End of the Obama era and of the incessant WOKE era hopefully. Time for the manderin class to have a look at themselves in the USA and certainly here and become civil servants again instead of bureaucratic pontificators. Also time for the main stream news media, on all sides, to have a look at themselves and wonder if fair balanced reporting as the fifth estate was once, ought to be what they aspire to instead of bloviators of their own narrow thoughts.
As an American, you've missed the point, both of Jen and Matt's article and of the aftermath of the election. This isn't about woke: it's about the basic desires of the populace, which generally drive towards clarity of message and clarity of leadership. Say what you want about Trump, he's clear. If Woke were clear, it would potentially be a path forward for the left, but it's not, never was, and 2024 showed it.
Trump was clearly himself. Is that coherent in terms of left or right, conservative or not, whatever? No, but at no point did he engage in classic political slotting: he was always, clearly, himself. Even picking Vance as VP was clear - arguably much more so than picking Pence in 2016. Trump ran as only himself - a classic populist candidate. It presents huge risks for Republicans going forward, but - and he sticks to the script here - he doesn’t give a shit about the party in 2028. That’s their problem: he won, and won on a platform of him. It may infuriate you, but it was crystal, perfectly clear to Americans.
So we are to accept a man as US President who blocked bilateral legislation to control the southern border BECAUSE HE COULD MAKE POLITICAL HAY FROM THE CHAOS?
Trump never had to be clear. His positions are well known. All he had to say was “they’re eating the dogs and cats” for everyone to remember his asylum policy.
According to what I’ve read in the US press, unchecked immigration was a major factor. I saw a Pew Research poll that 90% of Republicans favour mass deportations and so do some 40% of Democrats. (It’s unlikely they’ll happen but it shows the mood).
This was a signature Biden accomplishment: he lifted Trump’s border restrictions on his first day in office. I have no idea what he was thinking.
Great article and as noted a trifle early to pontificate on too deeply - give it a bit of time.
However, I wasn't surprised at the outcome either as my news feed, Apple, had breathless article after breathless article claiming 'Trump ahead', 'Harris ahead', often adjacent to each other. Guessing who was right or wrong really was a coin flip. I am, however, grateful that the result was decisive. The worst outcome that I feared was "Harris 274, Trump 266" - that would have been a ghastly scene, no question.
I also think, in common with many, that the progressive side of the aisle needs to think very hard as to why their policies are not finding favour with electorates. Note even in the UK a notionally progressive Labour Party fought an election on 'vibes' and said very little as to what they would actually do in power. Now they're floundering as the financial resources are rather thin and there simply isn't much they can do without arousing the ire of the IMF - a humiliation visited on the UK back in the 1970s (and might be our future unless we get a grip on our spending, I digress). Many of the progressive talking points from the past century and more are in place. Not much to do except administer same competently. Difficult to make pamphlets extolling such virtues and so you get half-baked child care, dental care and pharma care programmes that fool few. Why are they half-baked? No money to complete the job. And, oh yeah, one of the fundamentals of a sovereign state is defence of one's territory. The bill for which is about to double. There will be even less to spend on half-baked social programmes.
The progressive soul searching over coming years is going to be very interesting to watch.
Meantime, buckle up Canada as we have an American government that just doesn't care about our point of view or our little problems. Ouch.
"Meantime, buckle up Canada as we have an American government that just doesn't care about our point of view or our little problems. Ouch." We'd have had that regardless of last night's outcome.
Fair & balanced. I would argue quite accurate. Sadly I don’t think the current government cares about long term consequences for the possibility of short term political gains. Great article.
As an American, albeit one with a lot of Canadian roots, this is most cogent analysis of the US election I've read so far. The NYT is in freefall; the WSJ - otherwise generally good on the news side - is in a kind of post-champagne fog. Thanks to Jen and Matt for getting it right.
Junior is only concerned for himself, as a narcissist would be. He does not give a flying fuck about doing more harm to Canada by trying to link Trump onto PP. Just wait for it, in desperation the Liberals will go
hard on guns, abortion and Populism. Bank on it cause it’s likely all they see they can campaign on, cause their debt and record in office are pitiful.
