If Prime Minister Justin Trudeau truly believes that U.S. President Donald Trump is not joking about annexing Canada, he certainly isn’t taking it as a serious threat. If he were taking it seriously, he would never have prorogued Parliament — or, at the very least, he would recall the House of Commons now. Instead, Trudeau and those angling to replace him next month continue to operate under the fiction that all countries are fundamentally equal and that the United States, while certainly more powerful and more wealthy, is just like any other state living under the “rules-based international order.”
This is a fiction that successive American presidents have allowed the leaders of other countries to indulge for decades. Pretty much every complaint Trump has about Canada has also been made by Democratic presidents, specifically the export of fentanyl from north to south and Canada’s lacklustre contribution to defence. The difference being that former president Joe Biden was much more polite about these things.
As for trade, on Monday, Trump signed an executive order levying 25 per cent tariffs on steel and aluminum, against everyone. During his term, Biden cancelled the Keystone XL pipeline. Trump’s threat of more wide-ranging, across-the-board tariffs would serve the goal, he argues, of repatriating auto manufacturing to the U.S. For Biden’s part, he attempted much the same thing with massive subsidies for electric vehicle and battery production. Again, Biden was much more polite about it.
This isn’t to say that there is no difference between previous administrations and Trump’s. Observing the current president is a bit like reading medieval fantasy: you can recognize historical influences, but everything is bigger and more excessive.
What previous American leaders left implicit, Trump makes explicit. Whereas previous presidents muted their disappointment in Canada’s neglect of its military or expressed it privately, Trump regularly scolds U.S. allies and threatens that he will not “protect” them if they don’t increase their own defence spending. He also complains regularly that Canada and Mexico, as well as the European Union, treat the U.S. poorly, “unfairly” and “very badly.”
Trump is making it clear that the U.S. is the strongest and wealthiest power in the world. He is not interested in playing along with delusions about multilateralism. The Americans are the reason why global systems of trade and security function at all, and he wants to make sure everyone recognizes that.
This is most plainly evident in how Trump threatened tariffs against Colombia if it didn’t accept planes full of deported illegal migrants. After initially refusing to take back its own citizens, the Colombian government capitulated within hours. A similar approach was taken with Canada and Mexico, both of which complied with Trump’s demands that they contribute more to border security.
It is debatable whether Trump actually got much out of his continental neighbours. The Wall Street Journal dismissed the deals as “minor concessions.” What is clear is that Trump wants everyone to think he is throwing his weight around in a way that is much more obvious than those who came before him.
Yet Trump’s approach could also be self-defeating and ruinous — for the Americans. Even if the Trump administration doesn’t believe, or care, that trade barriers will lead to higher prices for Americans, the fact is that costs will go up and it isn’t at all clear what the benefit will be.
It is true that U.S. manufacturing jobs have declined since the Second World War, but this isn’t necessarily the result of unfair trading relationships. A 2023 Cato Institute report pointed out that the United States is still a dominant manufacturing power, and that fewer jobs in the sector are due to increases in productivity and changes in consumer preferences.
To the extent that Trump’s economic and security policies are more than simply bluster, he risks alienating much of the world. If tariffs become a long-term or permanent feature of American relations, supply chains and trade deals could recalibrate away from Washington in ways that would be negative for American prosperity, and certainly for American leadership. Of course, everyone prioritizes selling into U.S. markets, but that doesn’t mean that this will always be the case.
In many ways, we are witnessing the inevitable decline of American importance that began in the 1990s. American military power backstopped the postwar global economy because U.S. leaders saw a benefit in marshalling allies against the Soviet Union, which constituted a global strategic threat powered by ideology.
This represented a unique period in history. Peter Zeihan, a geopolitics analyst, put it this way in his book, “The End of the World Is Just the Beginning”: “Instead of having to fight for food or oil, everyone gained trade access global in scope.”
However, once the Berlin Wall came down, America’s global purpose faded, even though the last three and half decades have been marked by tremendous growth and technological advancement. Zeihan writes, “The post-Cold War era is possible only because of a lingering American commitment to a security paradigm that suspends geopolitical competition and subsidizes the global order.”
If Zeihan’s words, published in 2022, seem familiar, it is because the state of affairs he describes is exactly what Trump and those around him are complaining about. They want to stop subsidizing the world, but they should be prepared for the reality that they may not like what comes next.
National Post