It was a jubilant day for North America. At least, it looked that way to leaders in Mexico City and Ottawa.

Steel tariffs had just been lifted across the continent. Relieved Canadians had responded by introducing a bill to implement USMCA, the Trump administration’s signature trade deal, and Mexico had just followed suit on Thursday. Vice President Mike Pence was in Ottawa to celebrate the progress and cheer on America’s neighbors.

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Within hours, the moment of continental comity blew up with two tweets from President Donald Trump.

Trump’s sudden declaration of new tariffs on Mexico last Thursday evening delivered immediate whiplash, a jolt for two countries that had — for a moment — thought they might be coming off the Trump roller coaster.

“It’s never over,” said one Canadian official, describing the constant drama of life dealing with Trump.

Officials in Mexico and Canada in recent days kicked into gear with playbooks they’ve each used repeatedly in navigating a fractious relationship with Trump over the past two years. They’re deploying lessons other nations have come to learn as well: stay calm, speak the American president’s language and find Trump-friendly voices who can lean on him to deescalate the tensions.

Both countries also have learned to lean on each other with an informal support network to plot strategy and shape a shared action plan to keep Trump’s America First approach from destroying America’s two allies next door.

“What we are doing is, prepare and keep a strategy of how to coexist with what is sometimes unpredictable. That’s our obligation,” Mexican Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard said Tuesday.

“It’s impossible for Mexico to control” what unpredictable actions the Trump administration may take in the future, he added, but “we are going to be ready.”

Speaking at a press conference Tuesday in London, Trump said it’s “likely” the 5 percent tariff on all Mexican imports will go into effect June 10, even though U.S. and Mexican officials have not yet had a formal meeting to work on a solution.

Trump officials, including Pence and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, will meet with Mexican officials on Wednesday at the White House to discuss the situation, including Trump’s demand to prevent migrants from entering the United States from Mexico.

America’s neighbors have tried to project calm, insisting publicly that USMCA remains unaffected by the latest tariff twist.

Officials have mostly maintained the confident line that the agreement will still be ratified. The more candid ones acknowledge, however, that tensions created by the fresh tariffs could stall ratification.

“In Mexico, we’re going to continue” with USMCA, Mexico’s Undersecretary for North America Jesús Seade said Tuesday. “In the United States, I don’t know what they can do” with the tariffs threat right now. The new pact “is a little in waiting,” he added.

Current and former Mexican officials said the tariffs might create a new roadblock to an already precarious situation with House Democrats, who have specified they want changes to the deal before they approve it.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Democrats were already upset with Trump earlier last Thursday over his administration’s decision to send a draft statement to Congress that paves the way for moving forward on a vote for the USMCA. Democrats largely viewed the move as an effort to increase pressure for them to pass the deal quickly.

Pelosi and top House Democrats met with Ebrard on Tuesday afternoon for a “constructive and candid discussion” about the replacement deal for NAFTA and Trump’s tariffs threat, a spokesperson for Pelosi said.

Mexican officials held meetings across Washington this week with key Trump administration officials, such as acting Homeland Security Secretary Kevin McAleenan, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross and U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer.

They’ve also turned to Twitter to broadcast how they’re trying to talk Trump down from the tariffs — a move one former Mexican official called “trying to speak in Trump’s language.”

Mexico is prepared with a plan A and plan B, just in case. One is a proposal for how to tackle illegal migration at the border, and the other is a plan that’s expected to include targeted retaliation on American goods.

Mexico has not offered details on either proposal. But it has specified that while it wants to work out a deal with the U.S., it will not sacrifice Mexico’s dignity.

Trump’s sudden move has already helped to unite Mexico’s business leaders and lawmakers in support of Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador.

Top Mexican lawmakers and business leaders are also in Washington this week for meetings with their U.S. counterparts to ensure that the Mexican government’s message is clear: Tariffs are bad for both economies and for the long-standing alliance between the two nations.

