Uriel Fanelli

Ah yes, the wonderfully economical worldview in which every inconvenient fact is merely further proof of the conspiracy.

Canada trades heavily with the United States, therefore it cannot diversify. If it diversifies, that is “theatre”. If Carney supports it, he is a US puppet. If von der Leyen supports it, she is also a US puppet.

Marvellous. You have devised a theory so exquisitely protected from reality that no possible event can trouble it.

If they do nothing, America controls them. If they act against American interests, America controls them. If trade shifts away from the US, that too must presumably be part of the American plan.

At that point, one is no longer analysing politics. One is merely arranging puppets on a little stage and congratulating oneself for having discovered the strings.

The duller explanation, regrettably, is that countries with deep economic dependencies sometimes try to reduce them gradually rather than teleporting their entire trade structure to another continent by Thursday afternoon.

I realise this lacks the emotional satisfaction of declaring everyone a puppet, but reality has always suffered from a regrettable shortage of villains with visible moustaches.