By Don Newman

November 24, 2025

While Prime Minister Mark Carney’s response of “Who cares?” when asked Monday about the last time he spoke with Donald Trump could have been either genuine or tactical indifference, there’s no question that Trump really does care.

Canada’s review of the contract to buy 88 F-35 fighter jets from the mammoth American defence contractor Lockheed-Martin is clearly annoying Trump.

We can be sure of this amid the daily deluge of Donald Trump’s assorted annoyances real and performative because it is definitely annoying Pete Hoekstra, the American Ambassador to Canada.

Unlike traditional ambassadors, who effectively represent their country’s interests with the host country to which they are posted and in return explain their hosts country’s positions back to home base, Hoekstra has performed his role differently. He is in Canada to berate, bully, and push this country into seeing the World according to Trump and acquiescing to that view, no matter how norm-violating or difficult it may be to do.

Hoekstra is not really a diplomat, but he has played one before. He is a former Republican Congressman from Western Michigan’s 2nd congressional district — located in the mid-Upper Peninsula of the state, parts of which are farther north than Toronto. In Trump’s first term as president, Hoekstra, who was born in Holland, was appointed ambassador to the Netherlands.

Initially, with his heritage, Hoekstra was greeted enthusiastically by the Dutch. Less so as time went on, as he undiplomatically suggested there were some things the Dutch and Europeans generally could be doing to fall in line with the American agenda.

Now, he is bringing that same coercion-by-proxy to his dealing with his Canadian hosts, including at one point publicly berating Ontario’s trade representative in Washington, David Paterson, during a celebration of the bilateral relationship last month at the National Gallery of Canada (“I hope he’s feeling better,” Paterson said this week).

Hoekstra has said Trump is only “kidding” when he threatens to annex Canada as America’s 51st state. Trump seemed to back off that comment when Prime Minister Mark Carney went to Washington last May and told him to his face that annexation by the U.S. was never going to happen. The joke was exhumed in a callback ahead of their more recent White House meeting in October.

Maybe now that Trump is “watching closely” while the Lockheed Martin deal is under review, and his man in Canada is warning Canadians about the consequences of not going with the American F-35 to our already-besieged trade relationship, it is time to offer the man whose memoir is titled The Art of the Deal, a deal. It would go this way:

Trump has said this fall that he wants all of the Detroit automakers with manufacturing and car assembly plants in Canada to close those plants and move those jobs to the United States. That would effectively gut automobile manufacturing in Canada and would shut down one of Canada’s main industries, the manufacturing heart of the country’s largest province, and one whose American-owned companies have received billion of dollars in loans, grants and tax breaks from both the federal and Ontario governments.

When an American president crushes our automotive industry, hobbles our steel and aluminum makers, and sabotages our softwood lumber producers, perhaps fear-based obedience is the wrong approach.

So far, Trump is having some success. Stellantis, the parent company of Chrysler and Jeep and the popular Ram pick-up truck announced that instead of reopening its assembly plant in Brampton, Ontario, it is moving production of a new line of Jeep cars to Illinois. And General Motors recently said it is transferring work from its Ingersoll, Ontario, plant to the United States.

Those announcements — essentially disrupting the Canadian economy from a distance — have been recent “successes” by Trump’s standards amid a slew of negative headlines. For the first time since taking office, his iron grip on Republicans in Congress has broken and he has been forced to capitulate and sign a bill releasing all the Justice Department files on his former friend, the late “social entrepreneur” Jeffrey Epstein.

In other potential setbacks, court rulings are pending on Trump’s right to deploy National Guard troops into U.S. cities, and, more pertinently for Canada, from the Supreme Court on whether his tariffs levied under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) are lawful.

Meanwhile, a Judge in Virginia just threw out Trump’s “revenge” cases against former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney-General Letitia James.

So, at a time like this, the possibility of losing most of a $27 billion Canadian fighter jet order to Sweden as a statement on America’s recently degraded relationship with its closest ally, its partner in both NATO and NORAD, would be particularly embarrassing.

The Gripen E fighter jet, manufactured by the Swedish SAAB corporation, is mounting a full-court press to convince Canada to change its order for the 73 planes Canada will need to buy after it accepts the first 15 planes already being built by Lockheed-Martin.

In Canada last week, the president of SAAB, the deputy prime Minister of Sweden and various other officials accompanied King Carl Gustav and Queen Silvia on a state visit to Canada.

They were here to sell the Gripen with promises of up to 10,000 jobs created at a new plant in Canada to build the planes in this country. Perhaps that new plant could build Gripen for other countries too. So far, Canada is playing its cards close to its vest, and supporters of purchasing the rest of the planes from Lockheed Martin are warning that a cancellation of the bulk of the order would lead to massive retaliation from Trump and the United States.

It might. But when an American president crushes our automotive industry, hobbles our steel and aluminum makers, and sabotages our softwood lumber producers, perhaps fear-based obedience is the wrong approach.

Instead, Canada should make Trump an offer he can’t refuse: We will buy the entire order from Lockheed Martin and have a full fleet of F-35s, but only if he drops tariffs against all Canadian imports now and reverts to the provisions of CUSMA, the existing trade treaty that is up for review as of next Canada Day.

That, Mr. Trump, is an artful deal. It might even improve your mood — and Mr. Hoekstra’s.

Policy Columnist Don Newman is an Officer of the Order of Canada, and a lifetime member and a past president of the Canadian Parliamentary Press Gallery.