Actually, the free trade agreement comes up for renewal soon. Remember how Harper announced the first time in the face of Trump's threats, "There is no hope. Surrender." The Trudeau team did rather better than expected in preserving the Canada/US auto pact. Renewing NAFTA in the face of a tyrant seems a worthy crusade for Trudeau.
I like the analysis, but it's disappointing that after years of debunked hoaxes, where Trump is concerned, you still fall for them and mindlessly pepper your piece with those, to wit:
"Mr. Trump is a convicted felon who tried, albeit clumsily and pitifully, to foment an insurrection after he lost the last election. He engaged in a protracted disinformation campaign to lie and deceive the American people about the outcome of the election."
It undermines the validity of your otherwise excellent piece.
You owe it to yourself and your readers to not just take the mainstream opinion about Trump (especially in Canada) at face value. There is way too much evidence that the corporate media is corrupt a little more than a mouthpiece of the left.
For all his faults, trump is an infinitely more stable and moral character than any of his woke opponents, has accomplished way more than them, and in spite of an unending barrage of attacks of all sorts since 2016 (media, impeachments, lawfare and 2 assassination attempts just to name a few) is still standing.
If I were a Yank, I'd take that any day over the unhinged woke death cult.
Your use of the word “Yank” indicates you have no clue, even more than the incoherence of your reply. Trump isn’t stable, and indeed, Americans would not have gravitated to him if he were: we love us some crazy, pace Bill “Blue Tie” Clinton, GW “Mission Accomplished” Bush, Obama, and even Uncle Joe. Trump is a felon who wears it, he’s a bankrupt who sells it as savvy and success, You have no understanding of America if you think it is his “moral stability” that makes him attractive.
Nothing ad hominem: you don’t understand the term. I ascribe your cluenessness to your use of Yank, not to your character; I merely point out the fact that your reply is incoherent, not that you are. Nor is my pointing out to the readers your lack of understanding of American mores. Your reply merely emphasises the fact that your original post isn’t worthy of consideration. Thanks for backing me up!
I agree with the clarity that yes, this defeat needs to be seen as a defeat, not as a lucky win for Trump. Voters well knew Trump, and for the majority, they chose him.
The part where I feel the conclusion is premature is about the overall conclusion that pushback against the woke left (as it was phrased in the article) is something that's a trend. I think it's more of a pushback against any government that tells me how I should feel. So yes when we have progressive woke, we push back against that, but also we push back when we have the 'alt right" push of abortion restrictions, anti gay marriage, anti immigrant etc. You have the current examples, Higgs, Moe (to an extent), or Sunak. I think it's really we get sick after a while of anyone who tells us how to think.
As well, if you are on the woke left, you do see progress over time. For example, it wasn't that long ago that Liberals and Democrats disavowed gay marriage, but today, even your most populist or conservative democracies are not contemplating banning gay marriage.
I do agree that trying to tie Trump to Polievre is a mistake. But it's probably going to happen, since if this current iteration of Liberals had some good ideas, we would have seen them by now. It's not to say they didn't accomplish some good things, but the air is out of the balloon.
"Mr. Trump is deeply unpopular here because he is, in many ways, a deeply unlikeable and detestable person, with personal and political foibles that boggle the mind (as per our point above). That is, to put it mildly, not Mr. Poilievre."
Damn. After I read that first sentence, I thought the next sentence was going to be "But the equivalent here in Canada is not Poilievre, but Trudeau."
Great article, it took what has been rattling around my mind and organized the lot into a neat structure. Thank you.
Favourite phrase from the article:
" - the collapse of the moral authority of the institutional left."
Just like the "benefits" of communism and socialism turned out to be institutional piles of corrupt dung.
Favourite sentence from comments:
"The progressive soul searching over coming years is going to be very interesting to watch."
Yes it will be, but the progressives are incapable of soul searching because of their fanaticism. In that they are similar to the old-style Bolsheviks, and also to the today's Islamic jihadists.
I think the concentration of the media is also preventing accurate assessments about what it going on. There are no major networks in fly over America and their newspapers are now defunct. In the past, you would get stories about what people thought in those areas. Not anymore. It has become a self enforcing circle jerk where everyone missed what exactly was happening.
