Sunday October 19, 2025 | VICTORIA, BC [Posted at 9:53 pm PT]
Political editorial analysis by Mary P Brooke | Island Social Trends
What looked like success last week when Trump summoned a wide range of world leaders to Egypt to watch him sign what was called a Middle East ceasefire deal was a flash in the pan. The text of the so-called agreement was never presented in that process.
Many of the political leaders who dropped everything to be in Egypt on October 13 wouldn’t share the stage or any photo-ops with Trump. Perhaps they could see it coming… Israel is already back to bombing in south Gaza and this weekend was withholding aid supplies by stopping trucks at the Egyptian border.
The temporary nature of the October 13 event didn’t surprise many experts who follow Middle East politics and US foreign affairs. A Pakistani military official at that event praised Trump and said he should get the Nobel peace prize. And then the show was over.
Trump met with Ukraine President Zelenskyy on Friday in Washington — calm, no drama, nothing close to the seismic news impact of their first meeting at the White House in February when Trump and Vance dressed down Zelenskyy with a sort of humiliation strategy. They now seem to be find some common ground to discuss.
Words of wisdom about Trump’s deal-making style are now more prominently filtering out in the media.
“The art of the deal is no substitute for the architecture of strategy,” said long-time international affairs news analyst Fareed Zakaria in a well-crafted editorial on his Sunday morning news show Fareed Zakaria GPS on CNN today.
And with another context for how Trump does deals — in this case with Canada — Fen Hampson, Professor of International Affairs, Carleton University said in an interview on CBC this weekend says that what we’re seeing is negotiation by ‘dictat’, in other words it’s not negotiation at all. “To call this negotiations is a misnomer. It’s White House dictat — they are telling us what they are going to do, we are on the back foot.”
Trump dictates what he wants and Canada does what it must to accommodate the pressure. That certainly seemed the case with most European leaders who over a matter of weeks readily agreed to in most cases a flat-across-the-board tariff on virtually all of their exports to the US.
For all the time that Dominic LeBlanc — Canada’s Minister responsible for Canada-U.S. Trade — has spent in Washington in recent weeks appears to be coming to naught. Not for lack of trying, but likely only because the terms are already set by Trump who seems to have no intention of moving off that mark.
Meanwhile, Carney is holding cards close to his chest and perhaps is more in control of the outcome than might publicly appear. He said in a speech at a Diwali celebration on Friday in Brampton, about Trump: “I can’t let him think I’m controlling him. You never know what’s going to come next.”
Canada has CUSMA (USMCA) working in this country’s favour, as well a being a source of significant resources that the US needs. If a livable trade win for Canada ends up being the case, then Trump’s bluster for winning every deal might be seen as effectively rattled.
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