What's Trump's price for averting tariffs? He didn't tell Trudeau

Will Canada escape the potentially economy-smashing tariffs threatened by Donald Trump? If you can't answer that question, congratulations, you're in good company.

It's the multibillion-dollar enigma on the minds of some of the best-connected people in North America's capitals.

Trump has threatened a 25 per cent tariff on every product entering from Canada and Mexico — unless those countries make as-yet-undefined changes at their borders to slow the flow of migrants and fentanyl.

There's a widespread belief that Trump wants to extract concessions that will get his presidency off to a strong start.

What's unclear: What numbers, or targets, or actions, would satisfy him and avoid a likely recession and trade war.

Even people who know Trump, and trade, and Canada, confess to their own befuddlement, from people who worked in Trump's first White House to others advising the Canadian government.

"The challenge is that Canada doesn't have a clear sense of what does Team Trump really want? What on the border do you want fixed?" Canada-U.S. trade consultant Eric Miller told CBC News. "What does the definition of success look like?"

The U.S. president-elect offered no specifics in his phone call Monday night with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. Sources say the call began with a few minutes of friendly banter. 

When they subsequently broached the potential irritant, Trump repeated the threat he'd posted on social media; Trudeau listed things Canada has already done at the border and suggested Canada's situation wasn't as dire as Mexico's.

Here's what is already abundantly clear: The old maxim that national security equals economic security has never been more true. The U.S. is threatening to squeeze wallets to bolster its own national security.

In order to remain inside the American trade tent, this means seriously addressing U.S. concerns about things like the border, defence spending and the security of supply chains, say a number of insiders.

Trump demonstrated this pattern in his first term by threatening Mexico with tariffs unless it controlled migration. A first-term Trump official even recently suggested Canada deserves economic punishment if it won't increase defence spending. 

Now, border security again is at the heart of a Trump threat about trade. A senior trade official in the first Trump White House said this represents a sea change.

"It used to be that trade was discussed in backrooms in Geneva. That's no longer in the case. Trade used to rest in its own lanes, but the lanes have become increasingly blurred over the past year eight to 10 years," said Everett Eissenstat, who was deputy director of Trump's White House National Economic Council in his first term, and a trade specialist.