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Donald Trump’s ‘art of the deal’ means reneging on them. That’s why Canada cannot capitulate
Donald Trump’s administration has announced plans for fresh tariffs on hundreds of Canadian goods. Covering close to $28 billion in goods, and with none of the exemptions previously covered under the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement (CUSMA), the new tariffs are a clear escalation in the American president’s beef with Canada. This move has reignited calls for Prime Minister Mark Carney’s government to strike a deal with the United States to end the ongoing trade war. Some are even calling for Canada to offer more concessions if it will help secure a trade deal. The problem, however, is that Trump’s deals don’t amount to much. The issue is not that Trump’s deals are typically short on detail — though they are. Nor is the issue that they contain vague and ambiguous language — though they do. Nor is it that they have tenuous relationship to law — none of Trump’s trade deals during his second term have been ratified by U.S. Congress. The problem is that Trump himself never feels constrained by any deal he makes. Countries that sign deals with the Trump administration are quickly finding out that the stability and certainty they hoped to purchase was an illusion. A tenuous deal with the EU Last summer, the U.S. and the European Union reached what was called the Turnberry deal after months of conflict over trade. As part of the deal, the EU would accept a punishing U.S. tariff of 15 per cent and commit to purchasing hundreds of billions in American goods and energy. Despite this, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen praised the deal as delivering “stability and predictability.” That stability was short-lived. Months later, Trump aggressively pushed for the annexation of Greenland and threatened new tariffs on EU members who opposed him. Only after EU members mulled activating the Anti-Coercion Instrument — more colloquially known as the “trade bazooka” — did Trump back off. As Trump’s threats over Greenland escalate, will Europe use its ‘trade bazooka’? During the U.S. war with Iran, Trump singled out European allies he perceived as unhelpful. Spain, in particular, was targeted by the president as he threatened to “cut off all trade.” More recently, Trump has threatened fresh tariffs after the EU imposed a $1 billion fine on Google for violating EU law. If the Trump administration follows through on its threats, it could spell the death of the Turnberry deal. A 24-hour deal The U.S. and Saudi Arabia also recently announced a landmark civilian nuclear agreement. The deal would have expanded co-operation on nuclear power and allowed Saudi Arabia to construct its own domestic nuclear enrichment facility. The morning after the deal was announced, however, Trump changed key details. Saudi Arabia would have to join the Abraham Accords — a series of joint agreements brokered by the U.S. between Israel and several nations: the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan — and normalize its relations with Israel. The Saudis have refused in the absence of a guaranteed path to Palestinian statehood. Trump also denied the agreement would include nuclear enrichment. One Democratic senator, Chris Van Hollen, slammed the deal as a last-minute “bait-and-switch” attempt on the Saudis. Violating Iran ceasefire deal In mid-June, Iran and the U.S. signed a memorandum of understanding for a temporary ceasefire in the war. The memorandum itself, however, was deeply flawed with vague and ambiguous passages and virtually none of the monitoring and dispute resolution mechanisms typical of modern ceasefire agreements. Who exactly bears responsibility for the collapse of the ceasefire will determined by historians. What is clear, however, is that Trump began violating the agreement almost immediately. Iran ceasefire was always going to break – here’s why The first article of the memorandum states that the parties will “refrain from the threat or use of force against each other.” On June 21, just days after signing the deal, Trump posted on his Truth Social account threatening to “hit Iran very hard again, just like we did last week, only harder!!!”. The Gordie Howe Bridge shakedown After long delays, the Gordie Howe Bridge linking Windsor and Detroit was supposed to open on June 12, 2026. Under the original agreement, Canada would finance the construction costs and the toll revenue would be split 50/50 between Canada and the U.S. after Canada recouped the initial construction costs. Citing “unfair trade practices,” the Trump administration intervened at the last moment and blocked the opening of the bridge. Holding the $6.4 billion bridge hostage, the Trump officials leveraged a new agreement, one in which the U.S. will now receive 50 per cent of “net bridge and crossing related revenues” for 15 years. The result is that it will take Canada longer to recoup its initial construction costs. What’s in a deal? International deals typically evoke a specific image: dense agreements spanning hundreds of pages, painstakingly negotiated over years by diplomats, trade specialists and lawyers. These binding treaties are backed by domestic and international law, carrying severe reputational consequences for non-compliance. It’s precisely these features that make a deal a key source of confidence, certainty and stability — not just for today, but for years to come. The Trump administration provides none of that. Any sense of binding obligation can be wiped away with a few choice words on Truth Social. This is true regardless of whether the deal was signed by Trump personally or simply inherited from his predecessors. Canadians rightly want an end to the exhausting melodrama of the last 18 months. And a grand bargain with the U.S. offers the alluring promise of a reset in the relationship. But they should always remember that for the Trump administration, a deal is generally not worth the paper it’s written on. Eric Van Rythoven does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
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BoP briefed bipartisan US congressional advisers on Trump Gaza plan, senior member tells 'Post'
The delegation was led by senior adviser Josh Gruenbaum, while Gen. Mark Schwartz (ret.), the Board’s security lead, participated remotely.
