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The Citizen, 2018-6-7, Page 5Trump's lesson Here's hoping that there aren't many people who are buying U.S. President Donald Trump's assertion that he's an expert in deal making If people try to emulate him in their daily lives, the world could be a very unpleasant place. Trump, with an ego that's even larger than his net worth, wrote a book called The Art of the Deal and is convinced that through his brilliance in negotiating deals, he can reshape the world to favour the United States. His strategy is to deal from strength — to threaten to punish those on the other side unless he gets his way. So last week he announced tariffs on steel and aluminum imports from Canada, Mexico and the European Union, which he might be persuaded to drop if these countries give him what he wants in other trade negotiations. In the case of Canada, he wants our government to give in to his demands in the reworking of the North American Free Trade Agreement, including a clause that would require the agreement to be renegotiated every five years. He would then be in a position to make more demands in five year's time if he is elected for a second term as president. Given his background, it's easy to see where Trump developed this mindset. He grew up a millionaire's kid, which would have given him leverage from the very beginning. In business, there are a relative handful of people in the world who are richer than he is so he'd have been dealing from strength in most of the deals he's so proud of winning. His was the powerful world -spanning corporation that was almost always dealing with a company or community with less clout. After making one of those deals he'd move on to hundreds of other possible targets. But there's a problem in trying to translate THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, JUNE 7, 2018. PAGE 5. Other Views - losing by winning Keith Roulston From the cluttered desk his business experience into government. Yes, he's head of the most powerful country in the world, which gives him leverage, but there are only so many possible partners in deals because there are only so many countries. You're going to have to co -exist with your neighbours after the deal is done and if you win by threats and power plays, that's going to be an unpleasant relationship. In professional sports, where there are a limited number of partners, a good trade is often defined as a deal that benefits both teams. If a smart trader makes a player trade that gives his team too big an advantage, the other team is unlikely to want to make future deals — especially if the deal's winner brags about it. But Trump wants a total win — and his ego makes him want to boast about it. Most of us can't put ourselves in the place of Canada's prime minister, let alone the U.S. president. We can, however, imagine how adopting Trump's win -at -all -costs philosophy would be a disaster in our private lives. Let's take the relationship with the fewest partners — that with a spouse. This is always a delicate balance of give and take, trust and respect that can deteriorate quickly under the wrong circumstances. If one partner insists on winning every argument or getting his or her way on every decision, this partnership is not likely to last long — which is perhaps why Trump is on his third wife, with many dalliances along the way. Other family relationships — with brothers and sisters or parents — are also likely to become difficult if one person insists on always coming out on top. Then there's the situation with neighbours, where once again you have only a small number of partners. Back in the 1950s when I was growing up, nearly every farm had cattle or horses, which meant that there were fences dividing farms. A rule had been set up that the farmer on one side looked after one half of that fence while the other neighbour looked after the other. Often this worked well but there was also tension among neighbours who didn't share the responsibility evenly. Municipal councils appointed fence -viewers to try to negotiate when neighbours were fighting over who should do what. Trump doesn't like the equivalent of international fence -viewers. He resents any organization like the World Trade Organization that enforces rules that limit his use of power. Powerful people, whether they're rich, politically connected or physically combative, usually don't like rules that limit their exploitation of their advantage — which is exactly why we have created rules to create a balance of power. It's hard to guess how this confrontation between Trump and his country's friends and allies will end but it's hard to imagine that the relationship will recover quickly. As a Canadian, of course, I'm hoping Trump's power play fails. I'd also hate people to think they can get ahead using his tactics. Our families, neighbourhoods and communities might become much less livable if they followed his example. Running half a race is no way to win Jt didn't take long, but Sunday evening I faced a very difficult situation that I knew was coming: being on the wrong side of a lopsided score in a soccer game. As loyal readers will remember, this year I hung up my referee whistle, filed away my red and yellow cards and traded in my traditional black cleats for some more colourful kicks and started playing soccer after more than a decade and a half officiating it. The season started off pretty good: facing off against my brother's team, my squad managed to play a draw. Given that both my brother and I were minding our respective goals, and he's a decade younger than me, I counted that as a pretty good season opener. Sunday evening, however, I came face-to- face with a pretty dire score at the end of the first half of the game. I won't get into specifics because I don't want to point to any shortcomings in case I'm getting scouted for Toronto FC. I will say, however, that my team hadn't managed to earn a marker, so it wasn't like it was all my bad goalkeeping. Suffice to say winning was an unlikely proposition at half-time. I'm a pretty competitive guy, but, with age comes wisdom and I knew that getting angry wouldn't lead to some kind of magical rebound. The only chance we had to change our fortunes was to go back out on the field and do our best. Miraculously (or maybe the other team decided to coast on the lead they had amassed) the second half of the game was a heck of a lot less unbalanced than the first. Sure, we didn't manage a goal, but we did get a few shots on net and, if my memory is working fine, I think there was only one goal against. I'm not saying we won the second half, partly because we didn't, but mainly because that's a poor way of looking at a competition. You