In the wake of President-elect Donald Trump’s decisive victory in the November 5 vote, many Canadians are unsettled and uncertain about what the future holds, judging from my social media feeds. Trump’s previous tenure, after all, prompted both a full-on national effort to buttress free trade in North America and a trade war in steel and aluminum, later resolved. Canada’s system of supply management in the dairy industry came under particular scrutiny. Trump has threatened to impose an across-the-board 25 percent tariff on all imports to the United States from Canada and Mexico. It would be naive to think there isn’t, at the very least, turbulence ahead.
From a Canadian governing perspective, however, there’s little to be gained from hand wringing, any more than there was in early 2017, when the newly elected president was vowing to rip up the North American Free Trade Agreement, cut loose international allies, and repatriate America’s manufacturing supply chains—all overnight. Far more urgent is finding a line through the murk. And there are threads of hope, if not reasons for confidence, from a Canadian perspective.
