Remember that famous scene inThe Godfather, Part II when New Year’s revellers in Cuba had just found out Batista was out and Castro was in and everybody fled, looking to get the hell out of Havana?
The crowd at the U.S. ambassador’s election-watching party at the Chateau Laurier in Ottawa on Nov. 8 didn’t suddenly head for the exits. But the Canadian cabinet ministers in the room rapidly began disappearing as the polls clearly began to favour Donald Trump as the next president of the U.S., lest they be caught without appropriate talking points.
Luckily for the Trudeau government, Trump began equivocating and retreating from promises almost as soon as he became president-elect. Not all of Obamacare will be cancelled. Some of the U.S.-Mexico wall will be fencing – as in a wall if necessary, but not necessarily a wall. And so it goes.
Still, Trump is going to have to throw some red meat to his angry and disaffected supporters soon. So, Justin Trudeau probably made a wise decision to offer to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) almost as soon as Trump became president-elect.
An announcement that NAFTA will be renegotiated will enable Trump to claim his first victory quickly and Trudeau will have succeeded in getting the trade agreement out of the line of fire, to disappear into months of tedious and secret negotiations.
This is what Jean Chrétien did after Bill Clinton won the 1992 U.S. presidential election by promising NAFTA would not be ratified without renegotiation. The result was a couple of meaningless side agreements on the environment and labour standards that served as legislative placebos, thus enabling all sides to claim victory.
If NAFTA somehow does get torn up, as Trump promised on the campaign trail, Canada at least will be able to fall back on the old Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement, which was never nullified.
Trump is likely to proceed quickly with across-the-board tax cuts. He probably won’t be able to deliver his promised 15% corporate tax, given the size of the U.S. deficit. But he will be able to bring that tax closer to Canada’s net 28%.
In the short term, Canada is likely to gain from a U.S. economy stimulated by tax cuts. In the longer term, the Trump administration will be an ongoing wild card that will make management of the Trudeau government’s economic and climate control agendas much more difficult. But the federal Liberals may be strong enough to do that.
Where things will get interesting will be the political landscape in Canada, but not necessarily in the Opposition’s favour.
If the Liberals didn’t have Conservative leadership candidate Kellie Leitch, they would want to invent someone like her. The Honourable Member from Days-Gone-By may indeed become the next federal Conservative leader May 27 by framing herself as the “Northern Donald.”
The hardcore base of the Conservative Party would love to have a Trump of their own, in the hope that Canada will join what seems to be a worldwide trend toward right-wing populism.
Nothing is impossible in politics, as Trump’s victory demonstrates. On the other hand, Canadians firmly rejected that kind of populism just a year ago after nine years of it.
Unless Canadians’ attitudes very strangely morph, the Liberals will be able to drain what is left of the New Democratic Party’s base and attract moderate Conservatives – of which there are many.
Just as the Castros have been able to stay in power for almost six decades by building on the fear of an invasion by the U.S., the Liberals may be able to use the threat of Trumpism flowing north and corrupting Canadian politics in the same way.
Certainly, the Liberals will be very tempted to go into the 2019 election campaigning against Trump. Watch for the Liberals to move right of centre to attract moderate Conservatives.
In 2003, the former Progressive Conservative and Alliance parties put aside their bitter differences to merge into one united Conservative Party because they found the prospect of the Liberals ruling a one-party democracy even more odious than overcoming their differences.
Canada could virtually be a one-party democracy after the 2019 election, thanks to Trump.
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