U.S. President Donald Trump, right, broke off trade negotiations over Canada's digital services tax on Friday.GEOFF ROBINS/AFP/Getty Images

Maybe Prime Minister Mark Carney’s elbows were getting tired. He kept them up the entire campaign, and well, that was enough to get the job done (the job, notably, being winning the election – not standing up to U.S. President Donald Trump). And now that the election is over, Mr. Carney has allowed himself some moments of rest.

He dropped them down to tell Mr. Trump he is a “transformational president,” and then hoisted them up to bluster about Mr. Trump’s “illegal” doubling of tariffs on steel and aluminum, but let them fall again when it came to actual retaliatory measures, and then raised them again (an ephemeral gesture, it turns out) in response to U.S. griping about the planned digital services tax. This repeated motion of elbows-up, then elbows-down, then elbows-up and so on creates something that scholars of performance art have referred to as the “chicken dance,” which is an appropriate characterization of this government’s approach to negotiations with Mr. Trump thus far.

It wouldn’t seem quite........

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