Best Friends; Neighbours and Trading Partners

"We consider that [U.S.authorities confiscating German orders for PPE from 3M, en route from China to Germany] an act of modern piracy."

"You don't treat your transatlantic partners like that."

"Even in times of global crisis, there should be no wild-west methods."

German Interior Minister Andreas Geisel

"We are receiving essential supplies from the United States but the United States also receives essential supplies and products and indeed health-care professionals from Canada every single day."
"I think of the thousands of nurses, for example, who cross the bridge in Windsor to work in the Detroit medical system every single day. These are things that Americans rely on. It would be a mistake to create blockages or reduce the amount of back and forth trade of essential goods and services including medical goods across our border."
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau

"I am just so, so disappointed right now. We have a great relationship with the U.S. and then all of sudden, they pull these shenanigans. Unacceptable."
"When the cards are down you see who your friends are, and I think it’s very clear over the last couple days who our friends are."
Ontario Premier Doug Ford

• U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a coronavirus task force briefing in the Rose Garden of the White House, in Washington. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)
  

 Starting off on the wrong foot with someone of the nature of U.S. President Donald Trump is not a formula for good relations; rather spurning or scorning the man on the merits of his unstatesmanlike behaviour, his unpredictability, his hungry ego and boastful, threatening behaviour in an overt manner in the presence of others in a way that highlights the scorn in which other world leaders hold the man is to presage a predictable lash-back at the time and choosing of the man insulted.

Justin Trudeau, himself a preening egotist with pretensions of superiority as a 'woke' progressive, likes presenting himself as a world leader of a post-nationalist country, a man of his times and ahead of the times, contrasting himself as a sophisticated leftist feminist and champion of the underdog, to the autocratic belligerence and rough manner of someone like Donald Trump. Trudeau's immature posturing at the last NATO conference ridiculing President Trump would not be forgotten by a man who, like Trudeau himself, doesn't take slights lightly.

3M makes about 1.1 billion masks a year around the world, but currently none in Canada. (Romeo Ranoco/Reuters)

That situation did much to ensure that Canada has a small, very small voice in Washington. Leading Trump to have no qualms whatever when he decreed that 3M -- which had contracted with Canada to supply it during the global pandemic caused by the novel coronavirus with badly need N95 respirator masks for Canadian health professionals in an health-crisis-unprepared situation -- cease and desist. The U.S., much harder hit by the epidemic of infections and deaths than Canada, resulted in President Trump's America-first decision to ban export of vital medical products away from the U.S. and into Canada.

The ban did not start and stop with the critical masks alone, but was extended to include gloves and other medical equipment. And at the same time that President Trump excluded Canada from its contracted share of needed personal protective equipment, he generously extended an exception to his America-first rule to give aid to Italy and Spain, both particularly hard-hit, like the United States, with a surge of virus cases and a related shocking death rate.

N95 masks for COVID-19. (Nicholas Pfosi/Reuters

When 3M pushed back in favour of ensuring its masks would be shared to a degree with Canada citing humanitarian and contractual obligations, Mr. Trump declared he was "not happy with 3M". Following Canada's exclusion from 3M products, both Germany and France were also placed on the Trump "hit list" of unfavoured PPE recipients. In Canada, there sre those who advocate Canada should coolly respond to President Trump's decision-making.

Asserting that the thousands of Canadian health-care professionals who cross the border daily, including nurses, doctors and others in health care to work on visas in the United States, should be requested by the government to return to Canada and remain there, using their professional skills which are badly needed in the U.S., at home to respond to the anticipated crush of new cases requiring hospitalization and respirator treatment.

Ontario alone, the most populous province in Canada, and one of the hardest hit next to Quebec by the coronavirus, had ordered 2,200,000 masks from 3M, shipments which have been held up by American officials who in the end permitted 500,000 of the total number to be released into Ontario. Canada could also reciprocate to Mr. Trump's edict excluding Canada from 3M's deliveries by itself banning the exports of test kits, drugs and raw material required to produce medical supplies -- unless they prove surplus to Canadian needs.

N95 masks. | Thomas Wells/The Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal via AP Photo