Yes. Too much is centred in Toronto including CBC. Just listening to a commentator saying that radio is the last vestige of local news and it is under severe threat.
The really big papers like the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal do have stories — at times — from flyover country. The Times is reflexively liberal but the opinion section of the Journal is conservative.
Fantastic article that I shared with many American friends as it explains Trump's victory with greater clarity than anything I've seen from the American media. Take that as a huge compliment.
(I think you meant "Wednesday" in the statement "1:30 Eastern on Tuesday morning")
I will also like to say that everyone, including politicians, are terrified about what the new Trump administration will do to Canada, but I’m not scared enough to remove remove provincial tray barriers in order to help the economy in case he does do something.
There are common misconceptions about what Trumpism is about. Trump won his Republican primary in 2016 in spite of having a cringy personality, and the presidency in spite of his gaffs. I don't think he cared about abortion but he had to have a position on it to make a somewhat workable presidency. He is not the president of social conservatism regardless of how the Dems want to paint him. The message that resonated originally was about financial conservatism ie. we cannot afford to give away our jobs to Chinese factories and Central American illegal workers. This runs against the grain of free trade established by Ronald Regan and an immigrant friendly country. Unfortunately, the Democrats did not count on the rust belt in the US who lost their good factory jobs in the decades after free trade and had to compete with immigrants for employment.
The "Make America Great Again" slogan is also the title of the last chapter of Lee Ioccoca's autobiography. Lee complains that the government is not supporting American industry and that it is letting foreign competition ( in this case Japan ) overrun US companies. A couple of decades later it is China. The Republican ignored the problem and were overrun by the MAGA faction and the Democrats tried to run on a social democratic platform. Americans may care about abortion but they care more about their jobs.
The reason that it took a couple of decades to occur is that the credibility of media took a while to evaporate. When the majority did not believe in Rachel Meadow and Taylor Swift it was over.
The Dems have become the party of the comfortably well off (largely white) and so they thought the election ought to be about morals. The Republicans have become the party of people who care about their grocery bills. Turns out more people care about their bills than someone else's morals. No surprise there.
That does not change the economic consequence of tariffs. If Trump imposes tariff increases upon foreign agriculture, then domestic U.S. producers will take advantage of the discrimination against the competition to increase their own prices at the expense of consumers. That is why tariffs are so condemned by economists: that type of tax deliberately encourages lower productivity.
That is definitely a long run risk. And I'm not in favor of tariffs generally. But I'm also not convinced it's going to be this massive horrible instant bad thing. Wall street has been pretty happy today with Trump being elected - if they thought he was going to be horrible for business, I feel like today would've gone much worse.
There's a positive side to this - Trump has 4 years, and he can never run for president again. I didn't think he should've run this time. (full disclosure I guess). But I also don't feel like this is a chicken-little-sky-is-falling moment. Trump was president for 4 years and certainly caused some difficulties in certain industries in those 4 years (an industry I worked in was heavily affected,) BUT I also can't help but think there's a really good chance Trump doesn't make it to the end of his term just due to old age. He's apparently the oldest president ever elected. So I'm just not in the panic camp. (And I'll still travel to the US just the same.)
There's a difference between being horrible for business and being horrible for the economy. Tariffs do not specifically harm businesses, they simply harm wealth-creation more broadly and in the abstract picture. Because of their abstract impact, there is no group that consistently condemns tariffs other than economists.
"However, we would suggest that when the incumbent is progressive, the bias is deepened and made more particularly acute by another trend — the collapse of the moral authority of the institutional left."
Current polling suggests you're right and we'll have our own political transition in 2025. The "progressive left" has thoroughly corrupted itself because of its boneheaded stand on the wrong side of important concerns of our day; for example, the righteous, defensive Israeli war, the extreme Trans agenda, DEI, the "unmarked graves" affair, climate "crisis" zealotry, immigration, economic mismanagement, unheard-of debt levels, foreign interference, the decline of our military, rising crime and much more. The Liberals deserve the dustbin for a minimum of a generation while they figure out the true issues of most average Canadians, and while Canada's economy and social fabric are being repaired by PP and the Conservatives.
I worked for an enormous US financial company for 25 years, in leadership.
