There is no longer a Trump Tower in British Columbia. But there will be a Trump towering over us.
Setting aside how it happened – how a fraudster on bail, with a history of misogyny and a campaign of hatred, might win so many women’s, Black and Latino votes in a lopsided election – the most pertinent news today is to focus quickly on what will happen.
On the wider world stage, pray for Ukraine, think about what could happen to Taiwan, and wonder what happens to NATO if America shrinks from its historic obligations.
For America, well, it resoundingly asked Tuesday for what it will get. This was no nail-biter into the night and the days that followed, no stolen-election charade – more like a series of unforced errors by a president who occupied the office too long in his four years and a vice-president who couldn’t define her entitlement to occupy it for the next four.
What the world appears to be getting is not the clown car of 2016 but an Elon Musk-gifted Tesla of 2024, a second Trump administration that by all accounts appears vastly more prepared to rule the White House, Senate and perhaps the House of Representatives, and understands how to employ its political leverage this time in a technique closer to Renoir than Jackson Pollock.
Which brings us closer to home. Which ought to bring us closer to worry.
If you’ll recall – and it really is taxing to reminisce of that world apart – 2016 Trump was momentarily caught up in the momentum of our new prime minister, our swaggering Canada-is-back guy who was jetting around the globe to sprinkle political fairy dust. The world was smitten with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, then smote by Donald Trump.
What 2024 Trump rejoins in power is a Trudeau bereft of that international élan, an emptied gas tank of a prime minister who has to hold the fort for a few more months and hope Trump doesn’t notice him. It would be grand-scale hubris for Trudeau to think he’ll be a match for Trump 2.0; better to just lay low.
But behind the scenes Canada will have to prepare itself for an America that will steep its economy in tariffs, with the stiffest against China but tough ones on us. B.C. lumber will go through the regular rigamarole of fighting phantom complaints from the U.S. softwood industry on our cheaper export. But this will just be a piece of the problematic puzzle likely to extend into our metals, cars and even oil as a protectionist wall is built. Their tariffs will eventually create higher costs but not a higher standard of living for us. Their tax cuts will render us even less competitive.
More significantly, if Canada wants to get along with this administration, it will need to accelerate defence spending, signal there will be continental energy resilience arising from our supply, and take a more ferocious position on international cyberthreats.
We will also likely face weaker economic growth, higher inflation and a weaker dollar, and could find ourselves sandwiched in a U.S.-China trade war. If Trump can follow through on his mass-deportation plan – and that would take many years – we will also swell with the influx of sudden refugees.
The largest prospective challenge is the scheduled 2026 renegotiation of the free-trade deal with the United States and Mexico. Last time around, Canada celebrated when it lost only a little in the pact. Chrystia Freeland, at first the trade minister and then the foreign affairs minister at the table, was venerated for her spine and sharp diplomacy. Again, that seems a world ago.
No, the person most likely to take the hot seat next time is Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre and, maybe, whomever he chooses as his trade envoy. In his shoes, given his persona, it might be wisest to take this file on his own. These talks will not be, as they were last time, a matter of explaining the significance of Canada to underinformed Trump administration officials, but of doing actual business in the trade talks that will involve more profound giving and perhaps some taking with a regime on much firmer footing and a clearer economic mission.
While the Poilievre-Trump dynamic might seem on the surface to offer a melding, rather like long lost brothers united by those DNA tests, there is a braying, me-first quality to each that might make them more rivalrous than chivalrous together. We can only pin our hopes.
Kirk LaPointe is a Glacier Media columnist with an extensive background in journalism.