“We’re trying to remind Trump and his administration that we’re their ally — not an ‘abuser,’” a Mexican official said, nodding to Trump’s tweet on Sunday that Mexico has been an “abuser” of the United States, “taking but never giving.”

The Canadians prepared long ago for life with Trump, shuffling their cabinet to deal with the new president in 2017. They even staffed a rapid-response unit within the office of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau that operates like a campaign war room, dedicated to crises caused by the U.S. president.

The challenges with Trump have forced Mexico and Canada to lean on each other regularly, strategizing around how to handle a U.S. leader well accustomed to attacking long-time allies.

In public, Canadian officials insist the latest standoff is a bilateral issue between the U.S. and Mexico. Canadian Minister of Foreign Affairs Chrysia Freeland reiterated Monday the Canadian view that it doesn’t affect USMCA implementation.

But they’re still talking quietly behind the scenes. Freeland and Mexican Economy Secretary Graciela Márquez had a Friday evening phone chat to discuss how to navigate the latest crisis out of Washington.

Their informal mutual support network has generally been reliable, despite a few hiccups along the way.

Both countries worked together through the renegotiation of NAFTA over the past two years. Their common front only broke late in the negotiation, leading to one heated argument between Canadian and Mexican officials last year about which country had betrayed the other by cutting side deals with the U.S.

But this year they stood in lockstep over steel tariffs, with a new government leading Mexico.

Mexico could have had a tariff lift sooner, but refused to go along without Canada.

In recent weeks, López Obrador and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s governments worked together with top U.S. lawmakers to get the message out that Trump’s steel and aluminum tariffs needed to be lifted after months of deadlock.

López Obrador had instructed Seade to negotiate with Lighthizer to pull back the tariffs as quickly as possible to clear the path for USMCA passage. The Mexican leader has repeatedly expressed a desire to put the trade pact behind him so he can focus on domestic issues and bring certainty to investors in Mexico.

With that mandate, Seade met with Lighthizer over three weeks for intense discussions to end U.S. tariffs.

That’s when Seade and Lighthizer phoned Freeland to set up individual meetings with her to discuss the potential deal.

“Her conflict was really with the United States. It was a bilateral issue. But, you know, we’re in a deal together,” Seade said when the deal was announced.

Seade and Márquez headed to Canada three days later to present the deal with the United States.

During that trip, the Mexican and Canadian officials then discussed how lifting the tariffs would create momentum for passage of USMCA in their respective legislatures.

Freeland had already been in close contact with Senate Finance Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) about the need for the Trump administration to lift the duties to clear a path for ratification in all three countries. She also promised help for Mexico in implementing its landmark labor reform, which U.S. Democrats and their union allies are watching closely.

Freeland met the following day with Lighthizer in Washington and the steel tariffs were quickly lifted on both countries.

That brought two weeks of relative peace in the North American neighborhood.

The mood remained all positive before the head-spinning plot twist with the latest tariffs on Mexico that threatened to blow everything up once again.

Last Thursday, Pence had just left a celebratory feeling in Ottawa when both countries heard about new tariffs. Two Canadian officials said it never came up in Pence’s meeting with Trudeau.

“It surprised everyone,” one senior Canadian official said.

Andrew Restuccia contributed to this report.

LONDON — Donald Trump is using his U.K. state visit to anoint Brexit winners and losers.

The president on Tuesday fully cast his lot with political leaders pushing for Britain to crash out of the European Union — and in the process trampled on diplomatic norms that foreign leaders generally avoid meddling in domestic politics.

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Britain is especially fragile at the moment, with Prime Minister Theresa May set to step aside in the coming days, casting doubt on how — or even if — the United Kingdom will leave the EU.

But Trump barreled into the Brexit quagmire on Tuesday. In just a matter of a few hours, he snubbed the leader of the opposition — who wants a close relationship with the EU after Brexit and if he can’t get it, advocates a second referendum on the options — in favor of meeting with two avid Brexiteers and chatting with a third.

Trump “is very interested as to who the next Conservative leader and prime minister is,” said Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage, following his own meeting with the president Tuesday.

