“America first. This slogan brought up to date by Donald Trump half a dozen years ago remains very topical even though Joe Biden now occupies the White House.
Economic nationalism is still popular among our neighbors to the south.
And this is the most important obstacle that Justin Trudeau and his ministers face in Washington today.
No, the Canada-US relationship has not changed at all.
And no, this visit to the American capital (where a Three Amigos summit will take place on Thursday) will not be the equivalent of a picnic.
It’s true, no one is threatening to pulverize the free trade agreement between the three countries like Donald Trump did.
It’s true, Canada has predictable interlocutors in the White House, starting with President Biden.
It’s a huge relief!
But the points of commercial friction between our two countries have not all disappeared.
The most recent proof of this is that the US Congress is currently considering a new protectionist idea: a tax credit that could be offered on electric vehicles built in the United States.
The initiative threatens the auto industry in both Canada and Mexico.
There was also on Wednesday, on the menu for the first day of Prime Minister Trudeau’s trip, a series of meetings with leading Democrats and Republicans in the two chambers of the US Congress.
Rich idea.
PHOTO JACQUELYN MARTIN, ASSOCIATED PRESS
On the first day of his diplomatic trip to Washington, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau met with many US elected officials, including Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House of Representatives.
It is of the utmost importance.
Justin Trudeau will certainly have taken the opportunity to deliver a very simple message to them: stoking the rivalry between Canada, the United States and Mexico would be a very, very bad idea; rather, we should take advantage of our alliance to face competition from outside the North American continent.
We are talking here first and foremost about China, of course, Washington’s great rival.
The reasoning makes sense.
We work better among allies if we stick together than if we fight against each other.
This is what Justin Trudeau argued publicly, in a well-felt way, during a series of exchanges at the Woodrow Wilson Center on Wednesday noon.
PHOTO ADRIAN WYLD, THE CANADIAN PRESS
The Prime Minister of Canada participated in a question-and-answer session hosted by the Wilson Center in Washington on Wednesday.
Remember: this sounds like the message that was conveyed by Ottawa to the four corners of the United States while Donald Trump was in power.
The mobilization, so effective at the time, should also continue. Both on the Ottawa side and on that of other actors involved in the Canada-US relationship: provinces, cities, business community, etc.
“Being your neighbor is like sleeping with an elephant: however gentle and placid the beast may be, you endure its every movement and its grunts,” Trudeau father told Americans in the late 1960s.
It hasn’t changed.
The relationship is easier to manage when the American beast growls less, we agree on that.
But it’s not easy either.
Moreover, nothing better than a first real bilateral “face-to-face” meeting between Justin Trudeau and Joe Biden to lay the foundations for what could become a close collaboration over the next few years.
Such a wish is not far-fetched.
Justin Trudeau and Joe Biden have more hooks than, say, Stephen Harper and Barack Obama. Or even Jean Chrétien and George W. Bush.
And we are not talking about Donald Trump, who only looked soft at tyrants.
That said, Canada will have to align itself with certain American positions, particularly in the area of international relations.
Particularly on Chinese issues. Whether it is the refusal to let Huawei touch 5G infrastructure or the boycott, by politicians of our two countries, of the Beijing Olympics.
These issues are controversial and delicate. Still, it is high time for Ottawa to announce its colors.
It would be naive to think that elected officials in Washington will give us whatever we want without expecting anything in return.
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