal that would advance its control over our trade relationships, our cultural practices including our official languages policy, and our automobile industry. All this under the guise of negotiating a trade agreement. Needless to say, Prime Minister Carney said no. At least that’s what he said in public.

This offer to accept colonial status was made, of course, by our former good-friend-and-neighbour, the United States, now ruled by a raging narcissist.

And indeed, that’s what it’s all about. The U.S. is led by a man who, all his life, has suffered under a mental disorder—specifically, narcissistic personality disorder. His disorder dictates he should get anything he wants, that the world revolves around him. So, as must be expected, as master of his nation he decrees policies that insist the world should submit to his nation’s wants, as he sees them.

To a moral person, a good deal is one that leaves both sides feeling they have gained something. To a narcissist, a good deal is one where he wins and the other guy loses, and the winning and losing, the domination, is as important as the deal itself. That was Trump in his business life and that’s the Trump administration.

As a businessman, this master of the “art of the deal” bankrupted companies serially (from which his father serially bailed him out, largely through tax dodges) and was involved in literally thousands of lawsuits. The year he was first elected, 2016, the American Bar Association commissioned a report that highlighted Trump’s excess litigation, entitled “Donald J. Trump is a Libel Bully but also a Libel Loser.”

The pattern continues in his presidency as he sues critics left and right and implements myriad policies that are challenged in court. Losses, and there are many, don’t slow him down. As Jeremy Shapiro, former State Department official, put it, there is “no end to his rapaciousness and to his demands.” Nor is there a cure for narcissistic personality disorder.

So what’s the future of negotiating trade with such a person? PM Carney wouldn’t have been overly surprised by the excess demands. When running for office in 2025, he was asked about dealing with Trump and replied that he knew how Trump operated and expected that his first offer would be unacceptable. The PM now says he’ll resume negotiating when the Trump team has the “right attitude.”

U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer has made conciliatory noises and California governor Gavin Newsom predicts the Trump team will be back negotiating within a couple of weeks due to pressure from within the Republican Party. The U.S. midterm elections are coming up and a number of red states are going to be feeling pain from both Trump’s tariffs and ours. (Newsom also said he’s “disgusted” by how the U.S. president treats Canada.)

So we may yet have a deal in the not too distant future. What it will mean, signed by Donald Trump in pencil, who knows.

In any case, we will continue to deal with an unpredictable narcissist for at least two more years. If there’s anything to be thankful for, it’s that we have an exceptionally qualified and thoroughly sane leader on our side. We trust that he will, to borrow the Liberal slogan, keep Canada Strong.