Their energy, their focus, their attention. Your attention. All the time people spend in stress / outrage / fear / whatever in reaction to these events, that's time and energy not available to look at the news that get less coverage (which are usually the more important).

It also sucks all the air out of other internal political discussion - US trade relations take #1 priority and so everything else either gets forgotten or put on hold.

Easy way to set your opponents back when you have the upper hand like the US does.

Diplomacy is the art of saying “good dog” until you make it to the rock. The US will apply pressure for short term gain against allies while they move away long term.

It's actually pushing us to improve our economic policies that we've been debating about for years because the country is mostly united.

Getting rid of interprovincial trade barriers is a net good for Canada as is increasing trade diversification.

The US definitely seems like the one set back so far...

if the US had the upper hand it wouldn't have issued this partial climb-down

so much winning

But watching today, it seems like the markets aren't getting tricked anymore.

However, they are beginning to believe in them now.

I'm several other things, but I'm not entertained.