The roots of Trump's victory can be found as far back as the 1980s, given strength in 2001, 2008. In the 1980s Western economies embraced the global labour market, and cheap progress, without consideration or compensation for the labour market left idle in their own countries. 2001 added a piece to a cynical puzzle when senseless leverage created upheaval (as it does cyclically), many people were wiped out, and when the causes became clear, there was no accountability or real effort for structural change. Then 2008 confirmed the very same with even more egregious financial hoarding (again using unjustified leverage), and even less accountability. People feel progress has stopped, except for the elite few who also make the rules.
2008 was a watershed because the pattern repeated so quickly, and the helplessness was brutally confirmed.
I'll add one more interesting data point, studied and confirmed time and again: when corporations in Canada/US, or industry organizations, want to influence legislation they are successful 60% of the time. Individuals, or grass-roots, organizations... almost too small to be measured.
I'm a liberal democrat, a centrist who believes we need everyone at the table for success - my self-interest is enlightened in the sense that, I believe in the long term my interests are served if your interests are served, and my point is this: we gave away the credibility democracy needs to succeed by allowing different thumbs on the scale, without good outcomes, and for all to see.
I believe Donald J Trump is a grenade, throw by folks who have given up hope and don't much like him. Deaf leftists, drunk on hubris and self-referential justification, who tell us what to think and how to feel are the last straw, and it's obviously happening here.
End of the Obama era and of the incessant WOKE era hopefully. Time for the manderin class to have a look at themselves in the USA and certainly here and become civil servants again instead of bureaucratic pontificators. Also time for the main stream news media, on all sides, to have a look at themselves and wonder if fair balanced reporting as the fifth estate was once, ought to be what they aspire to instead of bloviators of their own narrow thoughts.
Keep up the great journalism folks
As an American, you've missed the point, both of Jen and Matt's article and of the aftermath of the election. This isn't about woke: it's about the basic desires of the populace, which generally drive towards clarity of message and clarity of leadership. Say what you want about Trump, he's clear. If Woke were clear, it would potentially be a path forward for the left, but it's not, never was, and 2024 showed it.
Trump has been anything BUT clear.
Trump was clearly himself. Is that coherent in terms of left or right, conservative or not, whatever? No, but at no point did he engage in classic political slotting: he was always, clearly, himself. Even picking Vance as VP was clear - arguably much more so than picking Pence in 2016. Trump ran as only himself - a classic populist candidate. It presents huge risks for Republicans going forward, but - and he sticks to the script here - he doesn’t give a shit about the party in 2028. That’s their problem: he won, and won on a platform of him. It may infuriate you, but it was crystal, perfectly clear to Americans.
So we are to accept a man as US President who blocked bilateral legislation to control the southern border BECAUSE HE COULD MAKE POLITICAL HAY FROM THE CHAOS?
we accept a leader who has done the same thing with COVID, abortion, guns, energy ...
Trump never had to be clear. His positions are well known. All he had to say was “they’re eating the dogs and cats” for everyone to remember his asylum policy.
According to what I’ve read in the US press, unchecked immigration was a major factor. I saw a Pew Research poll that 90% of Republicans favour mass deportations and so do some 40% of Democrats. (It’s unlikely they’ll happen but it shows the mood).
This was a signature Biden accomplishment: he lifted Trump’s border restrictions on his first day in office. I have no idea what he was thinking.
Great article and as noted a trifle early to pontificate on too deeply - give it a bit of time.
However, I wasn't surprised at the outcome either as my news feed, Apple, had breathless article after breathless article claiming 'Trump ahead', 'Harris ahead', often adjacent to each other. Guessing who was right or wrong really was a coin flip. I am, however, grateful that the result was decisive. The worst outcome that I feared was "Harris 274, Trump 266" - that would have been a ghastly scene, no question.
I also think, in common with many, that the progressive side of the aisle needs to think very hard as to why their policies are not finding favour with electorates. Note even in the UK a notionally progressive Labour Party fought an election on 'vibes' and said very little as to what they would actually do in power. Now they're floundering as the financial resources are rather thin and there simply isn't much they can do without arousing the ire of the IMF - a humiliation visited on the UK back in the 1970s (and might be our future unless we get a grip on our spending, I digress). Many of the progressive talking points from the past century and more are in place. Not much to do except administer same competently. Difficult to make pamphlets extolling such virtues and so you get half-baked child care, dental care and pharma care programmes that fool few. Why are they half-baked? No money to complete the job. And, oh yeah, one of the fundamentals of a sovereign state is defence of one's territory. The bill for which is about to double. There will be even less to spend on half-baked social programmes.