But it’s not clear Trump’s pressure will win him the nationalist ally he craves in Europe.

For weeks, the discussion about May’s replacement has centered on Boris Johnson, the voluble Brexit leader and former foreign secretary who shares Trump’s penchant for headline-grabbing quotes. On Tuesday, however, it was Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn who grabbed the spotlight.

Corbyn had turned down a visit to the lavish state banquet at Buckingham Palace the night before saying that the U.S. president did not deserve the honor. Instead, he delivered an anti-Trump screed at a massive rally less than mile away from the president’s joint press conference with Prime Minister Theresa May.

The opposition leader said he would “fight with every last breath” to prevent American companies from carving up the U.K.’s state health system, the National Health Service. And, to cheers from the crowd, he attacked Trump over his policies on immigration, climate change, reproductive rights and international cooperation.

Asked about the comments at the press conference, Trump said Corbyn had asked him to meet, “and I told him no.”

“I don’t know Jeremy Corbyn. Never met him, never spoke to him,” Trump added. “I think that he is … somewhat of a negative force. I think that people should look to do things correctly as opposed to criticize.”

The back-and-forth had both sides suddenly contemplating the potential U.S.-U.K. relationship under a Prime Minister Corbyn — a distinct possibility if a general election proves the only way to resolve the U.K.’s political impasse over Brexit.

The U.S. and the U.K. have long proclaimed a “special relationship” exists between the two countries. Trump used the phrase liberally and warmly during his remarks, proclaiming “the greatest alliance the world has ever known.”

But officials and diplomats quietly acknowledge these ties are fraying, strained by Brexit and Trump’s election. Corbyn’s rise to power would almost certainly further test the relationship’s strength still further.

Senior Labour officials war-gaming the prospect of Corbyn as prime minister with Trump still in the White House anticipate a rocky relationship, but not a total breakdown. A diplomatic visit like this week would still take place, one official said, but not with full state honors. Corbyn opposed the granting of a state visit and would continue to do so as prime minister.

“If he were president and Jeremy were prime minister they would find a way of working together. While of course simultaneously being a vocal critic,” the official said.

Whether Corbyn would call the U.S. relationship “special” — a buzzword for post-war U.K. prime ministers — remains to be seen. He used the term in a 2017 conference speech, but did so with conditions. He warned that Trump had “threatened war and talked of tearing up international agreements.”

“If the special relationship means anything, it must mean that we can say to Washington: that way is the wrong way,” Corbyn added at the time.

Some of Labour’s criticisms of Trump — on the Iran nuclear deal, on climate change, on the importance of multilateral bodies like the United Nations — are shared by the Conservative government, and are making the transatlantic relationship more difficult.

Heather Conley, director of the Europe program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies predicted the U.S.-U.K. relationship would face “profound strain” if Corbyn were to occupy No. 10 Downing. For one, the policies he has espoused over his lengthy political career are “so dramatically different from what we’ve come to expect from the United Kingdom,” she said.

“The more I think through what a Jeremy Corbyn premiership would look like, I think it would almost have some similar aspects to what it looked like when Trump became president,” Conley said. “You would really have a challenge for civil servants who wish to prevent dramatic shifts in policy.”

Corbyn as prime minister would add major new areas of divergence, particularly on military cooperation. Corbyn opposed last year’s airstrikes in Syria, as well as the 2011 Libya intervention. He can be counted on to maintain his lifelong opposition to U.S. foreign interventions if he became prime minister. It is also impossible to imagine Corbyn would be an ally, as May has been, in Trump’s push for NATO allies to spend more on defense.

“I imagine everybody would notice we have a tangible change. We have different policies and different priorities from the current government,” the Labour official said. Then again, the official added: “We could have Bernie.” The left-wing Democrat presidential hopeful would likely be a much more comfortable fit for a Corbyn premiership.

Trump allies have trouble envisioning Corbyn as prime minister, mainly because they don’t believe it will happen. Asked whether Trump would meet Corbyn at the negotiating table if he becomes prime minister, the White House declined to comment. Trump also did not provide a reason for rejecting Corbyn’s meeting request.

