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The only hopeful aspect of Monday’s Oval Office performance was that one word was dramatically conspicuous for its absence: “Wall.” If you had asked for word associations during the 2016 presidential campaign, pairing “Trump” and “Mexico” almost certainly would have generated “wall.” But the wall was nowhere to be heard of Monday — although in diplomacy worthy of Barack Obama, Mr. Trump did thank the Mexican president for co-operation on “the border.”

The reason the White House is touting the signing of a new trade deal rather than a ribbon cutting for a new border wall is, of course, that Congress blocked the president’s wall. It’s not so much that Mexico has friends in Congress — although it does — but that Democrats and some Republicans don’t want to spend tens of billions of dollars on a project that is more political stunt than border securer.

On trade, by contrast, the president doesn’t need budget approval to get better terms from Canada, although he does eventually need Congressional approval for any legislation such terms might require. We, too, have friends in Congress — even if it’s only those who aren’t facing an election soon that would risk accusations of being better friends to Canada than to Americans hurt by our unfair barriers.

The question now is whether we can get a deal that still includes three-digit tariffs on dairy and other supply-managed products. I’m an economist, not a political strategist. But in an age in which political strategy comes down to analyzing the whims of one man’s mind, it’s not clear expertise is worth much. My bet is that unless we repair the one fact about our current trade policy the president does firmly grasp, we won’t get a deal.

Under the 1995 WTO deal that turned our quantity limits on dairy imports into sky-high tariffs, the idea was we would gradually bring them down. Let’s get on with it. If Chrystia Freeland can’t get it done, maybe we could let Maxime Bernier have a go.