The progressive soul searching over coming years is going to be very interesting to watch.
Meantime, buckle up Canada as we have an American government that just doesn't care about our point of view or our little problems. Ouch.
"Meantime, buckle up Canada as we have an American government that just doesn't care about our point of view or our little problems. Ouch." We'd have had that regardless of last night's outcome.
Fair & balanced. I would argue quite accurate. Sadly I don’t think the current government cares about long term consequences for the possibility of short term political gains. Great article.
As an American, albeit one with a lot of Canadian roots, this is most cogent analysis of the US election I've read so far. The NYT is in freefall; the WSJ - otherwise generally good on the news side - is in a kind of post-champagne fog. Thanks to Jen and Matt for getting it right.
Junior is only concerned for himself, as a narcissist would be. He does not give a flying fuck about doing more harm to Canada by trying to link Trump onto PP. Just wait for it, in desperation the Liberals will go
hard on guns, abortion and Populism. Bank on it cause it’s likely all they see they can campaign on, cause their debt and record in office are pitiful.
And they will still lose.
Actually, the free trade agreement comes up for renewal soon. Remember how Harper announced the first time in the face of Trump's threats, "There is no hope. Surrender." The Trudeau team did rather better than expected in preserving the Canada/US auto pact. Renewing NAFTA in the face of a tyrant seems a worthy crusade for Trudeau.
I like the analysis, but it's disappointing that after years of debunked hoaxes, where Trump is concerned, you still fall for them and mindlessly pepper your piece with those, to wit:
"Mr. Trump is a convicted felon who tried, albeit clumsily and pitifully, to foment an insurrection after he lost the last election. He engaged in a protracted disinformation campaign to lie and deceive the American people about the outcome of the election."
It undermines the validity of your otherwise excellent piece.
You owe it to yourself and your readers to not just take the mainstream opinion about Trump (especially in Canada) at face value. There is way too much evidence that the corporate media is corrupt a little more than a mouthpiece of the left.
For all his faults, trump is an infinitely more stable and moral character than any of his woke opponents, has accomplished way more than them, and in spite of an unending barrage of attacks of all sorts since 2016 (media, impeachments, lawfare and 2 assassination attempts just to name a few) is still standing.
If I were a Yank, I'd take that any day over the unhinged woke death cult.
I disagree with your take on Trump and agree with The Line's take on Trump, based on a lifetime of evidence. Public evidence.
You're welcome to disagree. Please share your evidence.
I fail to see how being completely accurate about Donald Trump's gifts and flaws undermines their piece at all.
And accurate how, exactly?
Your use of the word “Yank” indicates you have no clue, even more than the incoherence of your reply. Trump isn’t stable, and indeed, Americans would not have gravitated to him if he were: we love us some crazy, pace Bill “Blue Tie” Clinton, GW “Mission Accomplished” Bush, Obama, and even Uncle Joe. Trump is a felon who wears it, he’s a bankrupt who sells it as savvy and success, You have no understanding of America if you think it is his “moral stability” that makes him attractive.
Ad hominem attacks make you look like a moron and would normally get you ignored.
You know nothing about me, so don't act like you can ascertain the value of my character by reading a few lines I penned. It's a bad look.
Either you can engage with a proper argument and remain civil, or you can fuck right off.
Nothing ad hominem: you don’t understand the term. I ascribe your cluenessness to your use of Yank, not to your character; I merely point out the fact that your reply is incoherent, not that you are. Nor is my pointing out to the readers your lack of understanding of American mores. Your reply merely emphasises the fact that your original post isn’t worthy of consideration. Thanks for backing me up!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IVFK8sVdJNg
Next time I'll use "seppo" instead of yank.
I agree with the clarity that yes, this defeat needs to be seen as a defeat, not as a lucky win for Trump. Voters well knew Trump, and for the majority, they chose him.
