Alex Muir: What the various factions of MAGA think about Canada (if anything)

Trump sits atop a movement with real divides. But to the extent they share any consistent view on Canada, it's not good news for us.

By: Alex Muir

If there’s one thing that we’ve seen in recent days, as Donald Trump plays an endless game of “deal or no deal” with countries around the world, it’s that the current administration is volatile.

Why? One answer to that question is factionalism — to an extent that has enshrined unpredictability as a core operating principle of the second Trump term.

Canadians are particularly exposed to this. From north of the 49th, it looks like American policy is oscillating between nationalist populism, business pragmatism, tech conservatism, and social traditionalism. That is, however, a misreading. Administration policy is remarkably consistent if you focus on the current rather than the waves. First and foremost, the president and his team obsess over visible status, a game you can play through flattery or strength and symbolic gesture — there are winning examples of both.

In concrete policy terms, the Trump administration expects us to help them on missile defence, border control, and maritime security. They expect access to our resource and energy assets, on their terms. And they want our manufacturing sector to relocate to America. They also expect Canada to know its place as a loyal American ally.

Zoom out to the bigger picture and all the daily clutter can be understood as moves to advance, or at least attempt to advance, those broad goals. And that understanding, in turn, can help inform a successful Canadian response to U.S. actions.

By way of disclosure, Line readers may recall from an earlier piece I wrote on U.S. politics that I am the husband of Line editor Jen Gerson. I’m also a pollster, data scientist, and consultant with extensive experience on both sides of the border. This means long professional intimacy with the currents and factionalism of U.S. politics, especially on the right. This is an overview of some of the political dynamics that are driving the seemingly chaotic process of policy formulation in the second Trump administration.

Trying to understand the president and his administration is obviously an area of major interest, in Canada as much or more as everywhere else. And yet many Canadian leaders still fail to grasp how diverse the MAGA coalition truly is, how different it is from the GOP of even a few years ago, and how that diversity is finding expression during Trump 2.0. This is a very, very different U.S. political context than we are used to dealing with, and some confusion is understandable. In fact, previous experience with the American government is at least as likely to lead you astray as to guide you successfully.

Even Trump 1.0 was a profoundly different animal from the one we are dealing with today. Trump 1.0 was a president largely isolated in institutional Washington. Trump 2.0 has steamrollered, colonized, and sidelined the political apparatus that holds the state afloat. To use the president’s own language, he has drained the swamp — although what he’s building on the site remains to be seen.

You cannot understand what is happening today if you do not understand what factions hold sway within this new structure. I recommend thinking of the United States as a monarchy wearing a representative democracy’s clothes. Decisions do not rest in the administrative state, or even in a political party (like Hungary), they rest in the attention of a restless and aging president and those known to have his ear, and his trust. How close to the president a decision-maker is, and who else has a voice on any given topic, goes a long way toward explaining outcomes.

The various MAGA factions colonizing D.C. share several important background beliefs on Canada. First, and arguably most important, they don’t notice it much, and care even less. Second, they assume all foreigners want to be Americans, or are somehow defective if they do not. Third, Canadians look and sound so much like Americans that the latter assumption is magnified.

Fourth, there is a wide streak of Manichaeism in several of the factions that make up the administration, and the MAGA movement more generally. This means resistance, or even evasion, is quite likely to be taken as evidence of ill intent — or even outright evil intent — as opposed to the furtherance of legitimate competing interests. All of these are wrapped up in a fairly magnificent degree of self-involvement. America is so big, so rich, and so strong, that all administrations overwhelmingly focus on domestic issues and domestic politics since nothing that happens outside their borders is generally seen as existential. (Whereas American elections and culture wars absolutely are.)

For Canada, this has meant many things, none of them positive. We’ve seen the rapid (and apparently random) escalation of tariffs (so far mostly on specific goods, or things not explicitly covered by USMCA), plus the endlessly repeated threats of higher duties in response to perceived Canadian provocations. There have been threats and intermittent moves to sideline Canada from vital security relationships, including the Five Eyes and NORAD. Canada has committed to some initiatives in order to satisfy American demands, like intensified border enforcement initiatives and committing new resources to national security priorities. It is difficult, however, to get out in front of a rapidly moving target in terms of the administration’s desired outcome.

And that’s the crux of the matter — what do the factions of the administration see when they look at Canada, and what do they want? Answering that question involves understanding what the factions are. The following summary of the factions within MAGA has been condensed from my other work, and should help Canadians understand the complexity of what we must face.

The Family Court

The most powerful faction is Trump himself, his immediate aides — chief of staff Susie Wiles, Steve Witkoff, and National Economic Council head Larry Kudlow — and the network of family members, family friends, and members of the social circle that surrounds the president. If you want to assign an ideology here, call it transactional nationalism: loyalty first (or you’re out), self-interest second, ideology a distant third. For this group Canada isn’t an ally or even a counterpart; it’s a petitioner to be managed. We are not important enough to be a major concern, so whether you see rapprochement, blandishments, or threats will be determined by what put Canada on the radar at that time.

Institutional MAGA

This group is dominated by figures who have worked to create an effective governing structure for the MAGA movement, working through the first administration, the America First Policy Institute during the Biden administration (where much of what you’ve seen this year was written), Project 2025, and now Trump 2.0. Think of individuals like Stephen Miller, Brooke Rollins, and Peter Navarro. Their agenda is nationalist, protectionist, “America First” — resulting in policies that seek tariffs, nearshoring, and immigration restrictions. Their view of Canada is pragmatic but transactional — Canada is seen as a competitor in global energy and manufacturing markets. Policies emerging from this group include the revived 25 per cent universal tariff and selective industrial incentives aimed at repatriating industrial production from Canada to the U.S.

