Canadians followed the US midterm campaign closely. We watched Democrats denounce the tariffs on Canada, Trump daily accusing Canada of exploiting the US, and border state Republican candidates like Susan Collins (Maine) and Mike Rogers (Michigan) attempting to disassociate themselves from Trump. The blue wave that defeated Collins, Rogers, and many other Republican candidates is cause for cautious optimism here.

The Carney Government’s refusal to sign Trump’s trade deal last August now seems prescient. A newly elected Congress with Democratic majorities can put pressure on Trump to end the trade war against Canada and to renew USMCA (or CUSMA here) on more favourable terms to Canada and Mexico. I trust that our diplomats are now speaking to legislators in both parties to determine how the ground is shifting and how that will affect future rounds of negotiations.

Still the Unreliable Boyfriend

Our optimism is tempered by a realization of what kind of person Donald Trump is. After his election campaign broadsides against Canada, Trump’s pre-election about-face that the US and Canada are close to a mutually beneficial deal is seen here as a typical lie, improvised for the occasion.

On October 13, Chrystia Freeland, Canada’s lead trade negotiator during the first Trump administration, published her memoir Unreliable Boyfriend: An Insider’s View of Dealing with a Chaotic Superpower, Plutocrats, and Other Complicated People. Freeland’s book is a best-seller and is influencing how Canadians understand Trump and the negotiations that replaced NAFTA (his “worst trade deal ever”) with USMCA (his “best trade deal ever,” until it wasn’t). Because of her capability as a negotiator and her gender, Trump came to despise Freeland, referring to her as a “nasty woman,” “totally toxic,” and a “whack.” Freeland recounts that back in 2018 Trump threatened to devastate the Canadian economy and wipe out its auto industry. Trump didn’t take a predatory turn towards Canada in his second term; rather than he began to say openly what he had long thought.

Freeland also observed the dichotomy between Trump’s behaviour in public and in private: “But face-to-face …[Trump] tells jokes, he remembers people … [and] … he offers compliments. … It is a lot easier than you think to have a friendly conversation with President Trump, and it is tempting to tell yourself that that concord will translate into real results. The problem is that it never does.”

Given Trump’s reputation for cheating on deals, Canada’s reputation for honouring commitments, and the imbalance of power between the US and Canada, I think there is a strong case for Canada not negotiating a trade and security deal with the Trump Administration. Freeland’s experience reinforces this conviction.

Playing the Field

There is a growing consensus among Canadians that the deep economic and strategic integration of Canada and the US was a mistake because it leaves us open to coercion. Numerous proposals are being circulated about how to do things differently. For example, Freeland draws from her experience as trade negotiator a proposal for “friendshoring,” which would involve liberal democracies (Canada, the EU, Japan. Korea, Australia, Taiwan) establishing a trading bloc. The bloc would provide resilient and trusted supply chains. Authoritarian regimes such as Russia, China, and possibly the US would be excluded.

Coincidentally, a second book released on October 13 was Ricardo Hausmann and Eric Protzer’s Canada After America: A Strategy for Prosperity in a Changed World. Though not a best-seller, it offers thought-provoking recommendations about how Canada can develop an export-oriented economic strategy that relies less on the US market. Hausmann is Director of, and Protzer a Canadian research associate at, the Harvard Kennedy School’s Economic Growth Lab. The lab focuses on understanding the complexity of economic supply chains and overcoming constraints to economic growth due to misguided public policies. Hausmann and Protzer look for high value-added exports for a global market that Canada could develop. They point out that automobiles and auto parts, a current area of tight collaboration between the US and Canada that is threatened by Trump’s tariffs, are regional (North American) rather than global exports. The global exports they suggest are aerospace and defence, pharmaceuticals, and medical devices. Aerospace and defence make sense because of Canada’s strong existing firms such as Bombardier, and because the massive military procurement required to meet Canada’s NATO commitments will be primarily from non-US firms, with a substantial portion of production located in Canada.

Our defiance of Trump’s imperialist and demeaning vision of Canada as nothing more than a vassal state has gone beyond personal acts such as the goods and travel boycott to a collective search for public policy solutions that will free us from ever being held hostage again. For us, that will be a more enduring legacy of the Trump era than either a ballroom or an arch will be for Americans.