Don’t be a Theresa. Don’t be a Malcolm.

As Justin Trudeau heads to Washington on Monday for his much-ballyhooed first face-to-face meeting with Donald Trump, the prime minister has two clear examples of what not to do.

Don’t act like Theresa May, the British prime minister who rushed to Washington in the first week of the Trump presidency to underscore the “special relationship” that the United States and the United Kingdom are supposed to enjoy.

May was so eager to please that she publicly flattered the president and invited him to come to London for a rare state visit. She even held hands with him (or at least let him hold her hand). Worse, she did it when a photographer was around to snap the deed.

May hasn’t lived it down since. She’s seen in Britain as Donald’s poodle. Not a good image.

Then there’s Malcolm Turnbull, the Australian prime minister who had the bad luck to have his first phone chat with Trump at a moment when the new president was in a particularly testy mood.

Trump set the tone by tweeting out his dissatisfaction with a deal on refugees made by the Obama administration with Australia (“I will study this dumb deal!”)

Then someone, apparently a White House staffer concerned about the president’s erratic behaviour, leaked a story that the phone call with Turnbull turned belligerent and was apparently cut short by Trump. It seems poor Turnbull just got in the line of fire at a moment when the president was tired and cranky.

The trick for Prime Minister Trudeau will be to avoid both these pitfalls. To be friendly, but not too friendly, at least in public. To clearly assert Canadian values, but not in a way that will be seen as a direct rebuke to Trump, especially as his guest in his own house.

So far the government has walked this line well. It has resisted the temptation to play to the gallery, as NDP Leader Tom Mulcair did when he denounced Trump as a “fascist” during a debate in the House of Commons. It’s one thing for the third-party leader to toss around such labels; the prime minister clearly must weigh his words more carefully.

This is not an abdication of responsibility. It’s simply a recognition that all prime ministers must get on as best they can with all presidents, regardless of their likes and dislikes, even regardless of serious differences on matters of principle.

Lester Pearson had to get on with Lyndon Johnson, even as Pearson criticized American policy in Vietnam, leading the president (according to an oft-told story) to hoist the diminutive prime minister by his lapels in the Oval Office and shout “You pissed on my rug!” Pierre Trudeau had to at least pretend to get on with Richard Nixon, who was caught on tape bluntly referring to the prime minister as “an asshole” and a “pompous egghead.”

So there’s no need for the leaders to bond on a personal level, though that can be a bonus. But there is a need for Canada to make sure its relationship with the U.S. does not go sour, for obvious reasons of geography and economics.

On economics, Canada has excellent arguments to make. Ministers and diplomats have already been making the case in Washington that the trade partnership between the two countries is already a model of what Trump says he wants to see elsewhere – a balanced relationship that makes sense for a president determined to put “America first.”

Trump has made much of the fact that the U.S. imports more manufactured goods from the likes of China and Mexico, supposedly “exporting jobs” to those countries. Canada is in the opposite position: we import more manufactured goods from the U.S. than we sell there, and send the Americans oil and other natural resources to make up the difference.

That’s a pattern that should make sense in newly protectionist Washington, if logic carries the day. But it’s also true that the power balance is very much one-sided, given the relative size of the two economies. Canada’s exports of goods and services to the U.S. account for about 23 per cent of our GDP, while American exports to Canada amount to just under 2 per cent of U.S. GDP.

In other words, they matter way more to us than we matter to them. That leaves us vulnerable, and they know it.

All the more reason for Canada to manage this new relationship carefully and spare no effort in cultivating ties at all levels in Washington and throughout the U.S. The fact that many Canadians (fully 58 per cent according to a poll this week) feel that Canada should risk a trade war with the U.S. if Washington imposes new tariffs at the border should not tempt the Trudeau government to stray from its chosen course.

So far that has involved sending a parade of ministers to Washington to meet with members of Trump’s new cabinet – including Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Defence Secretary James (Mad Dog) Mattis and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross – plus whichever White House officials will see them.

The idea is to make early connections with top officials while the power relationships in the new administration are still coming together. No one seems to know just how it will all shake out, but it is encouraging that Trump’s cabinet includes a number of strong figures who aren’t afraid to dissent openly from the president on some issues (as Mattis did, for example, on the wisdom of using torture). Trump is apparently fine with that.

On Monday, observers will parse every word Trudeau and Trump utter in Washington and scrutinize every detail of the body language between the two men. The prime minister should not hesitate to make clear the Canadian view on such key matters as refugees, immigration and openness to the world. But he should be careful to avoid needless jabs at the president at this stage.

And above all, don’t hold his hand.

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