The president spent his time Tuesday engaging conservative politicians — one of whom, following the party’s leadership election, will become prime minister.

Trump spoke with Johnson for 20 minutes by phone Tuesday morning. They did not meet in person because of a clash with a leadership hustings among Tory MPs who will select the two nominees to replace May.

Johnson, one of the leaders of the official Vote Leave campaign during the Brexit referendum, further bolstered his hardline Brexit credentials when he resigned from May’s Cabinet in protest at her concessions to the EU. The president’s team also requested a sit-down meeting with Environment Secretary Michael Gove, another leader of the official Vote Leave campaign during the Brexit referendum.

But with Trump and Corbyn’s public spat on Tuesday, the president’s allies were forced to confront the possibility of a future Corbyn-led Britain.

One ex-Trump aide suggested the Labour leader isn’t particularly popular within his own party after it suffered heavy losses in last month’s European Parliament election. “He’s as well-liked within his party as Hillary Clinton was with Democrats” in 2016, the ex-aide said.

The White House has been careful not to press too hard on issues where May’s successor — whether it’s Johnson, or a handful of other potential candidates — might diverge from Trump, like healthcare and climate change.

Trump was noticeably quiet on the latter issue during his press conference with May. He also didn’t make waves after discussing the topic over tea on Monday with Prince Charles, a major proponent of climate rules and the Paris climate accord.

On trade though, Trump was typically robust. “When you are dealing with trade everything is on the table, so NHS [National Health Service] or anything else… but everything will be on the table, absolutely,” he said.

May quickly pointed out that what was included in a scope of any deal would be the subject of negotiation. But if the U.K. is still in a state of political upheaval and desperate to make up for trade losses with the EU, those talks may prove to be a painfully one-sided affair — special relationship or not.

Acting Defense Secretary Pat Shanahan is not recommending punishments for higher-level commanders for the ambush that killed four American soldiers in Niger a year and a half ago, despite calls from some lawmakers and former officers to hold more senior personnel accountable for the ill-fated operation.

Shanahan has accepted the conclusions of Army Gen. Robert Brown, whom he tapped earlier this year to review two previous military investigations into the 2017 attack, according to two defense officials familiar with the matter. Seven Green Berets and a two-star Air Force general received reprimands after the ambush, in which a team of special operations troops were attacked by a much larger force of Islamist militants.

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Brown “concluded everything was in order with the punishments and Shanahan concurred,” said one of the officials, both of whom spoke on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to discuss internal deliberations. Brown recently presented his results to Shanahan in the form of a PowerPoint presentation, the second official added.

The completion of the review clears the way for the families of the fallen to receive their awards for valor, as well as redacted copies of the main previous investigation, which was conducted by U.S. Africa Command. But Shanahan’s decision is unlikely to satisfy some lawmakers and retired senior officers who remain highly critical of the handling of the Niger attack, which led to a string of recriminations over incomplete or inaccurate information initially provided by the Pentagon about the troops’ role and reprimands for some personnel involved but not others.

“We asked the Department of Defense to police themselves, and this is a big failure on their part,” said Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.), a Marine infantry veteran of the Iraq War, in an interview. “They’re just papering over a problem to get rid of it. You don’t want to have Congress have to come in and investigate.”

Gallego took Shanahan to task over Niger at a March hearing of the House Armed Services Committee after the Pentagon missed a February deadline to submit a report to Congress about the October 2017 ambush and other operations in Niger, where U.S. special operations troops advise Nigerien commandos on counterterrorism missions.

After Gallego lambasted Shanahan for not punishing “senior officers responsible for the systematic failings that led to this disaster,” Shanahan replied that he was undertaking his own “review” of the investigations “so I can ensure from top to bottom there is appropriate accountability.”

But instead of a broad review with the possibility of handing out more punishments or reversing penalties already issued, Shanahan tasked Brown with reading the existing investigations and producing “a glorified book report,” the first defense official said. The result was a summary without new recommendations of punishments or other changes, the second official confirmed.