The part where I feel the conclusion is premature is about the overall conclusion that pushback against the woke left (as it was phrased in the article) is something that's a trend. I think it's more of a pushback against any government that tells me how I should feel. So yes when we have progressive woke, we push back against that, but also we push back when we have the 'alt right" push of abortion restrictions, anti gay marriage, anti immigrant etc. You have the current examples, Higgs, Moe (to an extent), or Sunak. I think it's really we get sick after a while of anyone who tells us how to think.
As well, if you are on the woke left, you do see progress over time. For example, it wasn't that long ago that Liberals and Democrats disavowed gay marriage, but today, even your most populist or conservative democracies are not contemplating banning gay marriage.
I do agree that trying to tie Trump to Polievre is a mistake. But it's probably going to happen, since if this current iteration of Liberals had some good ideas, we would have seen them by now. It's not to say they didn't accomplish some good things, but the air is out of the balloon.
Its true that we're think of people telling us how we should think. Instead of talking so much they should try listening.
"Mr. Trump is deeply unpopular here because he is, in many ways, a deeply unlikeable and detestable person, with personal and political foibles that boggle the mind (as per our point above). That is, to put it mildly, not Mr. Poilievre."
Damn. After I read that first sentence, I thought the next sentence was going to be "But the equivalent here in Canada is not Poilievre, but Trudeau."
It kind of felt like when you mistakenly think there's one more step on a set of stairs.
Great article, it took what has been rattling around my mind and organized the lot into a neat structure. Thank you.
Favourite phrase from the article:
" - the collapse of the moral authority of the institutional left."
Just like the "benefits" of communism and socialism turned out to be institutional piles of corrupt dung.
Favourite sentence from comments:
"The progressive soul searching over coming years is going to be very interesting to watch."
Yes it will be, but the progressives are incapable of soul searching because of their fanaticism. In that they are similar to the old-style Bolsheviks, and also to the today's Islamic jihadists.
I think the concentration of the media is also preventing accurate assessments about what it going on. There are no major networks in fly over America and their newspapers are now defunct. In the past, you would get stories about what people thought in those areas. Not anymore. It has become a self enforcing circle jerk where everyone missed what exactly was happening.
Really good point.
Just like here.
Yes. Too much is centred in Toronto including CBC. Just listening to a commentator saying that radio is the last vestige of local news and it is under severe threat.
The really big papers like the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal do have stories — at times — from flyover country. The Times is reflexively liberal but the opinion section of the Journal is conservative.
Fantastic article that I shared with many American friends as it explains Trump's victory with greater clarity than anything I've seen from the American media. Take that as a huge compliment.
(I think you meant "Wednesday" in the statement "1:30 Eastern on Tuesday morning")
I will also like to say that everyone, including politicians, are terrified about what the new Trump administration will do to Canada, but I’m not scared enough to remove remove provincial tray barriers in order to help the economy in case he does do something.
Not scared enough. Sorry. Typo.
You can edit your comments. Press the three dots at the right and select edit.
There are common misconceptions about what Trumpism is about. Trump won his Republican primary in 2016 in spite of having a cringy personality, and the presidency in spite of his gaffs. I don't think he cared about abortion but he had to have a position on it to make a somewhat workable presidency. He is not the president of social conservatism regardless of how the Dems want to paint him. The message that resonated originally was about financial conservatism ie. we cannot afford to give away our jobs to Chinese factories and Central American illegal workers. This runs against the grain of free trade established by Ronald Regan and an immigrant friendly country. Unfortunately, the Democrats did not count on the rust belt in the US who lost their good factory jobs in the decades after free trade and had to compete with immigrants for employment.
The "Make America Great Again" slogan is also the title of the last chapter of Lee Ioccoca's autobiography. Lee complains that the government is not supporting American industry and that it is letting foreign competition ( in this case Japan ) overrun US companies. A couple of decades later it is China. The Republican ignored the problem and were overrun by the MAGA faction and the Democrats tried to run on a social democratic platform. Americans may care about abortion but they care more about their jobs.
The reason that it took a couple of decades to occur is that the credibility of media took a while to evaporate. When the majority did not believe in Rachel Meadow and Taylor Swift it was over.
