Rules for living (with the USA)

• Remember the 19th century statesman (or maybe it was Machiavelli, or de Gaulle, views differ) who said: Great nations do not have friends, only interests. Applied to Canada-US relations, it might better be phrased, Great nations think they have friends, but first of all they have interests. Events like the tariff threat have happened before in Canadian-American relations and will happen again. 
• Remember the argument that for small nations, "the decisive causes of their politics lie outside their boundaries." (Barrington Moore Jr, The Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy, 1966.) We can boycott the orange juice but we are not actually going to close the 49th Parallel.
• Remember that the tariff question is very important to us, and somewhat important to the United States. But we and the US could survive a tariff war. The current threat that the US Constitution may not continue to operate in the United States is fundamental, and Gaza and Greenland and the 51st State hoo-hah are not. 

Update February 7:  Not that he got it from me, but Paul Krugman makes the same point in the Substack that has replaced his New York Times column: it's the coup d'etat, not the crazy stuff, that is fundamental:

No, Trump isn’t going to take over Gaza, annex Canada, try to retake the Panama Canal or seize Greenland. But Trump’s bizarre announcements are a feature, not a bug: they distract from the ongoing autogolpe. 

 [Autogolpe: Spanish for self-coup, an elected leader overthrowing the constitution under which they were elected.]