have to consider the entirety of the event, unfortunately, and, in that light we got beat. However, the team did a great job for the second half and I got a lot more aggressive, which led to a lot fewer goals. It was an important lesson to learn. It just goes to show you, no matter how far back you are, there is always something to be gained by finishing the game or, in another parlance, running the race. That's why I'm incredibly disappointed in the actions of our (now assuredly) outgoing Liberal Premier Kathleen Wynne. Wynne, on Saturday, announced that the Liberals were conceding the provincial general election being held today, Thursday, June 7. She said she would no longer be Premier, indicating her party wasn't going to achieve leadership. This isn't a left- or right -leaning column, it is an observation: conceding the vote before it's over is a fool's gambit and current Ontario politics kind of suck. Pardon my slang. Sure, maybe through her perceived humility or through a change in leadership, Wynne and the Liberals will save face and save enough seats for the Ontario Liberal Party to continue to exist but, as an honestly -undecided voter, all the announcement did for me was further frustrate me with the options available. I'm not particularly happy with politics in Ontario right now. Like I said, it sucks. Maybe the Liberals were in power too long, but the changes implemented by the party over the past several years have been, in my opinion, shortsighted vote grabs at best and obviously, in light of Wynne's concession, they didn't work. The PCs have a Canadian version of U.S. President Donald Trump leading them in Doug Ford. I just can't support him or the attitudes he takes with so many issues, to say nothing of the lack of a visible platform (without joining their mailing list). Lastly, everything I see out of the New Democratic Party just seems to be, "Hey, we're not the Liberals or the Conservatives, vote for us." It's a frustrating time to be a voter. Traditionally, I've looked to the local candidates when deciding who to vote for, however, as my editor Shawn previously wrote, that becomes more and more difficult when we're not voting for candidates, but rather for the binders from which they read. While some experts feel Wynne's announcement may save the party, my immediate impression was that a Liberal vote in the coming election may be a wasted one. Some experts have said that's not a unique view to take on the incident. As a matter of fact, Henry Jacek, a political science professor at McMaster University was quoted by The Globe and Mail as saying Liberal voters could see Wynne's admission of defeat as permission to vote NDP. Wynne's move came either too late or too soon, depending on whom you ask, to have a beneficial impact on the election for the Liberals. Leaving her party leaderless with less than a week to the election is bad, but staying 011 so long when she knew how unpopular she had become (see her: "I'm Sorry" advertisement) may have been worse. Or, to bring it back to the sports metaphor, don't start the race unless you can finish it. Polls can be wrong, just ask Hillary Clinton or anyone involved in Brexit. Finish the race. Shawn Loughlin gab Shawn's Sense The of auction block How often The Citizen's ownership has changed hands has been a frequent topic of conversation with me in recent years. This fact is a bit curious, however, considering that the aforementioned number is actually zero and will not be increasing. Over the weekend, I was speaking to a fellow Lions Club member who asked, now that former Publisher Keith Roulston had shifted into near -full retirement, when I would be stepping up and buying The Citizen from him. I told him the answer was never, seeing as how The Citizen is not Keith's to sell. This also arose when Publisher Deb Sholdice took over for Keith — who now serves as president of our board of directors — with questions about our new owner (Deb). The truth is that neither I, nor Keith, nor Deb own The Citizen. We are owned by a group of shareholders who, back in 1985, lamented the closure of The Blyth Standard and The Brussels Post and identified the need for a newspaper to serve both communities. Sheila Richards, a name Brussels residents will know well, spearheaded the effort on behalf of the residents and found Keith and Jill Roulston, who were willing to kick some ideas around as to how this could be achieved. Shares were sold and The Citizen was born. (In fact, the story goes that too many shares were sold in those early days. The unique business model attracted attention from The Globe and Mail, which sent a reporter out to Huron County to do a story on the co-op model The Citizen had adopted. It was through that process that Keith and Sheila learned that if you sell more than a certain number of shares, your business must then be listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange. As a result, Sheila, a prolific fundraiser, had to give some people their money back, something she supposedly simply wasn't wired to do.) Earlier this year I was asked to be the guest speaker at the Brussels Agricultural Society's annual meeting and I told this story. Many readers approached me after my talk, informing me that they didn't know The Citizen's ownership structure. Indeed, The Citizen is a true community newspaper in that it is owned by the very community it serves. I know that I beam with pride when I explain this to people. I see our "owners" on the street every day, at events and in our local businesses. That's a good feeling. We don't have a singular owner with an agenda to push, we don't have political leanings and we don't have profit targets to hit every year, lest the layoffs begin if we don't (although no one here has been known to turn his/her nose up at a year-end profit). And our shareholders aren't looking for those big dividends cheques at the end of the year either. If they can support us in putting out a product that serves the community, they don't worry about their cheques or awards or anything like that. Serving the community is and always will be priority number one. I have thanked our shareholders before in this space, but there's nothing stopping me from doing it again. They saw the potential in The Citizen in 1985 and they still see our potential today and into the future and they're always there when we need them. So, even if I could buy the newspaper from them, I don't know that I'd want to. They're the best owners a newspaper could have. So, no, Keith hasn't sold The Citizen to Deb, who's looking to sell it to me. We must give our trusting and supportive shareholders the credit they most certainly deserve. Without them, none of this would have been possible.