There is no plan. After Donald Trump’s first 100 days in office, that’s the only interpretation that makes any sense — the only reasonable way to summarize how Trump’s mind works and how his presidency is shaping up.

Don’t fool yourself into thinking that President Trump’s bizarre behaviour — the Twitter non-sequiturs, the whiplash reversals on policy, the tantrums delivered against allies like Australia and Canada — are part of some brilliant strategy to keep his adversaries off-balance and “make America great again.” That would be giving him too much credit.

Trump has no interest in the intricacies of foreign policy options for North Korea or Iran, or the interplay between the softwood lumber dispute and the cost of housing in the U.S. He has no clue on how to balance massive tax cuts with the need to replace the missing trillions in government revenue.

Actually reading complex briefing notes and listening to experts is clearly beyond the scope of Trump’s ability — and attention span. In one of the more astounding asides in his interview with Reuters this week, he admitted he never expected the presidency of the United States to be so demanding.

“I love my previous life,” he said. “I had so many things going. This is more work than in my previous life. I thought it would be easier. I like to work so that’s not a problem but this is actually more work.” Trump must be the only person on Earth who somehow thought it would be easier to be president of the United States than a reality TV star and serial bankrupt.

What has always interested Trump most is dealmaking — the act, not the outcome. It doesn’t really matter to him what’s in the deal, as long as it allows him to boast about how great it is and how he’s a “winner”. The details bore him. And since he has no fundamental beliefs of his own, he can be as capricious as he likes about the beliefs he pretends to have.

That’s why NATO can be obsolete one day, and then not obsolete a few weeks later. It’s why China was a currency manipulator during the campaign — and suddenly wasn’t one after Trump met with Chinese President Xi Jinping at Mar-a-Lago. It’s why he can promise to repeal Obamacare and support two radically different proposals to Congress on what to replace it with (neither of which have succeeded).

Which brings us to Canada. Mexico was the ‘enemy du jour’ during the election campaign. You remember how Trump portrayed Mexico as an incubator for rapists and murderers — the “bad hombres” flooding into America who would be stopped by a wall the Mexicans would be forced to pay for. NAFTA, he insisted, was “a total disaster” and “one of the worse deals ever” because it allowed Mexico to steal all those factory jobs from Ohio and Pennsylvania. It all helped win Trump the election. But Canada was spared the brunt.

Our prime minister should continue to use his not-insignificant interpersonal skills to keep the narcissist-in-chief talking and answering his phone calls. If that means inviting Ivanka to the occasional Broadway show, so be it. Our prime minister should continue to use his not-insignificant interpersonal skills to keep the narcissist-in-chief talking and answering his phone calls. If that means inviting Ivanka to the occasional Broadway show, so be it.

Once elected, Trump found that the wall was no longer an easy win. Mexico made it clear it wouldn’t pay for it and the Democrats in Congress threatened a shutdown of the U.S. government if funding for the wall was included in appropriations.

Which explains why, in recent weeks, Trump pivoted to complaints about Canada. Coinciding with a trip to Wisconsin, Trump tweeted an attack on supply management and Canada’s pricing policy on ultra-filtered milk, which has had a direct impact on dairy farmers in that state — which just happened to have voted (narrowly) for Trump.

Then the Trump administration decided to slap interim levies of close to 20 per cent on Canadian softwood lumber exports, the fifth round of an arcane trade dispute that dates back to the early 1980s. The U.S. has long had complaints about lumber and dairy trade with Canada. What was different about the disputes this time was Trump’s Twitter feed — and his use of the online bully pulpit to threaten Canada and link the file to the future of NAFTA.

But here’s the point that matters most: Slapping tariffs on lumber and threatening action on dairy exports required no actions by Congress. For Trump, they were easy wins. And he loves easy wins — or anything that looks like an easy win.

By Wednesday of this week, Trump was threatening to trigger the six-month notice that would withdraw the U.S. from NAFTA. That led to last-minute phone calls from Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto, as well as interventions from U.S. business leaders and members of Trump’s own cabinet, to warn of the dangers of suddenly ripping up the trade deal.

So Trump changed course again. Now he says he prefers to renegotiate the deal rather than scrap it, though he’s warned that if he doesn’t feel like he’s winning, “we’ll terminate NAFTA.”

So far, the Trudeau government is acting reasonably, being careful not to inflame the situation while vowing to “vigorously” defend Canadian interests. Even those of us who think supply management needs a major redo don’t believe we should do it with a NRA-supplied gun pressed to our heads by President Trump.

Canada should put together our best and brightest trade negotiators and start putting together our positions on a range of issues. We should include industry and the provinces in these preparations, while keeping open discussions with friends of Canada in Congress and state legislatures.

When it comes to trade, Canada has always fielded very competent negotiators, as it proved again during the recently-completed free trade agreement with the European Union. We’re a lot smaller than the EU or the U.S., but we can still take care of ourselves when negotiations get tough.

Remember how Simon Reisman, Canada’s chief negotiator during the original free trade talks with the U.S., dramatically pulled out of the negotiations in 1987 when Washington balked at binding dispute settlement? The Americans blinked. Canada ended up with a better deal.

Whatever happens, these trade discussions will drag on for years and will be decided by courts and international trade tribunals as well as by politicians in meeting rooms. Trump can’t settle this over social media. Renegotiating NAFTA will be a long game.

And while our bureaucrats and politicians carefully prepare their dossiers, our prime minister should continue to use his not-insignificant interpersonal skills to keep the narcissist-in-chief talking and answering his phone calls. If that means inviting Ivanka to the occasional Broadway show, so be it.

As Trudeau explained in a recent interview, Trump isn’t like most politicians. “We’re trained to say something and stick with it,” the prime minister said. But Trump, he said, is open to different viewpoints. “He will take another position if somebody makes better arguments.”

If Trudeau can keep the lines of communication open with Trump, he’s got a better chance of making an argument that can stick.

The views, opinions and positions expressed by all iPolitics columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of iPolitics.