MAGA Populists

Where Institutional MAGA seeks enduring power through systems and structures, the populist wing of MAGA is passionate about tone, targets and culture. Much of this faction is outside the administration, but closely connected in the background — personally, at the state level, and in the media. Think of figures like Steve Bannon, Tucker Carlson, the proliferating MAGA influencer market, and a few figures in the administration itself like Kash Patel at the FBI. This group has effectively no interest in Canada, or American policy to Canada, so long as they’re winning and Canada knows its “proper place.”

Traditional Business Conservatives

This faction includes figures like Treasury Secretary Scott Bessant, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, and Energy Secretary Chris Wright. They favour deregulation and stable trade relations, often opposing Trump’s blanket tariffs. However, their influence has waned compared to Trump 1.0, as more populist and radical factions now dominate the administration. They advocate maintaining stable supply chains with Canada, though they largely support reshoring manufacturing, and prefer the growth upside of trade. Foreign policy positions here are fairly traditional, and a second-order concern at best to business and economic ones. While not overly strong, this faction may be the closest thing to a Canadian ally that we can find within MAGA.

Tech-Right Libertarians

This faction, represented by figures like Elon Musk, Marc Andreessen, and venture-capital allies such as David Sacks, pushes deregulation of artificial intelligence, cryptocurrency, and biotech. They diverge from the tariff-heavy populist faction, preferring skilled immigration and open trade in digital goods. Some of them view Canada as a potential technology partner and talent pool rather than a trade rival. However, their influence is limited to specific policy niches such as AI governance, computer chips and space technology. There is also a significant culture-war component to the faction that limits Canadian access and persuasive capacity.

Isolationists and Neo-Cons

In theory, these are different groups, but where Canada is concerned you’ll find they run closely together. Secretary of Defence/War Hegseth can be considered an isolationist, where Secretary of State Rubio is perhaps the leading Neo-Con voice. The purer Isolationists are generally out of the administration proper, think Senator Rand Paul or Congressman Thomas Massie, and many of the Neo-Cons were discredited in MAGA during Trump 1.0. This collection of groups, perhaps even looser than the others, is suspicious of both foreigners and foreign entanglements. Their view of Canada is relatively benign — they support bilateral cooperation, oppose large-scale American commitments or subsidies, and oppose global institutions such as NATO that bind U.S. commitments. Their views on trade can be volatile — how a given trade relationship or market impacts the United States is more important than abstract principle, and they don’t like binding obligations.

The Christian Nationalists (Religious Right)

This faction sees North America through a moral and civilizational lens. When they think about it at all, they tend to perceive Canada as a part of American culture, largely not considering Canadians as anything different from Americans. That said, they are also deeply skeptical of Canada’s liberal (and Liberal) politics and policies. These figures support Trump’s efforts to impose “values-based” trade restrictions, such as penalties for climate- or gender-related regulations perceived as socialist exports. You’ll see more of this faction at mid-tier levels or as part of the wider GOP world, but figures like Vice-President J.D. Vance and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem are favourites.

Those are the factions as I perceive them, at least as far as Canada is concerned. It is hard to quantify the relative strength of these factions — it depends on the specific issue, and on how the various factions’ interests happen to align on any given topic. The Trump family and inner circle is the most powerful, followed by Institutional MAGA, all other rankings are conditional. Many of them have different interests in Canada, if any, but is there an overall interest? A through line on Canada that every faction would agree with?

I think yes — subservience. The specifics of policy are downstream of domestic priorities, especially political ones. As noted above, Canada is to be put in its place. Canada isn’t an equal, and in a transactional and episodic view of international relations there is no reason for the United States not to use its leverage against Canada in pursuit of its goals.

Some of the rhetoric being field-tested about a renewed Monroe Doctrine should get real attention in Ottawa in this context. Announced by President James Monroe in 1823, the doctrine declared that any attempt by European nations to colonize land or interfere with states in North or South America would be seen as acts of aggression, prompting U.S. intervention. Over the subsequent century, it largely meant the United States justifying actions in Latin America. Canada, then a part of the British Empire (later Commonwealth) and thus covered by the Royal Navy and British Army, was quietly exempt despite the doctrine’s explicit claims about the whole hemisphere. The British Empire isn’t around to shield us anymore in the face of a more muscular American vision of its regional authority.

It is vital to understand that there is no particular concern with the damage U.S. policies in pursuit of the administration’s goals would do to Canada — a strong Canadian economy is no longer seen, to the extent it ever was, as an important consideration for the United States government. None of these factions seems to have any appreciation that sharing the world’s longest undefended border with an impoverished and angry neighbour might not be in America’s own best interest.

Where does this leave Canada today? In an entirely new situation. The underlying assumption for Canadian decision-makers has long been that they are working with an American partner that seeks mutual benefit via long-term cooperation. That assumption needs to be quietly but rapidly discarded. We are dealing with a different kind of American administration now, one that seeks our subordination (at least), and one that will continue to evolve and act in accordance with its own shifting internal power dynamics. Canada can adapt and successfully respond to this new reality in D.C., but that means understanding the factions inside the MAGA GOP and their differing agendas.

Alex Muir is a principal at Pulse Decision Science, a full-service research and data firm based out of Washington, D.C, and a Senior Advisor at Innovative Research Group in Canada. He has provided polling, data analytics, or qualitative research to political campaigns ranging from presidential primaries, gubernatorial races, U.S. House and Senate races, and independent expenditures. He also does corporate and public affairs work, up to and including in support of Fortune 100 companies. He also leads most of Pulse’s international projects and has worked with political, corporate, and non-profit clients in Canada, Australia, Great Britain, Mexico, Ukraine and Israel. He is married to Line editor Jen Gerson; Gerson abstained from any role in the preparation or publication of this article.

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