A commentary by Canada’s former ambassador to Russia, Italy and the European Union, and former High Commissioner to the United Kingdom. He lives in Victoria.
Polls got it wrong. Pundits got it wrong.
Donald Trump, who won a second presidential election Tuesday with 51% of the popular vote and 277 Electoral College votes to Kamala Harris’s 224, got it right. Anthony Scaramucci, once Trump’s White House Communications Director (for 11 days), who is today a fierce critic of the ex-president, credits him with an extraordinary ability to sense the popular mood and exploit it.
America is split: by race, gender and education. Trump has played to it and won. The dominant fact is that America has swung to the right.
Trump’s victory is part of a rightward trend in democracies across the world. In most places the beneficiaries are the centre-right, the losers being socialists and centre-left social democrats. In part it is part of a cycle, reinforced by an anti-incumbency reflex everywhere.
Governments are held to the standards of delivery, appraised through a lens of popular hostility that holds present conditions as both deteriorating for them and inherently biased.
Global psychology is disrupted, trust depleted, accelerated by a form of social long-COVID, and amplified by the recklessness of social media platforms. Trump and other right-wing populists appeal to people who believe they are being screwed by adverse changes to social ranking, by economic trends, by favour granted to immigrants, and above all to identitarian claimants for specific beneficial attention as part of a derided “woke agenda.”
The Economist ran a cover story two weeks ago touting the U.S. economy as the “envy of the world,” citing positive macroeconomic data in which U.S. performance outstrips competitors and partners alike. But the majority of Americans claim not to “feel” the benefit.
U.S. inflation is down to 2.4% but everyday American consumers don’t “feel” it at the grocery till, in rents, in dynamic pricing of events and travel available only to the privileged elites.
The overwhelming question today is “what now?”
Domestically, in the U.S., will Trump pursue a retribution agenda in his assumed role as his supporters’ “redeemer”? Despite losing the Senate, and at the point of writing, also probably the House of Representatives, Democrats and civil liberties will need to climb back in public support.
Their agenda will be less driven by progressives’ insistent reform agenda, and the party will drive toward the 2026 congressional mid-term elections where, if the keep their unity and communicate effectively, the Democrats should reap a massive haul of seats in the House, assuming that the President is still an agent of chaos.
The rush to appease the president-elect by billionaire headmen of American society — Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Tim Cook — has begun.
As in 2016, many potential business players are urging moderation in assessing Trump’s intentions, lauding his “transactional” instincts, and in effect, “normalizing” him as a now-elected single national power centre.
What is “semi-normal” about Trump’s victory is that an incumbent administration became unpopular from the standpoint of re-electability, and was tossed out by the opposition.
But Trump is not “normal” in any way. He is unstable, unpredictable and is now dangerously unchained, with many more institutional and organizational advantages than he had in 2016.
America will become a cauldron of dissent if he pushes the limits and doubles down on the nation’s divisions that won him the White House again.
Turning to the world and to Canada, there is nothing good in his election, unless you are Benjamin Netanyahu, Viktor Orbàn, or Vladimir Putin.
He says he will settle the two wars in days. There is a growing belief in Europe (where I write from) that the Ukraine war has to be stopped at the present lines of battle, and border and other negotiations put off, and security guarantees extended to Ukraine.
It is tacitly alive in the Biden team (hate to see the end of the team of Blinken and Bill Burns, etc., now break up without a deal). Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s calculus has changed overnight.
On Israel and its wars, Bibi must be dancing. But total defeat of Hamas and Hezbollah remains a delusion of Netanyahu, who won’t take the win.
As U.S. Ambassador to both Iraq and Afghanistan Ryan Crocker has said, countries and peoples aren’t “defeated” unless they feel it, and these forces don’t.
Trump is a nationalist and anti-globalist. He promises across-the-board tariffs of anywhere from 10% to triple digits for goods from China.
It will be ruinous, and especially to Canada with our 78% of exports at stake.
Our corporate pundits and trade advisers are whistling in the dark when they claim Canada will be exempted under the USMCA. We shall need a full-court permanent campaign in the U.S. like never before.
The smooth and silly advice the Trudeau cabinet received from billionaire Trumpist Stephen Schwarzman in 2016 “just flatter him,” was a bust. Trump dislikes Trudeau. It will be an uphill climb.
Whatever we do, we cannot sacrifice our belief and stake in a multilateral, or multipartner, global system to manage the global commons and its almost existential looming challenges, starting with climate change, which Trump refuses to acknowledge is mainly caused by human activity.
Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act is mainly a massive boost to the development in the U.S. of green energy. That it favours U.S. business over European and other innovators is irrelevant. It positioned the U.S. as the leader in progress defined in the Paris Accords. That Trump pulled the U.S. out of those accords and aims the last time he had the White House is the most ominous threat on the international scene of all.
Canada must militate for climate progress, and for all opportunities for progress on global cooperation including nuclear “disarmament.” We cannot continue to sit on our hands for the sake of not offending Trump and darkening our bilateral trade vulnerability.
Given the Trudeau regime’s passivity on international issues, I am not optimistic.
After Trump trashed the 2018 Canada-hosted G7 summit, then Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland initiated a contact group of like-minded “middle powers” to pursue reforms and cooperation in the multilateral system. It will have to be tried again, if we have the credibility to pull it off. Canada resumes the G7 presidency in 2025, so Kananaskis in June will be a crucial test.
Meanwhile, as we try to negotiate with Washington, we have to strengthen Canadian assets to lift our own economic and productivity game.
A challenge will come from Trump’s intention to undertake mass deportations, in the millions, of undocumented immigrants, that will pump up enormously refugee pressure at our border.
Hopefully, those intentions will be blocked by the remaining checks and balances in the US system. But there will be refugees of all kinds. Canada should be prepared.
Much has been made and maintained about Trump’s threat to U.S. democracy. Take it seriously, but don’t blame Americans. Look after our own democracy.
Alexei Navalny, in his final and utterly inhumane isolation in an Arctic prison, wrote in weeks before he died at the hands of Putin, one has to do two things in conditions that appear dire: accept as possible the worst hypothesis and plan for it; and find and rely on a reservoir of faith in yourself and in the future.
The long arc does not necessarily bend toward justice, Navalny claims, but courage, resilience and consistency, along with faith, can win the longer game.
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