“Donald Trump will not “break” Canada, Mark Carney promised during his election victory speech on Monday evening. The Liberal leader secured a remarkable comeback victory for the party, which had been set for an electoral wipeout under Justin Trudeau. In a speech to supporters in Ottawa, Mr Carney, the former governor of the Bank of England, said Mr Trump’s repeated description of Canada as the 51 state was not an “idle threat”.
It was an idle threat, as Carney knows perfectly well. I would ask “What was Trump thinking?”, except I already know that the answer was “This will make my supporters laugh and annoy people I enjoy seeing annoyed.”
I remain glad that Donald Trump won the 2024 U.S. election. I have several reasons for this view, but perhaps the biggest one was that for at least half Joe Biden’s term of office a cabal of his “advisers” operated his poor senile body like a puppet. They were preparing to continue their unelected rule for four more years when his visible confusion in the debate against Trump made the pretence no longer supportable, so they replaced him with Kamala Harris, who was deeply complicit in this fraud against the American people. While this was happening, tyrants and terrorists made hay worldwide.
Trump has other virtues besides not being senile. He is brave and determined. Rather than being apologetic at having something as primitive as a nationality, as people like Mark Carney and Sir Keir Starmer are when among their own class, Trump actually loves his country. Unfortunately his ideas on how to advance its interests are often simplistic and counterproductive (e.g. tariffs) and his behaviour is often childish (e.g. pointlessly goading Canada and Greenland).
The very shallowness of Trump’s economic thought may help America avoid the harm tariffs would do it. One of the world’s great tragedies is that very intelligent men remain attached to the bad ideas that appealed to them in youth, and employ their intellect in devising ever more ingenious explanations for why said bad ideas failed this time but will work next time. In contrast, Trump was not argued into supporting tariffs, and probably does not need to be argued out of it. I am reasonably hopeful that when he sees prices go up and his poll numbers slide he will row back on the policy, stopping only to claim it was all a negotiating ploy. (Hell, maybe it was all a negotiating ploy.) J.D. Vance, a genuine intellectual, may be harder to convince.
Alas for Canada, Mark Carney has all of Vance’s intellectualism without his unconventionality. He will continue the policies of his predecessor Justin Trudeau and his explanations of why they are not working will be most eloquent.
Fear of Trump may have helped Carney win. Now it is Carney’s turn to deal with Trump.
Perhaps Poilievre will come to believe that this was an election worth losing?
I suspect Trump must be laughing his arse off!
Since it seems Poilievre has lost his seat, I suspect not.
Justin did not have policies, Carney was one of the puppet masters pulling his strings for the last 10 years
*sigh*
(adds Natalie to list of Samizdata authors with blind spots about Trump who, therefore, can be ignored for the next 4 years…)
Ben David,
I realise you may not wish to answer if the four years have already started, but is the blind spot to which you refer that I criticise Trump or that I praise him?
And people wonder why I give Trump a hard time.
Greenland, Canada, and Ukraine (in order of increasing importance) have certainly been the most disappointing items in Trump’s agenda — so far.
I say: so far, not only in the sense that it might get worse, but also in the sense that Trump might have aces up his sleeves wrt those issues (to keep up the poker analogy). Although that seems unlikely in the case of Canada.
NB: This is the reason why i dismiss J. Pearce’s sneering rants: he does not focus on Ukraine, Canada, and Greenland.
PP lost his nerve, and gave away an almost sure thing.
All he had to do was to criticize JT (and thus MC) along the lines Trump chose – weak country, dying economy, DEI-controlled, joke of a border, China’s huge influence, etc.
I assume he got scared that MC could rally some sort of anti-Trump Canadian patriotism – something never before having been shown to exist – and he didn’t dare not hop on.
It became a race to the bottom. Too bad for Canada.
Not really.
Natalie:
It is that you criticize a straw man of your own creation. Created based on what clever people who are not businessmen, who for all their book smarrs would have been flattened by the lawfare and assassination directed at Trump – based on what these Grey Flannel Minds think his motives and actions should be, woild be kf he were clever or acculturated like them.
It is like music professors criticizing Coltrane or Ellington for not adhering to sonata form.
He is as intelligent as you/they are – and much better at that mix of strategic thinking,framing communication, people reading, and improvisation that yields miĺlion dollar deals.
These are *executive* skills that academics and other “smart” people and armchair generals lack, and therefore dismiss.
But he was elected to be an executive and is doing a great job – while leading the hostile media inatead of letting it frame the issues.
For example, he didn’t just “goad” Greenland cor no reason – he sjone a light a strategic issue previously soft-pedaled by pro-China politicos (including many in the Grey Flannel” expert class). Greenland also supported his efforts to restructure the old European alliances. It may not be obvious to the armchair experts, but after Greenland officials on every country with a “Belt and Road”agreement with China understand that America wiĺl be callkng.tk find out which bloc they align with.
See? Not gratuitous or unplanned… and quite possibly aware of things that the smart set does not see.
Sorry my new phone does not have autocorrect…
Its interesting that Trump’s tariffs have shown many on the Right to be as much obsessed with ideological purity as the Left is. It seems many would prefer to have no tariffs and Kamala Harris as US president.
Its good to know which side many people are actually on.