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MAP: How to watch the 2026 Women’s Tour de France
The 2026 Women’s Tour de France gets under way in Lausanne, Switzerland, on Saturday, August 1st, and finishes nine stages later in Nice
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The resurrection of the musical vampire: from the 19th century stage to The Vampire Lestat
June 7 2026 was a historic day for musical vampires. The stage adaptation of The Lost Boys won four Tony awards and the third season of the TV show Interview with the Vampire, now retitled The Vampire Lestat, premiered on AMC in the US and BBC Two in the UK. In the new season of the show, the French nobleman vampire Lestat is now a rockstar, and the series features original songs and extended musical scenes. Lestat (played by Sam Reid) carries a legacy rooted in melodrama, opera, alternative music and musical theatre. But while musical vampires were hugely popular on the 19th-century stage (see Heinrich Marschner’s 1828 opera Der Vampyr), the modern musical vampire has been somewhat cursed. From 2002-05, the musicals Dance of the Vampires, Dracula and Lestat all opened on New York’s Broadway – and all three were epic flops. While the vampire musical has found success internationally, it’s never had a moment in the sun (or rather, out of the sun) on Broadway. But where Lestat (2005) killed off the vampire musical, TV’s Lestat is resurrecting it. The series has a 100% Rotten Tomatoes rating, and The Lost Boys is one of the hottest tickets on Broadway. Here’s what they’re doing right – and where their predecessors went wrong. Dance of the Vampires Tanz der Vampire (Dance of the Vampires, 1997) was a smash hit in Vienna before the show travelled to Broadway in 2002. The lavish original production featured a grand gothic castle, thrilling power-ballad music by Jim Steinman and a brooding lead vampire, Count von Krolock. Mandy Gonzalez and Michael Crawford in Dance of the Vampires on Broadway. It also involved some problematic politics and a culturally specific sense of humour. With these challenges, Broadway’s production team couldn’t agree on a direction. While some wanted to remain faithful to the original, others wanted to appeal to American audiences with a “Mel Brooks-ish” comedy. With the latter coming to fruition, Austria’s grand romantic spectacle became pure slapstick. To its credit, the production did offer some narrative improvements, but the Broadway revamp misses something crucial: a balance between the serious and the camp. While the original featured plenty of humour, crucially, Krolock remained the “straight man”. When Broadway’s vampire became a clown, the tapestry fell apart. It lost the gothic wonder and emotional integrity that made Tanz a great musical. The Lost Boys As Lestat says in episode two of the new series, “facts are irrelevant – feels are everything”. “Feels”, after all, are the fundamental principle of both vampires and musicals. Both are certainly known for their passion. On a more base level, both create visceral effects through their excessive spectacles. The “feeling” evoked by horror (and live musicals) is immediate, an experience Linda Williams relates to “body genres”. Historically, excessive “feeling” and surface appeal have been shunned by critics of the gothic for lacking substance or moral meaning. But defenders of the gothic like Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick argue that surface affect and its associated “feels” are valuable in themselves. And just as this principle applies to the gothic, it is also true for musical theatre. A trailer for The Lost Boys on Broadway. The megamusical – a term that describes large-scale shows such as Les Misérables and Cats – runs on spectacle. Mesmerising scenery and technical innovation are paramount. The centrepiece of The Lost Boys is its flying vampires (something Dracula also had, although the rest of the show failed to match the whimsy). The Lost Boys looks and feels like an 80s megamusical, retaining that grandeur that was fatally cut from Dance of the Vampires. Its Tony wins for performance and design, and losses for writing, suggest its focus on style over substance – but rather than indicating failure, this seems to be the subgenre’s recipe for success. Dracula Dracula is a successful musical in Europe and Asia, but like many vampires, it had a difficult conception. The Broadway production suffered from static blocking, gratuitous female nudity, and, according to critics, “soberly eschew[ed] any temptations to campy indulgence”. Dracula himself showed no emotion. Actor Tom Hewitt, who had previously starred in Rocky Horror, clearly had a camp vampire bursting to get out, but the production demanded constraint. It was a musical made for the straight male gaze. A clip from Dracula on Broadway in 2004. The show was later revised in Switzerland, Austria, and South Korea. It gradually borrowed elements from the camp masterpiece Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992), from Eiko Ishioka’s costume design to the iconic bleeding cross scene. Mina’s Seduction was re-blocked into a romantic scene where Mina has more control of the situation. The female nudity was removed, but Dracula was framed as a Twilight-esque heartthrob. The sexual dynamics were transformed: this was now a Dracula for the female gaze. And since women are the primary demographic of musical theatre, and of popular vampire media, this gradual shift directly correlated with its gradual success. The Vampire Lestat If vampires are soulless, it stands to reason that they’re not naturally musical. The vampires in the multi-Oscar-winning film Sinners (2025) are attracted to blues music because it is alive and human: everything they’re not. A trailer for Lestat on Broadway. Some vampires might not be able to sing at all: Stoker’s Dracula praises the sound of the wolves (“what music they make!”) but doesn’t sing with them. In musicals, characters must sing truthfully about their feelings. So how do soulless demons function in this world? To be a successful musical vampire, they must be a failed vampire. Incidentally, Lestat’s albums are called The Failures. Music has “opened up the batch oven” and his feelings are out of control. He’s an inexhaustible vessel of love and pain: he cries, screams, and sings, expressing feelings he’s not supposed to express. After all the enduring vampires tend to do, Lestat is thriving – and inspiring others – in the cathartic communion of live music. Broadway’s The Lost Boys also gives its vampires a reason to sing by making the gang a rock band. However, Broadway’s Lestat did not focus on his rockstar era but rather condensed his life story. It missed the opportunity to explore the character’s love of music, to use the musical format to explore Lestat’s identity. In The Vampire Lestat, music is integrated into the show’s structure. It’s the very thing that unravels and reveals the vampire. There’s a specific intersection where the vampire’s appeal meets the musical’s, and while this intersection was a mystery for Broadway producers of the 2000s, it’s being nailed now. The curse is finally over – and now that the singing vampires have been invited in, who knows what they’ll do next. Jodie Passey does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.