I think the idea was more, if we could patch something together with the people who were actually negotiating (not Trump, he doesn’t have the ability to look at anything in detail) and get it to hold for six months or so, that would be six months more to diversify our export markets. In other words, our government has been trying to buy time. Which didn’t work this time.

Whether buying time for some of the industries under threat is justified is a whole 'nother crottle of greeps, but the pressure there is coming mostly from small subsets of the Canadian electorate, not from Americans.