Canada has win-win deals it can make to satisfy Trump
Consumed with another caucus insurrection, I doubt Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has any remaining bandwidth to focus on Canada’s clear and present danger.
It was almost this time last year when I found myself a few feet from Donald Trump the golfer. If we were to bump into each other again over the next few days, I’d tell him that there are plenty of business folks in Canada who take his cross-border concerns seriously. Indeed, I’ve been trying to get Ottawa’s attention on these same issues, including terrorism, military spending, lax entry standards, Iran, and defence procurement.
With so many opportunities for win-win outcomes, Canada need not deign to engage on a discussion about a merger of our two nations. Trump cut his negotiating teeth in New York City, where everything “is just business,” but there’s plenty of constructive deals to do before resorting to any “Iron Fist in a Velvet Glove” gamesmanship — like threatening to dump CPP’s $265 billion holding of U.S. stocks, bonds, PE and infrastructure.
I’ve posted the first half of this week’s Toronto Star column below (pushed from Christmas Day). If you want to see how it ends, buy a print copy, use your Apple News, or subscribe to The Star online via my special discount code: www.thestar.com/informed:
Consumed with another caucus insurrection, I doubt Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has any remaining bandwidth to focus on Canada’s Clear and Present Danger.
Donald Trump will be inaugurated in a matter of days, and there’s no coherent strategy to tackle these three key issues:
25 per cent tariffs, which would hobble an already weak Canadian economy
Trump’s vow to “launch the largest deportation program in American history" will give many “undocumented” U.S. residents good reason to flee north in the coming months
Trump’s belief that Canada’s trade surplus with the U.S. is a form of economic subsidy.
Many hope that Trump will suddenly change his mind on the tariff front, but during this month’s Yale University CEO Summit in New York City, 53% of the 200 senior U.S. executives in attendance supported the tariff threat as a bargaining chip.
With that kind of positive affirmation, praying is pointless.
Recognizing the shortage of relevant private sector experience around the federal cabinet table, the Canadian business community needs to fill the vacuum with actionable advice. Border security is an obvious bugbear, and Trudeau’s $1.3 billion of new immigration and border security funding sounded like a constructive step.
The reality is that only $81 million of that $1.3 billion will be spent in the near term. Chump change won’t impress Trump’s new Border Czar, Tom Homan, and nor should it.
This modest initiative also demonstrates that Team Trudeau has forgotten that the border is a two-way street. Following Trump’s first election in 2016, the number of people seeking asylum in Canada immediately increased by more than 100 per cent.
A fresh start in Canada will surely appeal to every U.S. “illegal” who feels threatened by Homan’s vow to first “concentrate on expelling criminals and national security threats.” If just one per cent of America’s 11.7 million “undocumented” individuals think Trump will make good on his threat of “mass deportations,” Toronto and Montreal had better get ready to welcome another 117,000 refugees in 2025.
Gulp.
To read the rest of the piece, hit the link.
MRM
(this post is an Opinion Piece)