The new review also delayed the release of the Africa Command investigation to the families of the fallen soldiers. “The families have been waiting for the redacted copies since February,” when they were originally scheduled to be released, “and some are p—–,” said the first official.

“The families do not feel like they’ve received a consistent story and that’s unfortunate and needs to be fixed,” said Rep. Michael Waltz (R-Fla.), a former Green Beret lieutenant colonel who has served in Africa.

Nevertheless, Waltz said, “I’m glad Secretary Shanahan ordered an additional review using a third party to have an outside look, because I did have concerns” about the previous investigations. In particular, Waltz said, he is unconvinced that junior members of the unit that fought in Niger deserved the punishments some have been given.

A spokesperson for Shanahan declined to discus the status of the review. “In deference to the families and the family notification process, we’ll decline to comment for now,” Lt. Col. Joe Buccino told POLITICO.

The two earlier investigations, by Africa Command and Special Operations Command, led to a series of reprimands for relatively junior Green Berets involved in the mission, along with the senior commander for special operations advisory teams in Africa at the time, Air Force Maj. Gen. Marcus Hicks.

But they spared two other Green Beret commanders involved in authorizing the mission: Lt. Col. David Painter and Col. Bradley Moses. They also cleared the Green Beret generals involved in preparing the team prior to the Africa deployment at Fort Bragg in North Carolina.

After then-Defense Secretary Jim Mattis complained late last year that too many junior personnel were being punished, Painter was removed from command of a high-profile Army adviser battalion and received a letter of reprimand. But the letter was placed in his “local” personnel file, making it less damaging to his career, and he has since been selected for promotion to colonel.

Before the ambush, Painter had overruled the objections of the Green Beret team leader on the ground when he ordered them to proceed with the riskier phase of the Niger mission, The New York Times reported last year.

“That means Shanahan is good with the idea of Painter, the man who was calling the shots and ultimately put the team in position to be ambushed, getting promoted to colonel, and Moses, who was briefed on the missions, eventually pinning a star,” said the first defense official.

Moses, who was responsible for special operations teams through northwestern Africa, was briefed on the orders that Painter issued. Moses is not known to have received a similar letter of reprimand, however. He is in the process of assuming a senior position overseeing strategy and policy for the NATO-led coalition in Afghanistan and did not respond to a request for comment.

Retired Maj. Gen. Jeffrey Schloesser, a former special operations pilot and commander of the 101st Airborne Division, cautioned in an interview against “trying to place blame rather than fix the problem.” A 2008 battle in Afghanistan killed nine of Schloesser’s soldiers and prompted a similarly controversial series of investigations, punishments and reviews.

“We investigate and the natural impulse is to find fault. But sometimes the reason we take losses is because the enemy fought well on land they knew well, and not through the fault of our soldiers,” Schloesser said, stressing that he was speaking generally and not specifically about the Niger case.

But some had hoped Brown’s review would lead to punishments for Moses or Green Beret general officers at Fort Bragg. “The fact that more senior officers aren’t going to be reprimanded is bad for morale and sets a bad precedent about a higher command that felt they could take these risks without consequences,” said Gallego.

Moses “is a wonderful person and a great officer, but when you play a role like he played in these events, you need to take responsibility for it,” said retired Brig. Gen. Donald Bolduc, a former commander of special operations forces in Africa. “To me, it’s just another example of how we’re protecting the senior leaders at the expense of the men and women we ask to do these missions.”

He added: “It’s unfortunate that this was just a review of the 6,000 pages and not a real, hard look at the fact that AFRICOM investigated themselves … and then passed the responsibility to hold people accountable to SOCOM, which butchered the process as it tried to protect its own.”

Bolduc also believes the Green Beret generals back at Ft. Bragg got off the hook too easily. They “failed to ensure that the team was prepared for this mission according to their own guidelines and should be held accountable for the team’s unpreparedness.”