Yesterday in Strasbourg, European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen gave her state of the union address to the European Parliament, and said that she wanted Canada to become the first “associate member” of the EU, which is not a Thing, and suddenly had a bunch of people’s backs up about it. Our new ambassador to the EU, Jonathan Wilkinson, poured a bunch of cold water on this suggestion, essentially saying that we need to define what this relationship is supposed to mean before we can actually assign any kind of label to it. Other European countries who are waiting for membership are also questioning what this means (including Ukraine), especially because there is a huge process around actual EU membership, and a lot of questions about what the obligations/benefits equation, and levels of integration, because there are already relationships that the EU has with other European countries that aren’t full membership. Carney’s speech will be today.
As Lauren notes, the CAP would be an eye-opener for Canadian ag. Add to that the Euro + the ECB stuff. And then there is the 'four freedoms'….hmmm.I'm not an EU expert, but I follow European politics enough to understand what *full* 'membership' means. Nein, danke. bsky.app/profile/ldob…
— Kevin Milligan (@kevinmilligan.bsky.social) 2026-09-16T15:17:45.192Z
Meanwhile, after Trump signed a memorandum to ban Canadian products from US federal procurement, he had a whole unhinged rant about how any “associate membership” deal with the EU would be considered a “hostile act” with new tariffs on Europe, in violation of the agreement he signed with them thirteen months ago—because he’s totally making the case that their attempted new trade deal wasn’t impacting on Canada’s sovereignty and would give Americans control over our other trading relationships. Then again, Trump also went on an absolutely incoherent rant about cutting off trade with countries and pocketing the “deficit” which makes no sense because that’s not what a trade deficit means, but his brain is rotted and he has no conception of any economic concepts, so it’s hopeless, but that doesn’t mean people won’t still try to implement these decisions in order to curry favour.
I fear that people might be getting sick of hearing my views on the world.So this time, an open thread for econ faculty to grade this submission on the meaning of a trade deficit.
— Justin Wolfers (@justinwolfers.bsky.social) 2026-09-16T23:45:58.544Z
My Latest:
My column points to how Americans, and Democrats in particular, are trying to guilt-trip us into backing down on counter-tariffs than actually cleaning up their own mess.