The Dems have become the party of the comfortably well off (largely white) and so they thought the election ought to be about morals. The Republicans have become the party of people who care about their grocery bills. Turns out more people care about their bills than someone else's morals. No surprise there.
I guess the Democrats did not talk enough about how Trump's tariff policies will hike grocery bills!
They really didn't.
But that might be because they agree with those policies. Both parties are protectionist at this point.
Yeah, that's my point. Or more importantly, the Dems didn't talk enough about how they're going to improve the economy.
Not necessarily. The US is a pretty big agricultural producer.
That does not change the economic consequence of tariffs. If Trump imposes tariff increases upon foreign agriculture, then domestic U.S. producers will take advantage of the discrimination against the competition to increase their own prices at the expense of consumers. That is why tariffs are so condemned by economists: that type of tax deliberately encourages lower productivity.
That is definitely a long run risk. And I'm not in favor of tariffs generally. But I'm also not convinced it's going to be this massive horrible instant bad thing. Wall street has been pretty happy today with Trump being elected - if they thought he was going to be horrible for business, I feel like today would've gone much worse.
There's a positive side to this - Trump has 4 years, and he can never run for president again. I didn't think he should've run this time. (full disclosure I guess). But I also don't feel like this is a chicken-little-sky-is-falling moment. Trump was president for 4 years and certainly caused some difficulties in certain industries in those 4 years (an industry I worked in was heavily affected,) BUT I also can't help but think there's a really good chance Trump doesn't make it to the end of his term just due to old age. He's apparently the oldest president ever elected. So I'm just not in the panic camp. (And I'll still travel to the US just the same.)
Why would you say "long term"?
What business sees an opportunity to raise prices and increase profits and says "nah... I've got enough money... I'll just not do that".
There's a difference between being horrible for business and being horrible for the economy. Tariffs do not specifically harm businesses, they simply harm wealth-creation more broadly and in the abstract picture. Because of their abstract impact, there is no group that consistently condemns tariffs other than economists.
What morals?
Thank you for another insightful column.
"However, we would suggest that when the incumbent is progressive, the bias is deepened and made more particularly acute by another trend — the collapse of the moral authority of the institutional left."
Current polling suggests you're right and we'll have our own political transition in 2025. The "progressive left" has thoroughly corrupted itself because of its boneheaded stand on the wrong side of important concerns of our day; for example, the righteous, defensive Israeli war, the extreme Trans agenda, DEI, the "unmarked graves" affair, climate "crisis" zealotry, immigration, economic mismanagement, unheard-of debt levels, foreign interference, the decline of our military, rising crime and much more. The Liberals deserve the dustbin for a minimum of a generation while they figure out the true issues of most average Canadians, and while Canada's economy and social fabric are being repaired by PP and the Conservatives.
I worked for an enormous US financial company for 25 years, in leadership.
The roots of Trump's victory can be found as far back as the 1980s, given strength in 2001, 2008. In the 1980s Western economies embraced the global labour market, and cheap progress, without consideration or compensation for the labour market left idle in their own countries. 2001 added a piece to a cynical puzzle when senseless leverage created upheaval (as it does cyclically), many people were wiped out, and when the causes became clear, there was no accountability or real effort for structural change. Then 2008 confirmed the very same with even more egregious financial hoarding (again using unjustified leverage), and even less accountability. People feel progress has stopped, except for the elite few who also make the rules.
2008 was a watershed because the pattern repeated so quickly, and the helplessness was brutally confirmed.
I'll add one more interesting data point, studied and confirmed time and again: when corporations in Canada/US, or industry organizations, want to influence legislation they are successful 60% of the time. Individuals, or grass-roots, organizations... almost too small to be measured.
I'm a liberal democrat, a centrist who believes we need everyone at the table for success - my self-interest is enlightened in the sense that, I believe in the long term my interests are served if your interests are served, and my point is this: we gave away the credibility democracy needs to succeed by allowing different thumbs on the scale, without good outcomes, and for all to see.
I believe Donald J Trump is a grenade, throw by folks who have given up hope and don't much like him. Deaf leftists, drunk on hubris and self-referential justification, who tell us what to think and how to feel are the last straw, and it's obviously happening here.