Donald Trump smiles at an election night watch party at the Palm Beach Convention Center, on Nov. 6, in West Palm Beach, Fla.Evan Vucci/The Associated Press
There will be chaos. There will be threats. There will be damaging tariffs. Donald Trump, soon to be the second-time-around U.S. president, has already made that clear. And we have reason to believe it: That’s what he was like the first time.
Now he’s back, planning again to slap tariffs on imported goods with the same predictable propensity to be unpredictable.
The new North American trade deal that Mr. Trump signed in 2018? He said he wants to renegotiate it. The deal that closed the unofficial border crossing at Roxham Road in Quebec? Don’t count on it. Expect Mr. Trump to redouble demands that Canada increase defence spending. And make new demands.
That’s what he did before. It’s what he will do now. What’s different now is that Canada has changed.
The first time around, Canada managed to calm the panic, keep its nerve and wrestle the damage down. Now things are different at home. And in the world.
In his first term, Mr. Trump put Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s team on red alert every other week. Three months into his presidency, he planned to suddenly trigger a withdrawal from the North American Free-Trade Agreement, prompting Canadian, Mexican and his own U.S. officials to urgently talk him down.
Yet the Trump terrors were arguably the Liberal government’s finest hour. It didn’t respond to most of the bait. Mr. Trudeau’s aides and ministers worked Mr. Trump’s circle and U.S. power-brokers and white-knuckled through pressure to end up with a trade deal that was only slightly worse.
On Wednesday, Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland suggested the government will do the same thing again. But things have changed.
When Mr. Trump was first elected, Mr. Trudeau’s top aides rushed to make friends with counterparts. His then-principal secretary, Gerald Butts, forged an unlikely friendship with Mr. Trump’s then-strategist Steve Bannon. But most of those relationships are gone now or have turned sour.
It’s hard to launch a second charm offensive. Mr. Trump called Mr. Trudeau two-faced in 2018, and this past August he repeated the internet conspiracy claim that Mr. Trudeau might be the son of the late Cuban dictator Fidel Castro.
A lot has changed at home. In 2017, Mr. Trudeau was leading a popular first-term government and there was a cross-partisan sense that Mr. Trump’s anti-NAFTA push was an external threat summoning all hands to the pump. Brian Mulroney offered advice. Then-Conservative leader Andrew Scheer promised unity.
Now Mr. Trudeau’s minority government is teetering. Canadians are already feeling economically vulnerable. Quebec Premier François Legault immediately raised the fear that Mr. Trump’s plan for mass deportations will lead to a wave of border crossings to a country that is now asking a lot of temporary residents to leave.
And everything in Ottawa is wedge politics.
NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh stood in the Commons Wednesday to ask the Prime Minister to say Mr. Trump’s plans are wrong. Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre’s reaction to Mr. Trump’s election was to lead off Question Period accusing Mr. Trudeau of failing to protect Canadian jobs from softwood lumber tariffs and state and local Buy American policies.
If Mr. Poilievre thinks he’ll be able to undo those things if he becomes prime minister, he’s dreaming. U.S. politicians are pretty much in unison on protectionism now.
Ms. Freeland was probably also dreaming when she suggested that because Mr. Trump signed the new North American trade deal in 2018 – making it his deal – he would not threaten new tariffs to obtain new concessions. He did that in 2020, albeit briefly.
There also isn’t much point in an appeal to global free-trade rules or principles any more. Instead, Ms. Freeland appealed to Mr. Trump’s trade sentiments by essentially arguing that Canada has made itself an ally in trade wars with China by imposing steep tariffs on its electric vehicles and steel. Geopolitics leads trade now.
This time, it’s not at all clear that Canada will be part of a cohesive set of Western allies pushing back against Mr. Trump’s impulses, apart from an effort to convince the U.S. not to abandon support for Ukraine.
In his first term, Mr. Trump pressed NATO allies to increase defence spending, but since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, many European allies see Canada as a laggard, too.
Mr. Trump will press Canada, too, of course. He’ll threaten. The lesson Canada learned in his first term is hold its nerve and work diligently to counter his impulses. But that won’t be easier the second time.