Canada and Mexico have surrendered to Donald Trump, but these victories for the US president in his phoney trade war are not what they seem.
Beneath the surface, the concessions his two largest trading partners have made are just repackaged initiatives and old promises – with some window dressing about opioid smuggling.
The blitz of threats against Canada, Mexico, Denmark, Panama, the EU and UK – much like his blizzard of executive orders after his inauguration – sends the message that Trump is back in business.
But the president is less interested in extracting substantive concessions than in the optics of submission and the winning deal.
Make no mistake, the president won’t brook any insubordination from his allies. But Western nations like Britain can escape his tariffs, provided they bend the knee.
Justin Trudeau, the Canadian premier, swallowed his pride in a phone call to Mr Trump.
Forget all that talk about trade wars and Canada becoming the 51st state: Mr Trudeau put off the threatened 25 per cent tariffs for a month by talking up a billion-dollar border security investment Ottawa has had in the works since last year.
Claudia Sheinbaum, the president of Mexico, was similarly rewarded, after promising to send 10,000 border guards to the US frontier. In Trump’s first term, Mexico escaped tariffs by sending 15,000 guards.
Panama understands the quid pro quo. It pulled out of China’s Belt and Road initiative after Mr Trump threatened to retake the Panama Canal unless Beijing’s influence over the waterway was ended.
Denmark also seems to have got the memo. It won’t sell Greenland to Mr Trump but on Monday offered to let the US military strengthen its presence on the island, to counter Chinese influence in the Arctic.
The EU should also be able to find concessions to buy off Mr Trump, whom it sees as a “transactional leader”.
Brussels has already mooted purchasing US liquefied natural gas, while some EU leaders have suggested buying American weapons to further reduce their trade surplus.
Full-throated promises to boost defence spending, and send more weapons and money to Ukraine, may be enough.
A similar deal is there to be done for Sir Keir Starmer too; all he has to do is suck it up and submit.
It will, however, be a test for Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission president, who is no old school dealmaker and who had strong links to the Biden administration.
In 2018, Jean-Claude Juncker, her predecessor, stopped further US tariffs by promising Mr Trump that Europe would buy more American soybeans.
In fact, European companies were already buying lots of US soybeans, which were competitively priced because of a trade dispute with China.
A real risk for the EU will be if Mr Trump insists the bloc sides with the US in any trade war with Beijing.
Mr Trump sees Beijing as a rival, not a US satellite. However, his 10 per cent tariff on Chinese imports was lower than he had threatened.
Beijing has made itself less dependent on the US since Trump’s first term, but the measures from Washington will still sting.
The world’s second-largest economy has now hit back with tariffs of its own but these are limited in scope and designed to prevent further escalation.
China is calculating that Mr Trump’s tariffs are a negotiating tool. The president and Xi Jinping are expected to talk on the phone this week.
A deal can still be done to stop a full-blown trade war.
But Mr Xi will be less willing than Western leaders to pay allegiance to Mr Trump, who will in turn be driving a harder bargain.
