Prime Minister Mark Carney was elected because he said he was the best leader to deal with Donald Trump in a tariff war.

Now would be a good time for him to prove it.

When he was running for the Liberal leadership, Carney’s approach to dealing with the U.S. President was all “elbows up” rhetoric.

In January, he said Trump’s threat of imposing an illegal 25% tariff on Canadian imports was “a blatant violation of our trade agreements, and will demand the most serious trade response in our history …

“Dollar-for-dollar retaliatory tariffs by Canada should be a given and they should be aimed where their impacts in the United States will be felt the hardest.”

But as prime minister, Carney’s strategy for dealing with Trump has been mostly one of appeasement rather than confrontation.

The question, given Trump suspending all trade and security negotiations with Canada on Friday because of U.S. anger over Canada’s digital services tax, which has been widely criticized by business groups in Canada and the U.S., is whether Carney’s strategy is working.

(The digital services tax was passed a year ago by the Justin Trudeau government and is poised to extract billions of dollars in tax revenue from a number of U.S. tech........

© Edmonton Sun